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The 3rd UIC MET English Speaking Contest award ceremony was held on 23 May at the Learning Resource Centre (LRC). Vice President (Students and Generals Affairs) Professor Zhang Cong, English Language Centre (ELC) Director Dr Viola Wong, and Deputy College Librarian Ms Fung Ying Cham were in attendance to hand out the prizes to the winners.

At his welcome speech, Prof Zhang Cong encouraged the attendees to make good use of the abundant resources UIC provides them to improve their English. “Learning a second language requires hard work and a lot of practice,” said Prof Zhang, sharing his early experience of studying in Switzerland, not fluent in the new language at the very beginning. He urged students to take the initiative and take every opportunity to practice speaking with their friends, teachers, and the MET programme every day.

Professor Zhang Cong delivers his welcome speech

Dr Viola Wong told the winners that the MET contest award was a recognition of their hard work. She encouraged students to enjoy practicing English with MET—to experiment with accents, tones, sounds, and to see MET as the beginning of their practice before they feel confident to talk with other people in English.

Dr Viola Wong talks to the attendees

The 1st place winner, Year 3 Division of Business and Management (DBM) student Wu Hanqiu received a score of 91.86, and the 2nd place winners, Year 1 Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Jiang Shunmei and Year 2 Division of Culture and Creativity Liang Hao received scores of 90.468 and 90.05 respectively. After receiving their awards, they shared their experiences of participating in the contest.

The 3rd UIC MET English Speaking Contest was jointly organised by the LRC and the ELC from 22 April to 7 May. Students submitted multiple recordings of contest texts to the MET contest where they were graded on a scale from 0-100. In total, there were over 160 contestants, where 26% of the contestants scored 80 or higher.

The winners should all be proud of what they achieved, and all participants should take pride in going the extra mile in their studies.

The awardees and presenters

Excerpts of contestants’ testimonials:

Wu Hanqiu: “This award will provide me with the strength and encouragement to put more effort in my future studies with the English language.”

Jiang Shunmei: “I think MET is more than a software that helps you correct your mistakes when speaking, it also provides you with a platform where off-campus you can still have chances to practice oral English.”

Wang Shengyu: “I learnt a lot from this competition; by practicing and imitating I found notable improvement of my pronunciation day by day.”

List of the awardees at the contest:

 Editors: Samuel Burgess, Deen He, Marissa Furney
(from LRC)