关于青春英语演讲中学生

　　thirty college students across the country attended the tenth 21st centurycup national english speaking contest in beijing on april 10. eventually, xiapeng, from nanjing university was named the champion. the second and thirdplaces went to zhang jing, a sophomore from china foreign affairs university,and zhang a xu, from hong kong polytechnic university, respectively. more than1000 college students in beijing are lucky birds to listen to the speeches onthe spot in friendship hotel.

　　just make to it the finals, they had to get past 60 others speaking on “theimpact of globalization on traditional chinese values”. that was at thesemi-final on april 8-9. what will chinese college students think about theimpact? each contestant had his own take on the subject. xia summed upglobalization by saying: “it’s just controversial and hard to say whether it isgood or bad.” xia took the old wall of his city, nanjing, as a metaphor. hespoke about the conflict over whether to protect the old walls or tear them downto represent the conflict of ideas. he suggested that people protect the wall asa valuable relic while tearing down the “intangible walls” of their minds thatprevent communication. while some other students are more focusing on the impactof globalization on family relations, attitudes towards love, andjob-hunting.

　　over the past 10 years, the national english speaking competition has givencontestants a chance to speak on a variety of topics closely related to theirlives. chinese students become more open-minded and receive various ideas andthinking over the decade. diversity becomes more obvious on campus, studentshave more opportunities to express and show themselves. it’s not an easy taskfor the contestants to win through the fierce competition. owning to theirpassion, hard work and persistence, they finally succeeded in the contest.

　　liu xin, the first champion of the national contest, is now an anchorpersonof cctv-9. recalling the passion of study on campus, she said: “when you want toexpress your idea by a foreign language without finding a right way, you’rereally upset. then you have to encourage yourself, and after a long term ofbitterness, suddenly you find you get the right way with joy.” with the championtitle in 21st century cup, liu attended the international public speakingcompetition in london in may 1996 afterward and got the first prizehistorically.the winner in __ surprised the audience, since she came fromaccounting major instead of english major. gu qiubei, then 22 years old, was asenior in shanghai foreign studies university. while being asked whether she hadsome good methods to learn english, she said: “learn english with passion andenthusiasm.” attracted by the greatness of english language, gu even changed hermajor from accounting to english in her postgraduate study. the most importantissue in english learning process she pointed out is personal interests. onlypeople interested in english benefit a lot from the learning methods and thosewith passion will finally achieve their dreams.

　　when chief of global media giant viacom sumner redstone gave a speech intsinghua university on his autobiography a passion to win, he was asked whatmade him to restart his career at the age of 60, the 81-year-old media tycoonsaid: “firstly, there’s a self-driving force in my deep heart, which keeps mypassion to succeed and surpass others; secondly, i don’t think i’m too old toleave work, actually i love my work very much.”

　　some of the contestants have achieved their dreams as redstone; stillothers are on the way to their dream. with a passion to win, you will overcomeobstacles and succeed at the end.

　　i’m studying in a city that’s famous for its walls. people who visit mycity are amazed at the imposing sight of its walls, especially when silhouettedagainst the setting sun with gold, shining streaks. the old, cracked bricks arecovered with lichens and the walls are weather-beaten guards standing still forcenturies.

　　our ancestors liked to build walls. they built walls in beijing, xi’an,nanjing and many other cities, and they built the great wall, which snakesacross half our country. they built walls to protect against enemies and evilspirits. this tradition has survived to this day: we still have many parks andschools walled off from the public.

　　for a long time, walls were one of the most natural things in the world tome.

　　my perceptions, however, changed after i made a hiking trip to the easternsuburbs of my city. my classmates and i were walking with some foreign students.as we walked out of the city, we found ourselves flanked by tall trees, whichformed a wide canopy above our heads. suddenly one foreign student asked me,“where is the entrance to the eastern suburbs?”

　　“we’re already in the eastern suburbs,” i replied. he seemed taken aback,“i thought you chinese had walls for everything.” his remark set off a heateddebate. at one point, he likened our walled cities to “jails”, while i insistedthat the eastern suburbs were one of the many places in china that had nowalls.that debate had no winners, but i did learn a lot from this student. forinstance, he told me that some major universities like oxford and cambridge werenot surrounded by walls. i have to admit that we do have many walls in china,and as we develop our country, we must look carefully at them and decide whetherthey are physical or intangible. we will keep some walls but tear down thosethat impede our development.

　　let me give another example.

　　a year ago, when i was working on a term paper, i needed a book on businesslaw and found a copy in the law school library. however, the librarian coldlyrejected my request to borrow it, saying, “you can’t borrow this book, you’renot a student here.” in the end, i had to spend 200 yuan to buy a copy.meanwhile, the copy in the law school gathered dust on the shelf.

　　at the beginning of this semester, i heard that my university had startedto think of unifying its libraries and linking them to libraries at otheruniversities, so my experience wouldn’t be repeated. barriers would be replacedby bridges. an inter-library loan system would give us access to books from anylibrary. with globalization and china integrated into the world, i believe manyof these intangible walls will be knocked down.

　　i know that globalization is a controversial issue, and it is hard to saywhether it is good or bad. but one thing is for sure: it draws our attention tochina’s tangible and intangible walls and forces us to examine their role in themodern world.

　　and how about the ancient walls of mine and other cities? should we tearthem down? definitely not. my city, like beijing and other cities, is actuallymaking a great effort to preserve the walls. these walls attract historians,archaeologists, and many schoolchildren who are trying to study our history andcultural heritage. walls have become bridges to our past and to the rest of theworld. if the ancient builders of these walls were still alive today, they wouldbe proud to see such great changes in the role of their walls. they are nowbridges that link east and west, south and north, and all countries of theworld. our cultural heritage will survive globalization.