On October 31, the 2020 Tianjin Foreign Language Competition for College Students and the Semi-final of “FLTRP · ETIC Cup” National English Writing and Reading Contest in Tianjin Division was successfully held in Peiyangyuan Campus in Tianjin University. Nearly 200 people, selected from preliminary contests by more than 20 colleges and universities, participated in this semi-final, and ten of them were contestants selected by Nankai University.

The writing and reading contest were respectively held during 8:30-10:30 and 13:00-15:30. The proposition of the contest selected topics with rich and diverse contents, which college students were familiar with and interested in.

The writing contest required contestants to complete an argumentative essay and a practical essay. The argumentative writing aroused the reflection of life, symbolizing two kinds of people by the fox and the hedgehog: One kind of people know lots of things and adopt different methods according to changing circumstances; the other kind of people only know a matter of great importance and meet all changes by remaining unchanged. The practical writing required contestants to write a letter to Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games for making an application for being the volunteer. These topics provoked deep thinking, showed concern for reality and paid attention to the use of language. English writing contest required students to have strong language practical ability and a large amount of comprehensive knowledge. It was also a challenging project which can improve the English writing proficiency of contemporary college students and enhance their critical thinking ability.

The reading contest had both objective questions and subjective questions in four sections, namely, Read and Know, Read and Reason, Read and Question, Read and Create. These sections, the difficulty of which rose step by step, comprehensively examined constants’ width of reading and their abilities of information acquisition, analysis, logical reasoning, extraction and application through the ingenious design. The reading materials for the subjective questions in the semi-final were selected from Walden, a book in the designated book list of the contest. And two questions were set. One question paid more attention to examine the comprehension ability to the author’s views and asked students to elaborate the author’s viewpoint on poverty and how to deal with poverty. The other open-ended question required contestants to make comments on author’s ideas in order to foster their independent thinking ability.

After the contest, the organizing committee of it in Tianjin Division adopted the form of machine assessment and manual review. Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP) offered the College Foreign Language Test and Training System as a support of the contest to assist experts in contestants’ performance evaluation and data analysis. This form of assessment not only enhanced the efficiency of performance scoring and ensured the fairness of the contest but also would provide inspirations to the teaching evaluation of English writing and reading in colleges and universities.

Finally, Cui Yue who studies in University of Glasgow-Nankai University Joint Graduate School of our university won the grand prize (champion) of the reading contest in Tianjin and will enter the national final with two contestants from other universities on behalf of Tianjin, showing the excellent command of English of students from universities in Tianjin in the contest of the national level.

Awards won in the Semi-final of the 2020 “FLTRP · ETIC Cup” National English Writing Contest in Tianjin Division:

The first prize: Hong Mengjie (English Language and Literature), Wu Xueting (English)

The second prize: Jin Xuju (Japanese)

The third prize: Ju Hong (English Language and Literature), Zhao Wanyun (Accounting)

Awards won in the Semi-final of the 2020 “FLTRP · ETIC Cup” National English Reading Contest in Tianjin Division:

The grand prize: Cui Yue (Regional Economics)

The second prize: Xu Moxi (English Language and Literature)

The third prize: A Sihan (Accounting), Liu Jiayuan (Japanese Language and Literature)