Before the Summer recess, the International Chinese Language Program(ICLP) of NTU held the 2009 Intercollegiate Debate Contest in the Archimedes Hall of the 2nd Student Activity Center. The debate contest was held for a three-pronged purpose: first, to train the participant's analytical capability, and to make sure that their Chinese proficiency were on a par with native speakers; second, to bring into fruition the efforts that some member students have devoted to this contest; third, to establish a platform for interchange for international elite students. Therefore, on the basis of this year's debate, next year's debate will be held on an enlarged scale.

In a free society, debate is quite common. However, the NTU ICLP intercollegiate debate contest is extraordinary in that it was an intercollegiate activity designed and implemented by two ICLP students--Jeffrey Chivers and Andrew Bruce Liu, who applied their target language proficiency to orchestrating the event.

From taking the initiative to plan the debate courses for this semester, to writing the proposal for the intercollegiate debate contest, and furthermore to the convocation of multiple preparatory meetings, sending out invitations and coordinating with the debate clubs of various universities, finally to the eloquent performance in the contest, these series of activities were all conducted in Mandarin, sufficient to prove that the proficiency of the target language of our ICLP students had reached a critical high level. Moreover, judging by the fact that they were able to plan and execute activities by using the target language, their language proficiency was closely tied to their professional skills.

The topic of this year's debate contest was "When businesses hire new employees, should talent be of more concern than moral character?" The debate was conducted in the Oregon style, participating teams included the NTU ICLP team, the NTU Debate Club team, the Debate Club team from National Chengchi University, the debate team from NTU Department of Foreign Languages & Literature, and a team from NTU Department of International Business's Global Friendship Special Project. The invited judges included former Director General of the Bureau of International Cultural and Educational Relations of the Ministry of Education Dr. Chen-Ching Li, Director of Language Training and Testing Center Dr. Tien-En Kao, and Professor Yong -Hway Hsi from the Department of Foreign Languages & Literature. All the judges gave high commendations to the event.

The success of an event is often attributable to the aggregate knowledge, strength, and energy of the key persons involved. For this event, we owe our sincere thanks to the planning of Jeffrey Chivers and Andrew Bruce Liu. And we extend our appreciation to the participating teams and the respectable list of judges (please refer to the program for their names). In addition, we are much beholden to the guidance and assistance provided by teachers Bao-Bei Wei and Jing-Fang and to the reportage provided by the managing editor of CILP electronic bulletin Bryan K. Beaudoin. Teeachers Chang-Zhen Chou and Chin-chin Tsai served as anchormen for the various debate sessions, teachers Yu-Rong Chen and Shen-Shin Hung kept time; teachers Yi-chuan Wang and Zi-Chun Lin and student Nathan Campbell served as receptionists, to them we express our gratitude. Last but not the least, we applaud the devotion of the ICLP administrative team, and the full support of Director of the Institute of Foreign Languages, Dr. Yan-wing Leung.

The predecessor of the International Chinese Language Program was a Chinese Language Training Center for American universities. Founded in 1962, the Program is geared toward training the academic elites from Europe and America, and is well known for its ability to teach its students to listen, read, and write Chinese through intensive spoken Chinese training, achieving both academic and professional proficiency. The alumni of the program are distributed all over the world. 75% of them serve in the academic circles, and 25% of them are in politics, law, and business. The alumni's achievements prove that high language proficiency is tantamount to high career success. For information about ICLP, please go to :http://iclp.ntu.edu.tw .