For over a month, freshman Whitley Walton studied Chinese in order to prepare for a statewide Chinese competition she competed in. As a result of her hard work, she won the Silver Award earlier this month.

Walton is a Chinese I student. She was interested in the language because it gives people the opportunity to learn about an entirely different way of life. She said, “I wanted to try to learn a new experience and see a different way of life. Learning a new language is always something really special. I thought that learning a new language that also requires you to learn a new alphabet too was interesting.”

Walton described the competition. “It wasn’t too hard. There were about 24 students from different schools across Indiana. There were three rounds, and people got eliminated each round based on the number of points they had.”

Walton said that that she was not too surprised to win an award in the competition. “I was studying like I wanted to win the trophy. I kept trying to push myself to memorize stuff, so I wanted to win,” she said. Walton said that she had been studying a Quizlet provided by her teacher from the beginning of March until the competition in mid-April.

Walton encouraged others to consider enrolling in Chinese. She said, “It’s very fun. If you are bored and you don’t want to take Spanish or another language or if you want to challenge yourself, take Chinese. It’s really fun to learn and it gives you a different perspective on the other side of the world.”