One Morning a Fox Saw a Cock...

I was invited to judge an English competition this afternoon. Such competitions are held in schools and universities throughout Nanchang (and China as a whole) and there are usually one or two foreign teachers on the judging panel.

The competitions are very popular among students and the standards can often be quite high. Some competitions are just held within an institution, some are provincial while the top competitions are nationwide with the winners often going on to join international English Speech contests.

Today's competition was different from the ones I usually judge. Instead of being just a straight prepared speech followed by an impromptu speech today the competitors had 3 sections to complete.

First was a self introduction followed by a 'talent show' in which most chose to sing (mainly English songs).

Second they were given a topic and 4 key words. They had 30 seconds to prepare then had to speak for 1.5 minutes on the topic and try to include the 4 given words in their speech. This round proved to be pretty tricky and most candidates struggled.

Finally all candidates (in 2 groups of 10) had to take part in a chain story. The first 2 sentences were put on the screen. Then Candidate 1 had to speak for 1 minute to continue the story, then Candidate 2 had to carry it on and so on and so on. Each candidate also had a given word that they had to work into their story. This round was definitely the best and some of the candidates really had great imaginations.

A little glimpse into the type of extra-curricular activities organized on Chinese university campuses

(by Andy Meek)