Dorothee’s Bilingual Competition

A Headington girl impressed at an inaugural bilingual recital competition in London’s Chinatown.

Dorothee, U5, came away with first prize at the UK’s first English-Chinese bilingual recital competition grand final and awards presentation on 27th Nov 22.

During the event, Dorothee performed one poem in Chinese and one speech in English. Recordings of her forms NVR can be found here:

English Speech Recital: Chinas Hottest Woman, by Dorothee

The event was spearheaded by the charity Mothers’ Bridge of Love (MBL) collaborating with Oxford based Fusion Education and KYX International Education. From close to 100 entrants from all over England, there were 20 who made it through to the final competition. The event was recognised as providing an opportunity to promote multi-cultural and multi-lingual learning as well great value of diversity and inclusion.

The competition had a star-studded judging panel. The English section was judged by British author, winner of the 2006 Whitbread Prize and biographer of Pearl Buck and Henri Matisse, Hilary Spurling CBE FRSL; founder of the China Media Centre, Professor Hugo De Burgh; former director of London College of Music, Dr David Henson and CEO of China Exchange, Ms Freya Aitken-Turff.

The Chinese section was judged by: Principal Teaching Fellow at Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at SOAS, Dr Song Lianyi; columnist for FTChinese.com, Ms He Yue; CEO of KYX International, Mr Li Jian and former journalist and presenter of China Central Television and Phoenix Television, Ms. Diya Wen.

Mr Alex Williams, PE Teacher and Head of L5, said: “This is absolutely fantastic and well deserved for Dorothee – a huge well done to her! She spoke brilliantly throughout the competition and it’s no wonder she did as well and she did – what an excellent performance.”