The Washington Metropolitan Area Chinese School Association (WMACS) hosted its annual Chinese Vocabulary Recognition Competition on Saturday, November 4th to enhance the recognition of traditional Chinese characters, words, and phrases. This event was held at the DC Culture Center of TECRO and brought over a hundred participants including students, principals, teachers, judges, and parents.
Ms. Jennifer Lee, the Director of WMACS, expressed her gratitude towards the member schools for their unwavering support during her welcoming remarks. She extended special thanks to the dedicated volunteers from each school and the WMACS staff team, who worked tirelessly to organize the competition. Lee emphasized the significance of this event in providing Chinese schools with opportunities for students to recognize traditional Chinese characters and apply Chinese words and phrases effectively in a fun and collaborative way.
This competition's word bank database, developed by WMACS, consisted of commonly used traditional characters from school textbooks. WMACS revealed 50% of the character database prior to the competition, with the remaining 50% randomly selected during the event. The competition was divided into two parts: Individual and the Group. In order to score, participants had to accurately pronounce the character displayed on the screen and then construct a phrase using the character within 3 seconds, either individually (Part I), and as a group (Part II).
There were five Chinese schools from the greater Washington, D.C. area, including Li Ming Chinese School, Tzu Chi Academy-Washington DC, Northern Virginia Experimental Chinese School, Chinese Language School of Columbia, and Washington DC Taiwanese School with a total of 57 students participating in the competition. The competition was divided into three categories: elementary school, middle school, and high school while the top one-third winning groups were selected in each category.
The 2023 WMACS Vocabulary Contest proved once again to be a successful platform for promoting traditional Chinese character recognition and teamwork in the Washington Metropolitan Area.
