Three outstanding contestants from Wuhan University, under the guidance of the contest instructor group of College English Department attached to School of Foreign Languages & Literature, have won a total of three grand prizes respectively in the provincial finals of 2021 "FLTRP·ETIC Cup" English Public Speaking Contest, English Writing Contest and English Reading Contest, which were successfully held from October 30th to November 6th, 2021.
They are Cui Danni of grade 2020 from School of Information Management who won the grand prize in the English public speaking contest under the instruction of Professor Zhang Hongmei, Sun Zihan of grade 2019 from Hongyi Honor College who received the prize in the reading contest with the instruction of Professor Wen Fang, as well as Gao Xinyan of grade 2020 from School of Marxism who was instructed by Professor Zhu Jie and awarded the grand prize in the writing contest. And they will take part in the National Finals of the three contests in December on behalf of Hubei province.
It should be noted that among numerous universities and colleges in Hubei province Wuhan University has once again become the only one to clinch the grand prizes in all the three contests exclusively in recent years.
As the only domestic high-level foreign language competition selected into the list of college discipline competitions by the Ministry of Education, this year, 2021 "FLTRP -ETIC Cup" Contests are organized to greet the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China and pay tribute to the new era, meanwhile, promote the “education of students by competition” and inspire the college students to advance together with the motherland and walk in pace with the times.
The topic of the prepared English public speaking contest is "Red Star over China", requiring the contestants to draw upon their own experience, and present a profound illustration of the "Red Star" in their minds from various perspectives. The writing and reading contests, by means of continuous innovation on the questions and forms, did encourage the participating students to pay more attention to Chinese Classics and traditional culture, and allow them to show their talents through the competition, to tell Chinese stories well, and inherit Chinese culture.
At the initial stage of preparation, the College English Department deliberately selected experienced and responsible teachers to form a contest instructor group, including Cheng Xiangli, Wen Fang, Zhu Jie, Zhang Yuwen, Zhang Hongmei, Tang Jianing, Fang Yan, Su Zizhou, Xu Hong and other teachers. They carefully designed the schedule and decided to combine the strategy of one-to-one instruction with collective instruction. The students participating in the provincial finals would receive one-to-one guidance.
According to the contest rules, each university/college can only recommend one contestant to participate in each provincial final of the three competitions. There are a total of 2826 students in Wuhan University registering for the preliminary round of three contests, including 302 in English public speaking contest, 1584 in reading contest and 940 in writing contest. With the joint efforts of the contestants and their instructors, eventually the three contestants mentioned above were successfully promoted to the finals in the Hubei area through two rounds of online and offline contests and won the three grand prizes.
At present, the contestants, together with the contest instructor group are actively preparing for the National Finals to strive for better achievements.
In recent years, the College English Department has actively responded to the call from Wuhan University to "guide talent education with moral education" and cultivate international elite personnel possessing solid academic foundation, with high quality and flexible adaptation to new changes and profound potential capacity. Aiming at cultivating international versatile foreign language talents with strong patriotism, high humanistic quality, and strong cross-cultural communicative competence by the public courses of College English, the teaching model of "four classrooms" has been created covering entity classroom, extra classroom, online classroom, and practical classroom, resulting in remarkable effects.
Students are motivated to take an active part in various English competitions, both provincial and national, and have won national grand prizes successively, under the guidance of the contest instructor group. During such process, not only could their own comprehensive ability for English application get improved in an all-round way, but the teaching efficiency could be promoted.
The courses of College English have also won many honorary titles such as “National Excellent Course” and "Online First-Class Undergraduate Course of Universities of Hubei Province", carried off the first prize in the “Teaching Achievement Competition of Hubei Province”, and gained the project approval of “National Excellent Resource Sharing Course”.
Due to outstanding achievements, the Department has been listed in the first batch of "Demonstration Sites for College English Teaching Reform" by the Ministry of Education and "Provincial Excellent Basic Teaching Organization of Universities of Hubei Province " in 2021.
(Correspondent: Ye Fang, Translated by Zhou Jie, Edited by Yu Shilong)
