On 20 May, the 28th China Daily “21st Century Cup” National English Speech Contest was held in ECNU’s SFL. The competition was included in the list of national class A competitions of the university.

A total of 54 students from more than ten faculties of the school participated in the preliminary selection, and 16 contestants advanced to the rematch. The theme of the contest was “My Interpretation of Civilization”. The contestants firstly finished a 3-minute speech on a fixed topic, then a 2-minute impromptu speech on a drawn topic, and finally a 2-minute question & answer session. After a sharp competition, 3 first prizes, 5 second prizes and 8 third prizes were selected. Jin Yuxin (Class 2022, Department of Translation), Li Jingyuan (Class 2022, Department of Japanese) and Qiu Yutong (Class 2020, Department of English) will represent ECNU to participate in the finals of Shanghai Region.

In recent years, the English Speech Team of SFL has achieved many successes, winning the national championship of the “Foreign Studies Society-Guo Cai Cup” English Speech Contest in 2019, the third place in the “21st Century Cup” in 2020 and 2021, the first prize in the youth group of the 21st Century Cup, and in 2022, the champion of the Shanghai Region and the first prize of the National English Speech Contest of the Foreign Research Service-Guo Cai Cup.