On the evening of April 13th, with the theme of cultural confidence, the final of “Shine U” English Speech Contest, sponsored by ELAA, was held in South Campus Club.
The contest was divided into two periods. And the candidates were finally scored by judges and Wechat voting rate according to their performances in prepared speech, impromptu speech, and Q&A session.
During the contest, 12 candidates interpreted cultural confidence from different perspectives. In Chinese traditional clothing Hanfu, Zhou Yuyang focused on the dissemination of Chinese culture and people’s interest in it around the world. He called upon the young to promote traditional Chinese culture and inspire more people’s cultural confidence globally. And Liu Binhua greeted the audience in Korean and explained the influence of globalization in terms of second language learning.He believed that in the face of globalization, China, an ancient civilization, should stick to and carry forward its traditional culture, establish cultural confidence, and promote the influence of Chinese culture on the globe. Furthermore, Wang Liangli emphasized the critical role of cultural confidence, and then enumerated a number of historical celebrities to exemplify the strength of Chinese culture, and finally put forward her own suggestions on the loss of cultural confidence. With their innovative views and fluent English, the candidates won applause from time to time.
In addition, the ELAA also gave wonderful performances, the drama Our Girlhood in English and the chorus What Are Words, pushing the atmosphere to a climax.
Liu Binhua, from the Graduate School, won the first prize for his standard pronunciation, fluency, and calm stage presence. Besides, Wang Liangli, Chen Manyi,and Wang Nan, from School of Foreign Studies, won the second prize, the third prize, and the Award of Popularity respectively.
It is reported that it was the second time that Liu Binhua had been the champion of the English Speech Contest.“There was no shortcut to good spoken English,” he said, “and I spent over three hours per day watching English speech videos and imitating them before the contest”.
（Translated by Zhou Huaxiang, Yu Ling）
