
Students striving to be the best English speaker in China - anigbrowl
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-05-25/meet-students-vying-be-next-english-speaking-star-china
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westiseast
I judged competitions like this a few times. It's a weird experience. Often
the students/academic institutions have a bizarre and extreme view of what
makes good language - speaking at 100 mph, emulating some kind of thick
Amayreeecaaahn accent, choosing crazily complex topics to memorize... At the
end of one horrific competition, a visiting professor from Xiamen University
(a good Uni btw) told the crowd you could _never_ speak a language well unless
you could memorize 4 pages of A4 :/

Incidentally, years ago the national CCTV English competitions were broadcast
live, but after my friend Justin completely forgot his speech and fluffed
everything they changed it to a pre-recorded (or time delayed perhaps?)
broadcast instead. He was the only person in that final stage who didn't grow
up in America or have 100% international school upbringing.

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smilekzs
> He was the only person in that final stage who didn't grow up in America or
> have 100% international school upbringing.

This is why such competitions has always been BS. They've been around for 15+
years. At first I admired those kids (back then my "peers"), but later on
realized that the education they received could only have been afforded by a
very small "elite" class. English was far from a _foreign language_ to the
vast majority of the final-rounders and this applies to every single
competition and every single age group. Totally fair huh.

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yzh
The competition has been there for a long time. I personally know some people
who have won the regional champion. They are as boring as other non-perfect
English speakers. To some of them, this is just a way to get themselves into a
good university. It's no use to speak English, or frankly speaking, any
foreign language well if one does not know how to think and what to express.
It's the content that matters. Yitang Zhang doesn't speak perfect English but
when he speaks, people would listen. I think what Chinese students really need
is logic and philosophy.

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cherry_su
What makes them boring?

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yzh
Boring is a very subjective word. Maybe coincidentally the people I met were
boring to me. My point is, being good at oral English does not necessarily
make one a thoughtful and interesting person. Several of the materials they
performed were not that good in terms of content itself. And whenever the
results are related to college entrance exam, I cannot help but questioning
the purpose of some people who took the competition. That said, I agree there
are also true and excellent speakers and thinkers among them. If this
competition can serve as a catalyst for ordinary people in China to learn
English, especially people from small cities, then it's great.

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melling
We should make more of an effort to understand the rise of China as it
happens. Someday a few decades from now we'll look back and try to figure out
how China surpassed everyone else. We only seem to understand events after
they've happened.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I've lived in China for almost 8 years now. If you strive for understanding,
you'll find your impressions have a bit more propaganda than reality. For
example, in most of Asia (Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, India), it is not that
hard to find a taxi driver that speaks some English. But forget about that in
China (unless you happen to maybe be in Shanghai).

China is making strides, ya, but it is still quite behind the west. Take the
educational system for example: it is great if you are middle class with
money, but it doesn't work well for most of the students who go through it
(whose parents lack those resources or even city hukou to attend a decent
school). And there is nothing magical about it, many of the upper class send
their kids abroad for education (and the parents often follow eventually).

Anyways, we said the same thing about Japan in the 70s/80s, and they really
didn't blow past us. If you want to see where China could go tomorrow, look at
Korea or Taiwan today, and that would be an ideal outcome.

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Xixi
You need to take into account the population of these countries. US is 319
million people, Japan 127 and China 1,368 (figures from 2014). South Korea and
Taiwan are even smaller at 50 million and 23 million inhabitants.

For China to be as developed as Korea, Taiwan or Japan would mean for its GDP
per capita to be roughly on par. A quick calculation shows that if China GDP
per capita were to be on par with that of Japan, its overall GDP would be 3.5x
bigger than that of US! Which mean the ability (for instance) to spend 3.5x
more on the PLA than the US on its army without impacting other budgets.

China still has a long way to go, but it actually has a shot at getting there
(contrary to Japan). I think (very personal theory) that the US managed to
become the de facto only superpower standing simply by virtue of being the
biggest developped country in the world, by far: France, UK, Germany or even
Russia are very small (population wise) compared to it. Hell: France, UK and
Germany put together are still small compared to the US.

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vacri
The US spends $600B annually on defence, and China spends $130B. Multiplying
by 3.5 still doesn't close the gap...

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seanmcdirmid
China's security concerns are also focused inwards (protecting the party from
rebellion, unhappy minorities in the west, semi-hostile neighbors), preventing
it from projecting much power outside of China.

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westiseast
They're starting to realize now that by projecting power externally you can
keep all the minorities and malcontents placated with nationalism </cynicism>

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seanmcdirmid
Nationalism doesn't work well for Uighurs or Tibetans. Nationalism plays more
to the poorer Han majority in the east.

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seesomesense
Is there a "Best Mandarin Speaker" competition in the Western world ?

If not, why not ?

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westiseast
Because Da Shan would win it every year :/

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seanmcdirmid
I haven't heard from him in a while...is he even in the Spring festival gala
anymore?

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westiseast
I saw him on some billboards in Wuhan recently :) I honesty don't know, there
seem to be more foreigners now on TV with good Chinese though, ones doing word
games and straight up presenting with great Mandarin.

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Zigurd
They don't need a best English speaker. They need a lot of adequate English
speakers. The best English speaker who is Chinese grew up in Hong Kong.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Doubtful. I know several Chinese who grew up in the US.

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Zigurd
That's a bet I would take.

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kelukelugames
I don't appreciate being generalized. How do you know how well we can speak
English?

