The Japan-America Society of Pennsylvania (JASP) and the University of Pittsburgh’s Asian Studies Center jointly hosted the 22nd Annual High School Japanese Speech Contest on Friday, March 1st at the William Pitt Union on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh. This year 52 students from Western PA competed in this daylong competition. Austin Keller from Norwin High School won the grand prize in the Advanced Plus level. The present for him was an electronic Japanese-English dictionary donated by the Consulate General of Japan in New York. University of Pittsburgh East Asian Language & Literature faculty once again participated as judges; Sachiko Howard, Noriko Kowalchuck, and Junzo Oshimo were part of the judging team, and Stephen Luft led a one-hour workshop for the language teachers on “Japanese Language Learning with Talkabroad: Connecting students with native speakers.”
This event is made possible through the generous support of the Elliott Group, Perryman Company, Temple University Japan Campus, Japan Foundation Los Angeles, the Japanese Consulate General of New York, University of Pittsburgh Asian Studies Center, the Japan Iron & Steel Federation and Mitsubishi Endowments at the University of Pittsburgh, and all participating schools, students and volunteers.
