Sri Lankan Student Wimalasiri Takes First Place at Advanced Level; Veterinary Medicine Student Kamiya Wins at Intermediate Level

Students at Okayama University of Science (OUS) demonstrated their English communication skills at "OUS TALKS 2026," held on October 28 in the Presentation Room on the first floor of Building A1 at the Okayama Campus.

First place at the advanced level went to Shelomi Parami Wimalasiri, a first-year Sri Lankan student in the Department of Information Science and Engineering, while Miku Kamiya, a fourth-year student in the Department of Veterinary Medicine, took first place at the intermediate level.

The event was launched in the 2021 academic year as the "Ridai GEDC English Speech Contest" to help students not only improve their English-speaking skills but also organize their thoughts and express their ideas effectively in English. In the 2023 academic year, it was renamed "OUS TALKS" to place greater emphasis on enjoying international exchange and self-expression.

This year's event featured five participants at the advanced level and three at the intermediate level, with students from the Imabari Campus joining online. Each participant delivered a speech lasting three to five minutes.

Wimalasiri's speech, titled "Language Learning," reflected on her experiences growing up in Sri Lanka surrounded by Sinhala, Tamil, and English. When she began learning Japanese, she nearly gave up because of the challenges posed by its three writing systems: hiragana, katakana, and kanji. However, through her interactions with her talkative host mother, she gradually became more comfortable speaking Japanese.

Through this experience, she came to realize the importance of expressing a willingness to step outside one's own world to understand someone else's. She explained that learning a language is not simply about understanding what another person says, but about understanding who that person is. She concluded that language enables people to connect with one another on a deeper level.

Kamiya's speech, titled "What Connected Us," focused on her experiences during a short-term overseas study program in Brazil this summer. She described the personal connection she developed with a woman in her host family through shared experiences, including Japanese food.

Through their interactions, Kamiya discovered that curiosity is essential to communication: wanting to know more about another person, wanting that person to know more about oneself, and exploring together how to better understand each other.

After receiving an invitation to the woman's wedding, scheduled for six months later, Kamiya expressed her excitement about their upcoming reunion. She concluded by saying that Brazil was no longer simply a travel destination, but a place where she could now say, "I'm home."

Faculty members serving as judges praised the participants, commenting that it was difficult to rank the speeches because of their high quality and meaningful content. They also noted how challenging it would have been for them to express their own thoughts in a foreign language at the same age and encouraged the students to take pride in participating in the event.

Second place at the advanced level went to Dulina Sandhadev Hiyarapitiya, a Sri Lankan graduate student in the Graduate School of Management, while Shova Darlami, a Nepalese student in the same graduate school, took second place at the intermediate level.