Yang Yaxuan, a year-two student majoring in Applied Economics at UIC, won the Second-Class Prize in the 2010 FLTRP Cup & Guangdong Collegiate English Speaking Contest on Oct 30. Yang ranked the 10th with 84.09 points. She was also the only participant from the universities in Zhuhai who got into the top ten.
Yang Yaxuan(right) and her friend
There were altogether 55 students from different universities in Guangdong who participated in this contest. There were three parts in the final, namely, the prepared speech, the impromptu speech and the question and answer section.
"Yang's performance was quite good, considering she was the only junior participant that is not majoring in English." said Ms. Faye Luo, a teacher from the English Language Centre (ELC). "Others were mostly English major senior students and there were even graduate school students." Luo also added that the result was very encouraging because it was only the second time UIC took part in this contest.
Yang said after the contest that she thought she did not do so well in the prepared speech:"I thought the judges would be mainly foreigners, but actually there was only one, so the topic I chose may not be very suitable."
Yang Yaxuan and her teachers and fellow students
Yang was chosen to represent UIC by the English Language Centre from a total of 5 students after two primary interviews. She was then trained for half a semester by Professor Eva Lai, Director of ELC, as well as Mr. Howard Huxter and Mr. Brendan Lassak.
Yang believes that UIC students have an advantage in English because the college provides them with a good English learning environment by using English as the teaching language. She also sees English as a tool to experience other countries' culture and added that learning English could help her to broaden her horizon.
The FLTRP Cup English Public Speaking Contest is formerly known as the CCTV Cup English Speaking Contest which was held by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP).
Reporter: Chen Yutai
Translator: Chris Wong
Editor: Richard Xu/MPRO
