Students from the Faculty of Asian Studies have excelled in recent speech contests, winning prizes in major competitions in four languages.

Nicholas Parsons won first prize in the annual Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister's International Malay Public-Speaking Competition in Kuala Lumpur in February. He competed against speakers from 30 countries including native Malay speakers but was awarded first prize for his speech '‘Human Rights is Integral to Global Harmony'.

In addition to Malay, Faculty students have won prizes in Mandarin, Korean and Japanese in the past six months. "This series of awards covers almost all of our language programs," said Faculty Director Professor Kent Anderson. "It makes the case very well that we are the best language institution in the country."

"Further, the students in many of the other languages the Faculty teaches are  top in the country as well, particularly since ANU is the only place still committed to teaching these," Kent said.

The faculty offers Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Tetum (language of East Timor), Javanese, Cantonese, Burmese and Lao on a full major or ad hoc basis. "As the Group of Eight 2007 report 'Languages in Crisis' noted: 'In 1997 there were 66 languages offered at Australian universities. Ten years later, just 29 survive'," said Kent. "This means our commitment to this language education is not only important locally, it is important to the nation."

The additional student winners include Tatiana Scott, Alison Joan Musgrove and Hiroshi Tsuboi (Mandarin), Lauren Hodes, Jasmine Barrett, Star Conliffe, Maria Schmalz and Ai Chen (Korean) and Adrian Wong, Claire Hazlett, Elli Kim, Kareem Moustafa, and James McCombe (Japanese).

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