Newman Huo

Wang Routing, who claimed the first prize in the senior high school category of the English speech contest on Saturday, said she believed the secret to her success was “hard work.”

Wang, 15, is a Senior One student of Shenzhen Foreign Languages School (SFLS).

“Talking about my own success in English study, I don’t think I can offer any special advice except hard work,” Wang said after the contest.

She said she started learning English only after moving from Shiyan in Hubei Province to Shenzhen at age 12 in 2004.

“Before I was 12 years old, I lived with my grandparents in the remote city in Hubei Province and could speak no English,” she said.

After enrolling in Liyuan Primary School in Futian District, she spent the entire second semester studying English for four hours daily in order to catch up with her classmates.

“I worked so hard on English at that time that I almost had no time and energy for other subjects,” she recalled.

She then moved to Shenzhen Foreign Languages School. In order to improve her spoken English, she joined the English drama club in the school.

In 2005, as a Junior Two student, she went to Canada for a two-week summer camp.

“Although the summer camp didn’t help me a lot linguistically, it did help me learn a lot about the culture of the English native speakers in Canada,” she said.

In 2006, as a Junior Three student, she participated in the CCTV Star of Outlook English Talent Competition in Beijing, and the 21st Century Scholastic Cup English Contest.

These two contests not only helped improve her spoken English greatly, but also gave her a lot of know-how and confidence about making public speeches in English.

According to Chou Chuyu and Zhang Xueling, two of Wang’s coaches, Wang is “an outstanding student who does well not only in English but also in all other subjects.”

“In fact, Wang had only about one week to prepare for the English contest,” Chou said.

“As instructors, what we could do were only two things: first, help her search relevant information on the Internet and write her own speech manuscript; second, improve her speech skills and teach her how to answer questions on the stage,” Zhang said.

Wang’s parents, who both came to the speech contest on Saturday to watch their daughter perform, said they were not very surprised their daughter had won the top prize in the senior high school category.

“My daughter is a very independent student, who has been studying very hard both at school and at home,” said her father Wang Jianbin.