New Zealand success in the inaugural Tokyo Foundation essay competition

New Zealand students achieved great success in the inaugural Tokyo Foundation essay competition in 2009. Four out of five of the New Zealand essays chosen by New Zealand judges for the international finals, were placed.  Samantha Vickery, a third year student at Auckland University, took out equal first place with a student from Monash University in Melbourne, Rebecca Chen. Samantha and Rebecca spent a week in Japan hosted by the Tokyo Foundation as their prize.

Undergraduate students from the 6 countries administering Tokyo Foundation endowed Japanese Language Education programmes (New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Romania, Egypt, and Turkey) were invited to write, in Japanese, about their dreams for how they might use their Japanese language in the future.  Zhao Zing and Elyse Jang of Auckland University shared third prize with several others, including Tim Clark from Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology, showing that NZ is most definitely ‘up there’ in terms of its teaching of Japanese language.

Please click here for more information about the awards ceremony for the essay competition in Japan.

And click here for a list of winners.

And click here for the winning essays of Samantha Vickery and Rebecca Chen.