2023 Year 7-8 State Hiragana Competition (date confirmed)

New in 2023, the State Hiragana Competition (HS) is for Year 7/8 Beginners of Japanese.

While the Primary School competition is a culmination of the end of students’ Japanese journey at Primary School, the High School competition focuses on celebrating their start, to encourage them to continue into the senior years.

Register via Humanitix here, once open: https://events.humanitix.com/jltasa-2023-state-hiragana-competiton-hs-beginners

The aims of this event are to:

• encourage High School students to continue Japanese studies
• allow students to meet other students who are learning Japanese from other schools
• encourage beginner students of Japanese
• motivate Japanese as a second- or third-language learners

What will the event involve?

• Part of the competition will be similar to the Primary School state final, which sees teams compete 1v1 to recall hiragana characters (or short words)
• Table activities (eg word puzzles/games) will also be involved
• Focus is on recognition, but some writing games will also be included

How do schools enter?

• Schools are encouraged to run their own competition at their site (eg using the materials provided – see below) to find their top four beginner Hiragana students
• If possible, you may like to organise an interschool competition if you have another school studying Japanese close by (this will be the aim in future years of the competition)
• The winning students form a team for that school
• Teacher registers the team via Humanitix

Regional schools

• While regional schools are welcome to enter, we recognise the distance may present transport and cost challenges
• A limited time e-challenge will be provided in Term 4 for all schools, but especially regional schools, to participate (details coming after Term 3/4 holidays)

Entry Criteria

• ‘Beginners’ are students in their first year of Japanese as a second (or third) language studies
• i.e. students have had not more than 12 months experience learning hiragana
• For some High Schools, this may therefore involve Year 7s or 8s depending on how the school structures language learning (or if they do a semester each of multiple languages)

Support/Practice Materials

Powerpoint