Sophomore Angela Good, a Chinese language student at The Summit Country Day School, was recently awarded the top prize in the 2020 Great Lakes Chinese Consortium Chinese Speech and Talent Video Competition. Her winning speech in the heritage high school division was adapted from a classroom writing assignment and describes a family trip to China’s Guangdong province six years ago.
“When I was in fourth grade, I went back to my birthplace for the first time since moving to America,” she said.
Angela also submitted an essay to the CLASS (Chinese Language Association of Secondary-Elementary Schools) National Essay Contest and won a Gold Award there in the heritage category. The topic of her piece was, “A Time Capsule from the Year 2020.”
Angela formally studied Chinese beginning in kindergarten but took a two-year hiatus in middle school. When she joined The Summit as a freshman, she decided to enroll in Chinese language classes after noticing her skills had “regressed badly.”
“Learning Chinese is meaningful to me because it allows me to communicate with my grandmother, who doesn’t speak English,” she said. She is also looking forward to reading the signs during her next visit to China, hopefully after she graduates from The Summit in 2023.
“Angela is always willing to challenge herself,” said Bonnie Pang, the Chinese language instructor at The Summit. “For example, I assigned extra reading from a high-level textbook to her, and she not only read through the text and identified new words and expressions, she also took the initiative to discuss the material with me after class.”
Two other students, Summit sophomore Shannon Dennemann and freshman Ashley Class, received Honorable Mention awards in the CLASS essay contest, according to Mrs. Pang.