A warm meaningful meeting with winners of Lucky Drawing Contest by ELT iCenter

On January 13rd, ELT iCenter held a warm meeting with winners of Lucky Drawing Contest to award them certificates of ELT iCenter and the amount of money in cash in equivalent with their prizes as prescribed in the rules of the contests. Although there were 3 winners of the 1st, the 2nd and the 3rd prizes, only the winners of the 2nd and the 3rd prizes attended the meeting. The winner of the 1st prizes lived in Nam Dinh, which was approximately 200 km from Thai Nguyen, so she could not come to Thai Nguyen due to her busy schedule. However, ELT iCenter did send her certificate and awards by the form of transferring at banks and sending via post offices.

About the place where the meeting happened, instead of celebrating a formal event as usual, editors of ELT iCenter decided to meet winners of the contest at Coffe Hollic in the centre of Thai Nguyen City, Vietnam to have an informal talk with winners.

  The meeting warmly began with an introduction about ELT iCenter. Ms. Sherry yen – Editor of ELT iCenter provided the winners with a brief background of ELT iCenter whose purposes are to promote English language teaching in Vietnam and disseminate various types of scholarships and grants as well for those who may concern.

The meeting continued with winners’ sharing about the reason why they had known about the Lucky Drawing Contest by ELT iCenter. Both of the winners of the 3rd and the 2nd prizes said that they had known about the contest via their friends. Generally, at first, the winners were a little shy. However, because of the friendly attitude of 2 editors, the winners comfortably shared with two editors of ELT iCenter about their study. Surprisingly, they were both students of School of Foreign Language, Thai Nguyen University - the same school with two editors of ELT iCenter.

The story seemed to be more exciting when two editors kept quiet to pay attention to their expressing about difficulties in learning English. Ms. Dieu – the winner of the 3rd prize mentioned that she was not confident in her ability of English language, so she found it hard to speak and communicate in English as fluently as others. Similarly, Ms. Hue – the winner of the 3rd prize faces a lot of troubles in listening to English. Both winners seemed to be diffident in themselves and were seeking for the best methods to improve their English language proficiency.

Enthusiastically, Ms. Sherry Yen gave them a lot of good advices that they can apply to practice speaking and listening to English. Concretely, Ms. Sherry Yen told her stories of learning English when she was student at SFL, TNU. I remembered she said that she did enjoy listening English via popular channels like CNN, BBC at every noon when she cooked. At first, she could not understand the content of the speeches or talks made by speakers of each program. Gradually, after regular practices, she amazingly recognized the content that speakers of CNN or BBC was making on each program and she was so happy of that. Moreover, she also introduced to winners some common English clubs for students in Thai Nguyen such as ICC English Club, Community English Club, TNUT English Club, etc so that they can come there to meet new friends and practice communicating in English with others. 

And as a common rule of life, the meeting nearly came to an end even though no one wanted to leave. Two editors of ELT iCenter said that they were so glad to meet the winners and they hoped that the winners would also attend further activities held by elt icenter. Then on behalf of ELT iCenter, Ms. Sherry Yen awarded the two winners certificates of ELT iCenter and their equivalent prizes as in the contest. They both looked so happy to receive their prizes and they also promised to be regular readers who would usually update information published by ELT iCenter. *** Finally, the meeting with winners of Lucky Drawing Contest by ELT iCenter finished with a lot of regrets from both winners and editors. All wished that they would have more time to talk to each other. *** 

Personally, being a part of ELT iCenter project with a position of an editor is one of the most meaningful achievements I could achieve this year. And celebrating this Lucky Drawing Contest did give us a lot of memorable experiences. We did try to make a well-running contest with all our possibilities even with the smallest things. Sis Sherry Yen and I may never forget the feeling of discussing about the rules of the contest, waiting for the time to start it and preparing carefully everything to make the video of selecting winners through the forms of drawing randomly and announcing results for the winners of the contest. Thanks to organizing the contest, we had a good opportunity to be the organizers of a contest which requires us a lot of skills like team-work, time management, writing scenario and controlling a program like real MCs on TV shows.

  Sincerely, all these useful lessons which we have learnt from organizing the contest encourages us to better complete our jobs as editors of ELT iCenter so as to provide readers with the best quality posts and the most meaningful programs including contests or interviews to great people who are interested in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT). And as we have promised, we will soon return with more impressing activities! Let update our information on this site and Facebook fan page of ELT iCenter.

Once again, thank you so much for all participants in Lucky Drawing Contest and all those who have visited and contributed to build and develop our ELT iCenter website project. We are looking forward to more feedbacks from you so that we can expand the content of ELT iCenter Website. Many thanks in advance!