第20届“21世纪杯”全国英语演讲比赛冠军、澳门大学选手李珊珊是一个长着一张“国际脸”、身材高挑的姑娘。她在赛场上表现出的优雅、自信和大方给评委和观众留下了深刻的印象。

 

      今天，小编请珊珊同学回忆一下当时比赛的经历，看看冠军是怎样炼成的。

 

      

      全国政协外事委员会副主任王国庆为冠军李珊珊颁奖

 

      演讲比赛让她觉得最困难的部分

 

      李珊珊是澳门大学演讲队队员，曾代表学校参加过无数各种规格的英语演讲比赛，可谓身经百战。即便如此，撰写演讲稿也是一个漫长的过程。但是对于她来说，最大的困难并不是写演讲稿、不是逻辑思维问题、不是该如何用英文表达、而是——紧张。

 

      每次上台前，她都感到格外的紧张，因为她非常担心自己在台上会摔倒或是中途忘词。“I get nervous very often before competing and going on stage. My biggest fear was tripping on stage and forgetting my speech. But I found that jumping around backstage and making small talk with the microphone controllers or student helpers are good ways of calming down. That’s what I usually do.”

 

      

 

      演讲比赛为我敞开中国道家思想的大门

 

      如何写出一篇高质量的稿子？李珊珊的秘诀是：不断地进行头脑风暴，想出具有新意的点子。“Brainstorming fresh ideas are an important part of the process. I tried my best to think out of box.”

 

      此外，演讲稿的内容是否能引起评委以及台下观众的共鸣也是致胜关键！“When you write a speech, it is about making a connection with the audience. The key is to come up with ideas that both judges and audience could connect with.”公众演讲不是自说自话！一定要考虑台下的评委和听众。

 

      全国总决赛的已备演讲题目是“The Balance of Yin and Yang”。拿到这个题目，珊珊第一个就想到了道家思想。在动笔写稿之前，她查阅了许多关于道家思想的资料。慢慢地，竟然逐渐开始着迷了。“The idea of balance is something that I strongly believe in. I believe that there is light and dark, warm and cold, good and bad. It isn’t entirely up to us to decide which of the other can gain dominance in our lives, sometimes things can be difficult while other times things are easy. There are sad days and happy days. And I think at the end of it all, there is a balance between the two that amounts to a complete whole. Without the bad, we wouldn’t know what good would feel like. Those are one of the concepts in Daoism that I liked very much, You need to experience both to understand the bigger picture. ”

 

      

 

      莎士比亚带给我灵感

 

      英语演讲比赛中最能考验选手水平的部分，就是即兴演讲环节和Q&A提问环节了。现场看过李珊珊同学比赛的同学们都能感觉到，她的即兴演讲可谓信心满满，逻辑清晰，气势磅礴。

 

      说到如何构思即兴演讲的内容，又如何从众多的即兴演讲中脱颖而出，她是这么回答的：“There are common structures, for example the pros and cons technique or the level of analysis technique where you analyze the question from different perspectives. Another good way to make an impromptu speech outstanding is to come up with specific examples that the audience would most likely remember. ”

即兴演讲的关键，不在于华丽的辞藻堆砌，而是让人信服的观点。不用为了创新而刻意追求标新立异，用那些观众耳熟能详的例子来支撑论点，反而更能引起共鸣。

 

      在问答环节，被问到意料之外的问题是比赛中常有的事，说到这点，珊珊提起在全国总决赛上，自己被问到一个超乎意料、同时又非常有趣的问题：If you could sit down and meet either Confucious, Shakespeare or George Washington, who would you pick?她毫不犹豫地回答: “Shakespeare, because I love reading. His work is phenomenal. His sonnets are groundbreaking and plays as well. I gave the fastest response to this question because I was eager to answer it. I had background on Shakespeare and I knew the answer I wanted to say right away. ”原来珊珊是莎老爷子的粉丝啊，难怪会回答得这么得心应手。冠军可不是临阵磨枪就能获得的殊荣哦，关键时刻拼的就是平时的积累！

 

      啤酒品牌——两座城市的纽带

 

      除了比赛本身，还有一段小插曲让她觉得特别有趣。在比赛的候场室，她遇到了一位来自青岛的选手。“He mentioned his city and he said Qingdao. That’s when I remembered the beer Tsing Tao.They sell it everywhere in Macau. And when he said that, I referred to the beer and he said he was precisely from that city. I thought that was a funny moment that happened during the competition. I never thought I would meet someone from Qingdao, the city where they brew the famous Tsing Tao.”

 

 

附：李珊珊在第20届“21世纪杯”全国英语演讲比赛总决赛的演讲稿

 

The balance of Yin and Yang — a youth perspective

 

Ladies and gentlemen, youth is precious. It is a time of our lives where we are energetic, idealistic and passionate but also clueless, insecure and naive. This small fragment of time in our lives may sometimes feel like a grey area between childhood and adulthood. A time where most of us feel lost but yet excited about what’s to come. It is a mixture of bliss, toxicity and adrenaline. Youth is bright and sunny but it is also dark and stormy. Let me explain.

 

Youth is happiness. Youth is trying things for the first time. It is being a bit braver, a bit bolder, a bit... mercurial! Perhaps, for some, it is the first time we fall in love and it’s magical - like a story in a fairytale. Youth now, is spending time on the Internet, with our friends, on our hobbies, on the things we enjoy - but, all this time is not time wasted because we are happy. Youth is a Pandora’s Box of memories with childhood friends and high school classmates - making fun of our teachers behind their backs and sometimes copying each other’s homework.

 

But youth is also pain. It is a time of metamorphosis and sometimes we learn things that are simply excruciating. For those who fall in love, youth is your first heartbreak and it feels like the end of the world. Youth is a time for goodbyes - the friends we used to see every day are now scattered across the globe and everyday becomes once a year. Youth is a time for acceptance - where we get rejected by universities, by our parents and even by ourselves. We beat ourselves up over things we can’t change yet don’t understand - why did that university not accept me? Why am I not good enough? Why?

 

Youth is both happiness and pain. It has moments of highs and lows, light and dark. It is the zenith and the nadir. You can’t have one without the other. Rather, it’s a balance of both - a yin and a yang, a complete whole.

 

So ladies gentlemen, do not fear the darkest of nights because it will always be followed by day - the boy or girl who broke your heart will never meet the spouse of your future, the friends you thought you’d never see again come back to you - perhaps on your wedding day and to those who didn’t think that we were good enough, well, look how far we’ve come.

 

Thank you.