艺无止境。在由衷地赞许选手们出色表现的同时，评委们更是殷切地关注着年轻学子们继续成长和改进的空间。 在此我们特别刊出2008“CCTV杯”全国英语演讲大赛半决赛评委会主席刘黛琳教授的现场点评(节选)，与选手和指导教师们共勉。

　　I am sure everyone would like to join with me in saying that the Organizing Committee has chosen a very good theme for the prepared speech, that is, “Does one plus one equal two?” which is very thought provoking and leaves plenty of room for your imagination. As I said at the very beginning, we have been enjoying the contest thoroughly and tremendously because, the 92 contestants approached the theme from different perspectives, well researched, with good thoughts as well as interesting ideas. And we are very pleased to see, most of you delivered your speech with good pronunciation, clear articulation, with good eye contact and a proper manner. You have also demonstrated your remarkable analytical ability. But there is one thing I would like to mention. With a little bit more sense of humor, you might have entertained your audience more。

　　One thing that impresses us most is that some of you are very fluent speakers of English. But one point that I’d like to make is, fluency doesn’t mean haste. Some of you spoke very fast, or too fast, that the speaker himself got carried away; but the audience got lost. We’ve also noticed some small pronunciation problems, such as, we heard some contestants say, /tek'nɔlədʒ/, /'enədʒ/, instead of /tek'nɔlədʒI/, /'enədʒI/ for “technology” and “energy”. And we heard some say /'tʃaInər/, /'kɔ:nər/, instead of /'tʃaInə/, /'kɔ:nə/. I haven’t got time to check with my American friends yet if they would identify that with the American accent. I very much doubt it。

　　Compared with the prepared speech, generally speaking, your performance was somewhat weaker in your impromptu speech. It’s not surprising, because that is a very tough and challenging task and you are only given 15 minutes to get yourself prepared to talk about a given topic. I must say all those topics for the impromptu speech are very well-designed, though some of them are more straightforward, while others do need a bit more hard thinking。

　　Quite a number of you were given quotations. So, when you face those quotations, I’m afraid you have to interpret it and to get the message of it first. And then you put your understanding and your arguments into a logical order and deliver it to inform or to persuade the audience。

　　Here I would like to pick up two of them to help drive my point home. Look at this one, which is a quotation from Alvin Toffler. It reads, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn。” What does it mean? What message does the writer intend to get across? I wonder if you have heard of this phrase — “lifelong learning”. Have you? Please put up your hand if you have. Oh, that’s good. Then you have the basic knowledge to interpret this quotation. Why 21st century? Because in this century, the world is changing fast. One’s learning no longer ends up with the completion of one’s schooling time, and one’s learning should go on throughout one’s whole life. One of the aims of education in college should be to make the students learn how to learn. And then when you step into this fast changing world, you’ll be able to carry on learning to face and adapt to the ever-lasting changes. You will know how to learn to catch up, to update and to enrich yourself. Therefore, if you didn’t have this knowledge, if you didn’t know this new concept in education, it would be difficult for you to interpret “learn, unlearn, and relearn” from the quotation。

　　And let’s look at the other one. “We reached the Moon and come back, but we find it troublesome to cross our own street and meet our neighbors。” So what message does the writer want to convey here? Why are the Moon and the street and neighbors mentioned here? What’s the connection? Isn’t it something about establishing human relations, and about advocating communication between people? We reached the Moon, having covered such a long distance, however, it is so difficult for us to reach, to contact, to talk, to communicate with our neighbors just across the road. Here “street” could also refer to the boundary between two countries. However, this message wasn’t reflected in your performance。

　　I just want to comment on those two examples, because I believe, if you accumulate more knowledge of life and keep an eye on what’s going on beyond your campus, you will be able to understand, to get the message from those quotations。

　　Now I would like to make a suggestion. I think all the contestants here today should give your coach a big hug and say a large “Thank you!” for all the support and guidance they’ve given you and all the way they’ve accompanied you up to this stage. You can do it now, or you can do it when you are alone with your coach, but you must do it. We should learn to appreciate. In this case, appreciate all the efforts your coach has made to help you, to lead you to today’s success。