Judges listen to college candidates' speeches during the 21st Century National English Speaking Competition. [Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

Key to better careers

Since its founding in 1996, the 21st Century English National Speaking Competition, sponsored by China Daily, has attracted more non-English majors.

In the past two years, University of Macao international relations student Li Shanshan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University medical student Zhu Xue have won the competition.

The 2006 winner, Cao Feng, now a 30-year-old lawyer who works at US law firm of Paul Hastings in Shanghai, was a law-school graduate from Tsinghua University.

Unlike other contestants who had participated in various English-speaking competitions before college, Cao attended his first contest when he was a freshman.

To enhance his public-speaking skills, Cao regularly sought advice from his teachers as well as spending spare time practicing his presentation skills. "I practiced (even while) biking to school and taking showers," he says.

According to Cao, even though English majors have certain advantages, non-English majors can stand out on the stage, if the contestants can offer something from their respective fields.

In 2006, Cao became the champion of the 11th 21st Century National English Speaking Competition, the first Hong Kong resident to claim the title.

He says winning such English-speaking competitions can help contestants later in the job market. "Winning the competition itself demonstrates certain abilities," he says. "It can at least get the contestant job interviews."

Some other winners from the competition gained offers or internship opportunities in Cao's current company. The 2011 champion, Xu Jiru, is a colleague.

Sponsored by his law firm, Cao is expected to enroll at Harvard Law School to study LL.M. (Master of Laws) this fall. He will continue to work for Paul Hastings after graduation.

This year's competition also attracted a number of non-English-major contestants like Cao.

"I was thrilled to see that many non-English majors demonstrated strong skills in public speaking," says Mu Zhouqing, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' deputy division director, English division, department of translation and interpretation.

"Over the past two decades, the 21st Century National English Speaking Competition has made contributions to improve college students' English language proficiency nationwide."