News

2008.1218

English Singers Win Their Prizes

By Patty Wang Campus Reporter The English singing contest, one of the series events of Humanity Festival, was held by the English Department today, which was the same date of the performance of Department of Physical Education at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU).  The overlapping led to the result of small groups of audiences for contest. "It is a pity that our contest was scheduled to be held on the same day as the performance,” said the conveners of the contest, Lai I-an (賴羿安). They said they had already chosen the date at the very first because it was a tradition of the English Department.  They took place the contest on the same date as that of last year.  They did not anticipate the date’s overlap of two activities.  The Physical Education Department advanced the annual performance to this semester because the National Intercollegiate Athletic Game was going to be held next semester at NTNU.  There were totally 27 contesters from different departments.  Among them were 12 English major students, including several senior students. Most of those English major seniors said they attend this contest in order to keep a good memory and give a good ending to their four-year college life.  Wu Jing-lan (吳靜蘭), one of the judges, who was the Associate Professor of the English Department said in the end of the contest that she found out those English major seniors all “happened to” take her course this semester.  If they wanted to know whether this year was their last year in the college, they could go to ask her. "If you want to stay a year longer, just talk to me and I can accomplish your wish,” she said. Though it was an English songs singing contest, the pronunciation accounted only 10 percent of the competitors’ performances.  The technique of singing accounted up to 40 percent of the total scores. Lai and Wu said that the songs were limited in the English songs because the contest was held by the English Department. The Mechatronic Technology major junior Li Hsuan-ping (李宣屏) finally won the championship on the English singing contest after attending the contest twice. He said that though he was not an English major student, the pronunciation was not a big problem to him.  He practiced often because he liked singing very much. "I learned the pronunciation from those English songs’ singers,” he said.