On October 27th, The 2018 “FLTRP.ETIC Cup” English public Writing and Reading semi-finals(Tianjin Division) were successfully held on the new campus （Peiyang）of Tianjin university. Nearly 200 contestants from more than 20 colleges and universities in Tianjin participated in the contests. Students who won the special awards of the contests would enter the finals on behalf of Tianjin students and showcase the English competence of our Tianjin students. The special award and first award winners of the preliminary contests held in Tianjin colleges and universities entered the semi-finals, and the Writing and Reading contests were held from 8:30 to10:30 and 13:00 to15:30 respectively. The propositions of the two contests were familiar and interesting to university and college students. They were closely linked to our learning, academy, life and work with diverse contents. Participants are required to complete a 300-500 word of Expository Writing and a 600-800 word Narrative Writing in the Writing contest. English writing is a project featuring flexible language application, comprehensive knowledge possession and high training difficulty in the teaching process. The Writing contest can fully examine the English writing level of contemporary university and college students and enhance their analytical and critical thinking abilities. The Reading contest comprises both objective questions and subjective questions, totally being divided into four modules, namely, "Read and Know, Read and Reason, Read and Question, Read and Create". Those modules were arranged based on their grade of difficulty so as to comprehensively examine the contestants' reading breadth, information acquisition ability, analysis and judgment ability, logical reasoning ability as well as information extraction and application ability through the masterly design.
During the contests, Sun Fenglan, Deputy Editor of the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press of Beijing Foreign Studies University and Wang Lisong, Secretary General of the Tianjin University Foreign Language Teaching Steering Committee and Vice President of the School of Foreign Languages and Literature of Tianjin University, made their rounds and provided instructions.
After the semi-finals, the Contest Organizing Committee of Tianjin Division made an evaluation in the form of a combination of systematic review and manual review. The university's foreign language testing and training system offered by FLTRP provided support for performance review and data analysis, greatly assisting experts in their review. The judges were backbone teachers of various universities in Tianjin and they conducted online review and scoring through the system. The organizing committee combined the review of the judges with the systematic review as the final performance of the contestants. This form not only improved the evaluation efficiency, but also ensured the fairness of the contests. It also provided new ideas for the development of English writing and reading teaching as well as evaluation measures.
In the end, Kong Wenjie of Tianjin University as well as Li Xiaoyi and Mao Qi of Nankai University won the special awards in the Reading contest. Cai Wenting, Wang Xiaona of Tianjin University as well as Kong Yankun of Nankai University won the special awards in the Writing contest. They will engage in the national finals on behalf of the Tianjin University and college students to showcase the English competence of Tianjin students in the national arena.
By: School of Foreign Languages and Literarure
Editor: Qin Mian and Ketih Harrington
