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Jakarta Holds Southeast Asian English Olympics

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I'm Alex Villarreal with the VOA Special English Education Report, from http://voaspecialenglish.com | http://facebook.com/voalearningenglishThe Southeast Asian English Olympics were held in February in Jakarta, Indonesia. High school and university students competed to demonstrate their English skills at the Anggrek campus of Binus University. The Bina Nusantara English Club at the university started the English Olympics in two thousand five. The yearly competition was formerly known as the Nationwide English Olympics. This year the club invited other Southeast Asian schools to send "ambassadors" to join students from Indonesia. The organizers hoped to have four hundred or more students take part. There were six areas of competition. One was based on Scrabble. This is the board game where players try to form words from letters with different point values. Other areas of the competition included speech, storytelling and newscasting. Students were judged on their ability to present the news. Yohanes Napis is the twenty-year-old chief executive officer of the Olympics. He says the biggest event was the debate competition, which included international judges. He says the competition used the British parliamentary system but debaters could use either British or American English. Organizers of the Southeast Asian EnglishOlympics got support from the American Embassy in Jakarta and VOA. The finals took place February nineteenth in a new high-tech American cultural center called @america. It opened in December in the Pacific Place Mall in Jakarta. One hundred Indonesian high school students came to the @america center. They chose their favorite entry in the sixth area of competition, short movie making. But adult judges chose the winners of the gold, silver and bronze medals. Yohanes Napis says the Southeast Asian English Olympics might expand next year into the Asian English Olympics. He said people from Bangladesh and China wanted to take part in the Southeast Asian English Olympics but they could not accept them. So he thinks they have a good chance of expanding the competition into other parts of Asia next year.For VOA Special English I'm Alex Villarreal. Our programs are online with transcripts andMP3 files at voaspecialenglish.com. You can also comment on this and other stories. And you can find us on Facebook at VOA Learning English.

(Adapted from a radio program broadcast 10Feb2011)
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