North Penn High School students participated in the MCATFL James J. Doyle Annual Oral Proficiency Contest recently at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School. This annual contest provides a forum for students to measure their oral skills in a foreign language against students from other schools in the county. Individual interviews are conducted by foreign language professionals to determine which students are most proficient in the second language.

The following students in the Japanese I, II and III classes at North Penn High School participated in this annual contest and received awards:

Level I Jennie Ju (first place) Kang Lee (second place)
Level II Vy Nguyen (first place)
Level III Erik Barnes (first Place) Evan Barnes (second place)

Students were individually interviewed by a judge in the first round. Then, two students are selected from each level to advance to the second round in which these finalists are interviewed again by three judges. In this interview, each student is asked to perform a role play on a given topic in front of an audience. The NPHS students had a wonderful time performing at both the competition and the world trivia question activity. All of them did an excellent job on their role play.

This contest is open to students from Montgomery County Association of Teachers of Foreign Languages (MCATFL) member schools that have learned their foreign language in a classroom in the United States. There are five different levels of competition depending on years of experience or academic work in a specific language. Students who speak the language as their primary tongue at home, or who have spent more than six consecutive weeks in a country where the language is spoken are not eligible to compete.

For more information, please contact Noriko Coyle at coyleno@npenn.org.