2019-06-28 English Corner Opening Speech

Good afternoon guys! Welcome to English Corner.

I am Belinda from Total Quality Department. Maybe some of you already knew that I used to be an English teacher. Well, frankly speaking, I was. The most enjoyable things in my college life was standing in front of the lake and speaking very loud to practice my spoken English.

I know working in an International company usually requires us to speak fluent English. After all, English is our working language. However, I also noticed that most of us had no problem in replying emails to foriegn customers and colleagues but are usually stuck when they talk with foreigners face to face.

Well. Luckily you are here. You decide to change. You decide to speak out. You decide to be a good speaker when you talk with foreigners. And you decide to join in our English Corner. You are already one step ahead. Give yourselves applause. (此处应有掌声）

Some of you may think that English Corner is a fun place. Of course we will try to make it fun, but in parallel, please consider it a training place -- a place where you can improve yourself with diligence and practice, a place where you are willing to spend your time, and a place where you can grow. 

Of course, we also have some rules. 

1. Making sure that English Corner will not affect your work. I hope the one-hour time in practicing English will not be the reason that you cannot finish your work today. 

2. Please be on time every time. We will start on time, so please don't be late. Respecting other's time is equal to respect your own time.

3. No Chinese. No Chinese. No Chinese. I have to emphasize three times for important things. If you don't know how to express yourself in English, try to use body language or even drawing picture. Just treat your partners as forieigners who cannot understand a single word in Chinese.

I would really appreciate it if you can respect the above rules. Of course there is no punishment if you break the rules, but if you respect the rules, as a bonus, I will share some useful information in our WeChat Group, such as how to learn English, what to learn, how to choose useful materials. etc. And if you have a very good performance, our company will sponsor you with some on-line or off-line English courses. 

I will aslo give you 4 team leaders. I will invite them to the stage and introduce themselves in English. Then you can decide who will be your team leader. The responsibility of the team leader is to understand whether your team memebers are practicing and doing homework after work and at home, and give some supporting ideas, and enccourage them if they feel like giving up. Not very complicated job but still very challenging. 

Now I am offcially revealing our topic today: Meeting friends and self-introduciton. Let's start from the very simple topic.