Year Three Finance student Scarlett Jiaxuan Fan claimed the second prize of the 2014 Provincial Round of the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) Cup English Public Speaking Contest on 2 November.
Scarlett Jiaxuan Fan (right) and her advisor Philip Mulder
A total of 64 contestants from top-flight universities in Guangdong entered the provincial showdown at Guangzhou’s Zhongkai University of Agriculture and Engineering. After the first Impromptu Speaking round, Scarlett Jiaxuan Fan and other 12 participants surpassed the rest to compete in the final Prepared Speech round, and her superb performance won her the honour to be one of the best collegiate public speakers in Guangdong.
Fan was the first place winner in UIC’s preliminary round on 14 October. Her advisor Philip Mulder, Lecturer of UIC’s English Language Centre (ELC) and the FLTRP Task Team Leader, said Fan deserved “special recognition.”
“In all rounds she showcased her lovely poise and confident demeanour extremely well while also presenting a meaningful and fluent response to all speech prompts,” Mulder added.
Fan said the teaching and learning environment at UIC was of benefit to her public speaking performance.
She also thanked the ELC team that supported her throughout the contest: “Joel Tohtsonie inspired me. We went through a brainstorm and came up with some good ideas. Then I went to Alma Tesorero. She pointed out many details I should be aware of and gave me a bag of files related to the public speaking topic and techniques to read. I was so touched! Susan James corrected the grammar mistakes for me. And Philip helped refine my speech and revised my speech five times!
“I appreciate their dedication a lot, without which I don’t think I could have won the prize. A ‘thank you’ is far from enough to express my gratitude.”
Students awarded in UIC’s preliminary round and the jury
Reporter: Deen He
(from MPRO, with special thanks to the ELC)
