Lisandra Wagan Fesalbon from the University of Macau’s (UM) Public Speaking Team won the championship at the ‘21st Century Coca-Cola Cup’ National English Speaking Competition held in Henan University, China. Of the 100,000 contestants who entered the competition in May 2014, only 64 made it to the national grand final, advancing successively from internet trials, campus trials, oral exams via phone, and regional finals.

Fesalbon from the Department of Government and Public Administration, Faculty of Social Sciences, earned unanimous praise from the judges for her outstanding performance in the grand final and won the championship. This is the first time a student from Macao has won a championship at this competition.

‘I’m really happy to win the championship, and I’m very grateful to my coach Randall Tran for his coaching,’ says Fesalbon. ‘Without his training, I wouldn’t have been able to beat so many strong contestants from around the country.’

Launched in 1996, the 21st Century Cup is an annual English speech contest which also serves as a trial for the international public speaking contest held in London every May. The topics for this year’s semi-final and national grand final are ‘Seeing Is Not Believing’ and ‘On the Balance between Yin and Yang from a Young Person’s Perspective’, respectively.