On December 20, 2020, Lan Xian’en, a graduate student from the Institute of Molecular Plus (IMP) won the second prize in the 2020 “Uchallenge” National English Speech Contest for College Students, as was announced by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press Unipus, a WeChat public account. This is the highest award students from Tianjin municipality have won in this contest this year.

In total, 182 students from all over the country were qualified for the national championship. The first stage of the national championship was held online on December 14, 2020. The topic of the speech in the first stage was "Challenge to All". Based on the story of both him and his father about the voluntary work during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lan Xian’en shared his understanding and perception of the fight against COVID-19 with the title of "Unite as one and we fight the challenge together". In virtue of his excellent language application and critical thinking, Lan Xian’en got to the second stage of the competition successfully after an intense competition.

The second stage of the national championship was impromptu speech involving culture, social concerns, and international hot issues. The topic for Lan’Xian’en was "Quarter-life crisis". He described the challenges that young students may encounter in their 20s and shared his opinion on how to overcome the challenges by taking his own experiences as examples.

Prior to the national championship, Lan Xian’en had won the first prize in the English speech contest of Tianjin University on October 25, 2020 and the prize of top three in the Tianjin championship of the 2020 English speech contest on November 8, 2020.

By Lan Xian’en from the Institute of Molecular Plus

Editor: Sun Xiaofang