(Correspondents: Dong Congyi, Li Yitian, Yan Kun; Translators: Hao Minghao; Li Guanglongjia) At 14:00 on December 13, the Torch English Speech Contest held by the School of Economics and Management officially kicked off in the classroom 511 of the University Student Activity Center. In this activity, we had the honor to invite Sun Bingzhen, Vice Dean of the School of Economics and Management, Zhang Weili, Director of the International Programs of Economics and Management School, Xiao Lizhi, Director of the Enterprise and Business Training Programs of Xi 'an International Studies University, Li Jing, Lecturer of the IELTS Program, and Kenya Pressley, Lecturer from the School of Foreign Languages of Xidian University as judges.

After the host’s brief introduction, 14 contestants from class 2020, Scene English Corner and Language Association of the School introduced themselves, and then the speech contest officially began.

The first part is the individual speeches of the contestants. From“idol phenomenon”to“production and consumption pattern in the post-epidemic era”, from“university life”to“the meaning of education”, the topics of the speech were all close to our study and life. The contestants thoughtfully analyzed the themes with fluent language, free performance and no fear of the stage. The meaningful themes were shown to the audience and judges in an interesting way, which stimulated the sympathy and thinking of teachers and students.

The second part was the improvisation of the situation by random drawing and forming their teams. After five minutes of preparation, each team began its own performance. The five groups conducted impromptu English dialogues in the situations of publicity, shopping, dining, hairdressing and medical treatment. By presenting the situations in daily life, the contestants demonstrated their English proficiency, improvisational ability and communicative skills. In the role play of shopping situation, the team members cooperated with each other in a tacit understanding, turning the timid into the real, and really showed the consumers' psychology and needs. Li Guanglongjia, the member of this group who played a consumer also won the Best Popularity Award for her brilliant performance. In the context of medical treatment, Liu Pengbo’s“grandiose”acting as the patient made the judges and students laugh. After the first round of presentations, the contestants felt more relaxed in the second round.

After two rounds of the competition, it’s time for the exciting selection. The first, second and third prizes, the Best Popularity Award and the Excellence Award were decided by the judges and the audience. Before the award ceremony, Kenya and Mr. Xiao commented on the competition.

Kenya first praised all the contestants, saying that they all performed very well. Then she gave some advice on English speech: Not all the audience can understand your accent, pronunciation and intonation, so you should slow down as much as possible, maybe you can gain better results. Mr. Xiao also expressed his feelings and comments: By listening to your speech, we teachers also benefited a lot. He encouraged students to insist on learning English and keep the love of English.

Afterwards, teachers presented awards to the winners. Guests, judges, contestants and staff took a group photo at last.

After the competition, we invited Hao Minghao，the first prize winner of this competition, to share her experience:

Last week, I had the honor to participate in the Torch English Speech Contest, which was my first speech in a real sense. As for the speech, different people have different opinions. Here I will share my preparation process and harvest.

The first thing to do in a speech is to keep it relevant and realistic. The theme I chose was "The purpose of education". This is a profound topic. I am not an educator, so I could only explain my understanding of the purpose of education from the perspective of an educated person. To be consistent with the reality, not generalizing, so as to use our own life experience to tell the truth of the speech content. And authenticity is what moves people the most. Since I went into Xidian University, each trio in my class has had a research assignment almost once a week. We only do our research as a task we have to do without thinking more. One day, my teacher told me that the purpose of this task...

In preparing the content, I watched a lot of education-related videos and distilled the idea "Know Yourself". Yang Lan once gave an interview in English about what education means to women, and this video helped me a lot.

Mindset and tone of voice are also important. On the morning of the speech, I didn't go to see something about speech skills because I was too nervous. I watched a lot of variety show，instead，such as The Reader and Host Competition. This kind of programs can not only refresh people, but also give us a lot of stage skills. When I was on stage, I got nervous, and even the last part was improvisated，but I didn't get stage fright anyway. Try it and challenge yourselves. That's what I've learned from the show.

Above is my personal opinion on speech, for reference only.

Just as Kenya said：“Just keep trying, keep doing it. The more you do, the less fearful, the less nervous you will be.”This is just the nature of the activity slogan "You Are Really Beautiful When Expressing Yourself Bravely". As long as you are brave to do, no matter how the result is，you will emit the most dazzling light.

Torch English, the program helps to spread light on you, will always expect your participation!

Come on, let’s shine together!