40th high school Poetry Declamation Contest to be held at Clemson

Published: October 25, 2012

By Evan Lybrand

CLEMSON — Clemson University will hold the 40^th annual Poetry Declamation Contest from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 27, in Daniel Hall. An award ceremony will follow the competition at 1:30 p.m. in Tillman Hall.

High school students from South Carolina and Georgia will compete in foreign language poetry recitation. Participants must recite two poems from memory in a foreign language, such as Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian or Spanish. In honor of the 40th anniversary of promoting high school foreign language education, American Sign Language will be included.

“With the technology, there is no boundary between countries and therefore there should be no boundary between languages," said Su-I Chen, director of this year’s event and lecturer in the department of languages. "With foreign language training, more and more people can communicate without obstacles or misunderstanding. Language learning is best starting from early age. We would like to promote foreign language learning in our region from earlier ages.”

This year, 400 students will be represent 34 different schools in the competition.

END