Three Surrey & White Rock students win medals at provincial French-speaking competition

May 8, 2026

A trio of students showed off their skills en français this past weekend, bringing home medals from this year's B.C. and Yukon Concours d’art oratoire, a provincial French-speaking competition.

École Peace Arch Elementary student Nicolas Doan Tran placed third in the Francophone 6 category while École Earl Marriott Secondary’s Wenshu Ding and École Kwantlen Park Secondary’s Mehtab Sidhu finished second and third, respectively, in the Core French 11/12 category.

Hosted by Canadian Parents for French (CPF), the 43^rd annual competition took place May 2 at Simon Fraser University’s Surrey campus and saw students from across B.C. and the Yukon participate. The Concours d’art oratoire was created to encourage and support bilingualism in Canada while providing French-speaking students with an event and a community of active French language learners. The competition also aims to demonstrate the relevance of French language instruction in the real world.

Surrey Schools has an extensive history of Concours winners:

2025 – Concours d’art oratoire (provincial): Arabella Reece Carpio, Clary Chow, Landon Chrismas, Mireia Cuenca, Hana Diaz, Shareena Kaushal, Rafa Ramadan, Emily Shi
2024 – Concours d’art oratoire (national): Dhruv Mehta
2024 – Concours d’art oratoire (provincial): Mireia Cuenca, Aashita Goyal, Dhruv Mehta, Jathu Nanthakumar, Chaarvi Sivansankar
2023 – Concours d’art oratoire (national): Dhruv Mehta
2023 – Concours d’art oratoire (provincial): Mireia Cuenca and Dhruv Mehta
2021 – Concours Virtuel (national): Mireia Cuenca and Simone Sinai
2020 – Concours Virtuel (national): Luka Roberts
2019 – Concours d’art oratoire (provincial): Kaitlyn Lu and Ben Tyler
2018 – Concours d’art oratoire (provincial): Olivia Podhajska, Paige Metcalf, Ben Tyler and Coralie Tcheune
2017 – Concours d’art oratoire (national): Coralie Tcheune
2015 – Concours d’art oratoire (provincial): Julia Albert and Kyle Boutilier
2014 – Concours d’art oratoire (provincial): Julia Albert, Haley Biggin, Jazlyn Melnychuk, Shailee Shah and Coralie Tcheune

Prizes for this year's provincial competition range from $50 to $300, based on grade level and placement in the top three of categories.

To learn more about the CPF and the Concours d’art oratoire, click here.