Students show Chinese proficiency

Students show Chinese proficiency

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Temujin Nusantara Iqbal, a first-year student of Maranatha
University of Bandung, West Java, quickly pressed the buzzer on
his desk every time a juror read out grammatical questions in
Mandarin.

He and his teammates, David Steven and Symphoni, astonishingly
answered almost all the questions in the final round of the 9th
Chinese Language Competition for the basic level, held on
Saturday at the School of Humanities, University of Indonesia
(UI).

His team won the competition, organized by the students of the
Chinese literature, after beating teams from Petra University,
Widya Kartika University, both from Surabaya, and the host
university, UI.

Meanwhile, in the intermediate and advanced levels, the
winners were Petra University and Maranata University
respectively.

"We organized the competition to see how far students of
Chinese literature have mastered the Chinese language. And we
also would like to strengthen the relationship between students
who are studying Chinese," Etsy Tia Kartika, spokesperson of the
organizing committee told The Jakarta Post.

Besides organizing competitions for all levels of Chinese
language, the committee also held speech, storytelling, and
karaoke competitions.

Etsy said the organizer was surprised by the enthusiasm shown
by the students to participate in the competition.

"The language competition participants came from the
universities that we invited. But for speech, storytelling and
karaoke, we only set a quota of 15 participants for each
competition. But more than 20 registered for each competition,"
she said.

Iwan Lee, one of the jurors at the competition, said that this
was heartening because it showed how Mandarin has become popular
in the country.

"Chinese has become the second most popular language after
English in the world. The fact that many students are mastering
the language proves that this trend has also infected Indonesia,"
he said.

However, Joanne Liu of Taiwan said that Indonesian students
should improve their Mandarin speaking capability as soon as
possible to allow them to interact with foreigners who speak the
language.

"Most of them are good, but that's not enough. They have to
speak the language more often because Indonesians are actually
late in learning the language. Malaysians and Singaporeans
already mastered the language more than 10 years ago," she said.