Pan Wei, a first year University Student in Wuhan, recently entered another school 'English speech contest', entitling her speech: 'Challenge Forever'.

Pan Wei : Always challenging herself.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, the title of my speech today is "Challenge forever".

The other day my schoolmate was surprised to see my name on the list of contestants and asked: "Why are you doing a public speech again?"

In fact, most of my extracurricular activities involve speech making and I am so lucky that I had some success. Now I continue to enter speech competitions for two reasons.

First of all, I believe that we must not allow ourselves to stagnate, and secondly, I believe that we must continuously improve ourselves.

So how can we do this? The answer is to challenge ourselves. It inspires us to take action to overcome our weaknesses and increase our strengths.

Take me for example, the first time, I learned to enjoy myself during the course of the speech, and the second time I found that speeches are not only reports but are also conversations with your audience.

Actually, I am just one of those people described by George Bush who said that 'We are generous and strong and decent not because we believe in ourselves, but because we hold beliefs beyond ourselves'.

[George W. Bush Inaugural Speech].

What do you think is the most important factor in being successful? The answer again is to challenge ourselves. Sometimes people hide from challenges through fear of failure, or they fear the loss of past success. But what is real success? We know true failure is when you run from challenges. So true success is when you dare to confront challenges. We should be open to risk and challenge, and be open to new opportunities. We should make each day an exciting adventure.

In short, we should never tire, never yield, and never give up. We should renew that purpose today, to "challenge forever".

Thank you very much.

R.P.Bendedek
Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com

Congratulations also go to two of my other students Yan Yuhua and Yang Shuo. While Pan Wei has been my student for only one semester, and Yang Shuo for two semesters, Yan Yuhua is my former Hong Hu High School Student.

I take no credit for their abilities. They are all dedicated language students who have pushed themselves to succeed.

Related Reading for Chinese Students: "Chinese Students ask: How Can I Improve My Oral English?"

R.P.BenDedek is the pseudonym of the Author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' (www.kingscalendar.com), and is a guest columnist at Magic City Morning Star News. An Australian, he currently teaches Conversational English in China.

Photographic Stories from China can be found at:  http://www.kingscalendar.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?action=viewnews&id=128

"The King's Calendar" is a chronological study of the historical books of the Bible (Kings and Chronicles), Josephus, Seder Olam Rabbah, and the (Essene) Damascus Document of The Dead Sea Scrolls.