Source: SYSU Youth Association
Written by: SYSU Youth Association
Translated by: Ji Yuzhu
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

Sun Yat-sen University team won the Second Prize and Best Debater Award in the 2014 “FLTRP Cup” National English Debating Competition Invitational held in Beijing on May 18-23. SYSU team consists of Ji Yuzhu and Kou Qiaohui from School of Communication and Design as the debaters and Lu Haolin from School of Engineering as the tutor. SYSU team has gained good results in the "FLTRP Cup" for three consecutive years after winning the champion in 2012 and runner-up in 2013.

The “FLTRP Cup” is sponsored by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League, All-China Students Federation and Beijing Foreign Studies University, and organized by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (FLTRP). Since 1997, it has been the most recognized English debate competition in China. The format used in the competition is British Parliamentary debate format, a common form of academic debate which is internationally adopted. Participants have only 15 minutes for preparation, which demands a high level of knowledge accumulation, critical thinking, language ability and improvisation skills.

This year, the competition attracted 105 teams from universities across the country, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Fudan University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, The University of Macau, etc, reaching the largest scale in the history of the “FLTRP Cup”. The motions involved many hot social issues, such as education system, public policy, cultural exports, ethics of science and technology, etc. After 8 preliminary rounds, SYSU team successfully broke into the Octofinal, ranking the 5th out of 105 teams, and finally won the Second Prize. Our two debaters, Ji Yuzhu and Kou Qiaohui  also won the Best Debater Award, with the second highestest total debater scores among over 200 contestants.