The 5th annual UIC More English Talkers (MET) English Speaking Contest was held from April 7th to April 28th by the Learning Resource Centre and the English Language Centre. The aim of the contest was to motivate students to improve their spoken English and to build their confidence outside of the classroom. The contest was held through MET’s online platform, meaning that students could take part in the competition using their own laptops, mobile phones, or tablets.

Over 150 students registered for the contest, with most participants being first-year and second-year students. The MET system analysed students’ English speeches for pronunciation, fluency and intonation and then provided students with specific feedback on how to improve.

The first-place winners this year were ZHANG Yan, a first-year student from DST, and HUANG Jieyu, a first-year student from DBM. WANG Shuhan, a second-year student from DBM, and YE Chutong, a second-year student from DHSS, came in second place. One of the third prize winners was ZHOU Yutong, a first-year student from DST, who said “I may not be very good at English, but through this competition, I constantly pushed myself and constantly challenged myself until finally I got the third prize for my efforts. I felt so happy and thank my teacher for her encouragement.” Congratulations to all our winners this year!

Currently, LRC subscribes to more than 80 courses from MET, such as Situational Dialogues, Studio Classroom, BBC News, International Conference Speech, TOEFL, IELTS, and others. This database is accessible from the LRC website free of charge, providing a great resource for UIC students to improve their spoken English.

We hope everyone enjoyed practising English with MET, and we look forward to more students participating in the 2022 contest next year.