The final of the 19th China Daily “21st Century Coco-Cola Cup” National English Speech Contest was successfully held in Peking University Hall on March 24th, 2014. Our English major Zheng Hongying won the third prize.
The “21st Century Cup” was first organized by China Daily in 1995 and has been held in many mainland cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen as well as in Hong Kong and Macao for 19 times. This year, after selective trials through the Internet, campus and area, 72 competitors entered the final on behalf of their schools. Students from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan were also invited by the organizing committee. Students from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Science & Technology Beijing, and Shandong University respectively became the champion, runner-up and second runner-up of the Contest. The first prizes were awarded to students from Tsinghua University, Nanjing University, Communication University of China, New York University Shanghai and Tamkang University (in Taiwan).
The competition was divided into three parts: prepared speech, impromptu speech, and question & answers. The mark of the last two parts above took up 70%. Before the competition, professors and teachers of the English Speech and Debate Group of our School of Foreign Languages provided careful guidance on how to write and polish the speech drafts and how to answer the questions to our competitors. This competition proves to the students as not only a chance to show their talents, but also an opportunity to improve themselves. While preparing for future competitions, we are expected to focus on improving the knowledge scope, adaptability and critical creativity of the students. We believe that with the joint efforts of students and teachers, we will cultivate more talents with high-level foreign language skills.
(Translated by Liu Langyu)
