About English Competiton

Yesterday Wen invited me to join an English competition with her, but I refused, cos now when I think of these stuff, I feel boring and meaningless.

When I was a freshman, I joined a lot of this kind of competitions, I won some and failed the rest, at that time, these competitions really help me a lot with my English, especially the confidence of speaking English, but I have to say the content of most English competitions is sort of stupid, like the same form, the similar topics… But I really don’t want to judge! I respect every contestant, and I have a great admiration for them since they get the courage to compete it!! It’s not easy to make a decision that getting on the stage and showing yourself, but I sincerely hope these people could really think about what do they want from the competition, an award? A great reputation? A self-approval? A excellent way of improving your English? I suggest everyone could get a clear idea about what their every move for.

Meanwhile, as an experienced person, I’d like to let u know how these competitions operated! At first, an assigned topic speech is necessary, so what all u need to prepare is just memorizing an article whatever is written or copied. Then an “impromptu” speech will be arranged, but don’t worry too much cos the organiser will leak your topic! The following part may be an “impromptu comment” with a portion of a famous film or sth, apparently, u also can get the name of that film in advance…so as u see.. all of these nothing to do with your English ability or willing English logic, it’s all about the memory and fake!! It’s not fair to those whose English is really good, and it also will contort the purpose of many contestants!! We must admit that when people are making a preparation, they can learn a lot, but I do believe that English competition should always concern how great your English is, not how perfect your preparations are!!

Besides, I think a smart mind is much more important than a native English pronunciation, I don’t want to ignore the importance of speaking a standard and fluency English, that’s should be very basic to a person who wants to communicate with English-speakers, but it’s far away from real communication, what u need is not just the ability of speaking, cos neither English speaker nor other languages speaker would like to talk with a stupid person. I suppose language is always secondary since a smart mind absolutely should be most important.