M.U.S.T. Students won 2nd and 3rd prizes
at the 25th China Daily “21st Century Cup” National English Speaking Competition
Left to right: Assist Prof. Lei Kai Cheong, Ziyue Wu and Yufei Wei
Ziyue Wu, a sophomore of Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism Management, and Yufei Wei, a junior of School of Business, M.U.S.T., won the 2nd prize and 3rd prize respectively at the 25th China Daily “21st Century Cup” National English Speaking Competition in October. This was the first time that two M.U.S.T. students were able to enter the national final, and is the 13th consecutive year M.U.S.T. students qualified to enter the final of this national competition.
The China Daily “21st Century Cup” National English Speaking Competition was launched by the China Daily in 1996. It is the highest academic and most rigorous English learning competition in China.
This year’s competition was launched in September 2019 and lasted for seven months. Because of the pandemic, the final had been postponed till October this year. The contestants came from all major universities nation-wide. It is comprised of several stages: screening interviews on the Internet, campus-wide selections, speaking tests on the phone, and regional finals; out of approximately 100,000 contestants from around 1,000 higher institutions of the mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macao, 75 regional winners (top three of each region) are selected to enter the national final. The Competition invites top-level experts from well-known international English teaching organizations, media organizations, foreign embassies in China, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and renowned national and international universities, to serve as the judges. Its official website and many well-known mainland Chinese media organizations provide detailed coverage for the event for over a million people.
This was the first time that two M.U.S.T. students were able to enter the national final. Originally, each university can only send one student to participate, but because our student was among the top 5 in the competition last year, the organizer allowed the top 5 universities to send students to enter directly the final of the following year. Therefore, M.U.S.T., together with Tsinghua University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, China Foreign Affairs University, and Xiamen University could send students directly to the final this year. In addition, since our student was the champion in the last Macao regional English speaking competition and also qualified for the national final, our university could unprecedentedly send two students to participate in this year's national final.
The final round of this competition consists of three parts: prepared speech, impromptu speech, and the Q&A session. With their fluent English, elegant stage presence, agile mind and excellent critical thinking and organizational skills, Ziyue Wu and Yufei Wei, won the 2nd prize and 3rd prize respectively. Their tutor, Assistant Prof. Lei Kai Cheong, also won 2nd prize and 3rd prize in the Best Tutor Award.
