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I judged competitions like this a few times. It's a weird experience. Often the students/academic institutions have a bizarre and extreme view of what makes goo

I judged competitions like this a few times. It's a weird experience. Often the students/academic institutions have a bizarre and extreme view of what makes good language - speaking at 100 mph, emulating some kind of thick Amayreeecaaahn accent, choosing crazily complex topics to memorize... At the end of one horrific competition, a visiting professor from Xiamen University (a good Uni btw) told the crowd you could never speak a language well unless you could memorize 4 pages of A4 :/ Incidentally, years ago the national CCTV English competitions were broadcast live, but after my friend Justin completely forgot his speech and fluffed everything they changed it to a pre-recorded (or time delayed perhaps?) broadcast instead. He was the only person in that final stage who didn't grow up in America or have 100% international school upbringing.

smilekzs 11y ago
> He was the only person in that final stage who didn't grow up in America or have 100% international school upbringing. This is why such competitions has always been BS. They've been around for 15+ years. At first I admired those kids (back then my "peers"), but later on realized that the education they received could only have been afforded by a very small "elite" class. English was far from a foreign language to the vast majority of the final-rounders and this applies to every single competition and every single age group. Totally fair huh.
erroneousfunk 11y ago
I can only trace a small handful of distant ancestors that came from outside the US, and have only left the country for occasional vacations, but, having never memorized four pages of anything, I should probably take "native proficiency in English" off of my LinkedIn :(