On March 27, 2022, the 2021 International Future Envoy Contest was successfully held in Chengdu. The campaign was initiated by the Future Diplomats Public Welfare Program and hosted by Chengdu Translation Association and Prophet Translation Association. About 100 universities participated in it and communicated with foreign embassies and consulates, foreign affairs agencies and foreign-related enterprises. The Institute of Foreign Languages of Southwest Jiaotong University was invited to participate for the first time. The four-member team “Rongcheng Young Masters Group of Southwest Jiaotong University” consist of undergraduates of grade 2019, Gu Yaowei, Wang Yu, Wang Chuan and Ge Zheng, under the guidance of associate professor Zeng Xiangmin, and won the highest prize and the only gold medal after two rounds of rematch and final. Ge Zheng and Wang Chuan made their appearances in the Honor List of 2021 World Young Ambassadors, and Wang Chuan won the title of Best Spokesperson for his outstanding performance.
After receiving the invitation in July 2021, the four students selected the theme of dialogue with the city of Phoenix in USA. The four members of the team lived in different places in China, and immediately organized many online meetings to discuss the communication plan and strategy between Chengdu and Phoenix together with their tutor Zeng Xiangmin.
During the period from the start to the final round, the four students extensively collected information about Chengdu and Phoenix, and punched in the QQ group every day to share their research notes. After sifting through four topics: sports, ecological conservation, health care and humanities, the team captured the common role of sports in Chengdu and Phoenix. In view of the upcoming 2022 Summer University Games in Chengdu, Zeng pointed out that “students should make full use of this platform to increase university exchanges between the two cities”, which turned an abstract sports theme into a concrete and practical solution.
After the team decided to take “a sports invitation letter from Southwest Jiaotong University” as the theme, all team members actively searched for relevant materials, analyzed and discussed concrete implementation plans, especially the sports connection between Southwest Jiaotong University and Arizona State University in Phoenix, and finally formed the two activity plans of “Friendly Basketball Match” and “Sportsmanship Dialogue”. During this period, team spokesman Wang Chuan participated in the offline dialogue activity concerning Phoenix and fully discussed the operability and feasibility of this activity.
In the quarter-final, 37 teams were selected to participate, but only 10 teams made it to the finals. As one of the teams that made it to the finals, the team of our English Department did not relax. In order to better carry out the communication between Chengdu and Phoenix in sports, the team modified and optimized the contents catering to the final competition system, especially refining the connection between the projects. In this stage, every member is making progress and growing, especially their teamwork ability. In order to increase the entertainment and diversity of the speech, the team added the 50-second video introduction of Chengdu and Phoenix in the introduction part, and made the outlook for the future, which was finally unanimously recognized by the judges.
In the final, “Rongcheng Young Masters Group of Southwest Jiaotong University” fully prepared and won the title in one stroke with the overwhelming momentum and fluent and natural oral English. This is not only a recognition of the four students’ hard work in more than one semester, but also highlights the excellent teaching level of English major of Southwest Jiaotong University.
