News
October 2005
Wales Welcomes Competition Winners
From 3rd - 7th November Wales will host a visit by the 8 highest ranking students from the Guangdong China English Speaking Contest organized by the Guangdong Province Department of Education in China. The visit is being organized by the Wales International Consortium (WIC) and Aspect Colleges who jointly sponsored the competition. The students will spend a five day study tour visiting some of the consortium institutions including University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, University of Wales Swansea and Trinity College Carmarthen.
The English Speaking Contest takes place every year and presents an opportunity for around 40 students, selected from hundreds of applicants, to demonstrate their fluency and confident use of English in front of a large crowd. The students are all aged under 35 and are full-time undergraduates at Chinese universities. Preliminary heats were held at each of the 34 universities in Guangdong Province, leading to the semi-finals and finals at the South Normal University where judges included 6 English language Teaching Specialists from the British Council and 1 educationalist from Aspect Colleges, one of WIC’s partner organizations. The contest is staged in a different prestigious Guangdong Province university each year, and is televised nationwide by the Chinese state TV channel, CCTV. The competition is an initiative of the Guangdong Department of Education and the British Council and its aim is to help raise awareness of English speaking studies. It includes prepared and impromptu speeches along with a debating section. The grand final is held in Beijing where the students are required to give a prepared speech on given topics such as “The Greatest Global Invention of the 20th Century”. The overall winner was Mr Liu Dan a student at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. The other finalists were Ms Wang Weiwei, Ms Gou Si, Ms Huang Xiaofang, Ms Huna Juan, Ms Deng Wenhui, Mr Shi Linglong, Ms Xu Yuting.
Dr Medwin Hughes, Principal of Trinity College Carmarthen, said, “My congratulations to all the contestants in the Guangdong English Contest. I am delighted to welcome the winners of this prestigious competition to Trinity and to Wales as they represent exactly the type of student we want to attract to the higher education sector in Wales – hard-working, with a good level of English and an international awareness. I believe that these students would be an asset to any of the higher education institutions in Wales.”