Ramsey High Schoolers Win Chinese Competition

A group of seven Ramsey High School students showed off the Chinese speaking skills they have picked up in the school’s Chinese program this month at the Chinese Cultural Project Contest, a competition held annually at Seton Hall University. This year, competing students from 17 high schools were asked to examine how new technology can assist in learning Chinese and other World Languages.

The team from Ramsey presented a project that won them first place.

“It was a perfect project for us,” Cecilia Liu, the high school Chinese teacher and advisor to the competition team, said. “We are in the middle of implementing new technologies in the Ramsey School system, so this fit so well.”

In order to beat out their competitors, the Ramsey team gave both an in-person presentation to a panel of judges, and showed a video they created about technology and learning Chinese. During the presentation, the kids performed a rap song they wrote, completely in Chinese.

“We think that really impressed the judges,” Liu said.

For their efforts, the kids were given the top prize, $1,000.

“What was really cool about this project was that we got to think about technology not only in terms of Chinese, but for all subjects at Ramsey High School,” Junior team member Matthew Bonan said. “There are a lot of cool opportunities.”

The team was made up of mostly juniors who are taking Liu’s Chinese III Honors class: Joely Alt, Matthew Bonan, Christopher Eng, Jacqueline Loughran, Thomas McCabe, Laura Tracey and Christian Zitelli.

Ramsey has competed in the Chinese Culture Project Contest for four years, and this year marks the first that the RHS team has snagged first place. The team was honored for its accomplishment at a Board of Education meeting last week.

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