第四届“南国杯”·“英语经典” 朗诵大赛（大学英语组） 报名通知
为凸显我校“强外语，重实践”办学特色，深入推进“三随”活动，构建大学英语学习共同体，打造校园文化品牌活动，以读促用，以用促学，我校将举行第四届“南国杯”“英语经典”朗诵大赛（大学英语组）。本届大赛由学校“三随”工作领导小组、教务处主办，大学英语教学部承办，南国CEO大学英语学会协办。具体安排如下：
初赛备选篇目
请任选一篇朗诵全文
（小组、团体选手可自行设计朗诵形式~）
A Little Bit More Today is an excellent day for small improvements. Whatever is working for you, find a way to improve it just a little. There’s no need to make a huge change, just a small one, something you can do right now. If you called just one additional customer each day, over the course of the next month you would talk to about 20 new people. If you learned just one more new word each day, in the next year you would increase your vocabulary by more than 300 words. Small improvements can add up over time into big accomplishments. Look around you. Consider the work you do each day. Think about how you could do it just a little bit better. In a marathon race, each step the winner takes is just a little bit longer and a little bit faster than each stride taken by the 100th place finisher. Yet over the course of the race, that small difference adds up in a big way. Do just a little bit more today, and tomorrow too, and each day after that. Anyone can make just a small improvement, and that can make a big, big difference. A Better Tomorrow People often wonder why historians go to so much trouble to preserve millions of books, documents and records. Why do we have libraries? What good are these documents and history books? Why do we record and save the actions of men, the negotiations of government officials and the events during wars? We do it because, sometimes, the voice of experience can cause us to stop, look and listen. Sometimes, past records, when understood in the right way, can help us decide what to do and what not to do. If we are ever to create lasting peace, we must seek its origins in human experience and in the records of human history. From the stories of courage and devotion of men and women, we create the inspirations of youth. History records the suffering, the self-denial, the devotion, and the heroic deeds of people in the past. These records can help us when we are confused and when we really need peace. The main purpose of history is to create a better world. History gives a warning to those who promote war, and inspiration to those who seek peace. In short, history helps us learn. Yesterday’s records can keep us from repeating yesterday’s mistakes. And from the pieces of mosaic assembled by historians come the great murals which represent the progress of mankind. You are Absolutely Unique Enjoy that uniqueness. You do not have to pretend in order to seem more like someone else. You do not have to lie to hide the parts of you that are not like what you see in anyone else. You were meant to be different. Nowhere, in all of history, will the same things be going on in anyone’s mind, soul and spirit as are going on in yours right now. If you did not exist, there would be a hole in creation, a gap in history, and something missing from the plan for humankind. Treasure your uniqueness. It is a gift given only to you. Enjoy it and share it! No one can reach out to others in the same way that you can. No one can speak your words. No one can convey your meanings. No one can comfort others with your kind of comfort. No one can bring your kind of understanding to another person. No one can be cheerful and light—hearted and joyous in your way. No one can smile your smile. No one else can bring the whole unique impact of you to another human being. Share your uniqueness. Let it flow out freely among your family and friends, and the people you meet in the rush and clutter of living, wherever you are. That gift of yourself was given to you to enjoy and share. See it! Receive it! Let it move you and inspire you! You are unique! Youth Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of 60 more than a boy of 20. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether 60 or 16, there is in every human being’s heart the lure of wonders, the unfailing appetite for what’s next and the joy of the game of living. In the center of your heart and my heart, there is a wireless station; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, courage and power from man and from the infinite, so long as you are young. When your aerials are down, and your spirit is covered with snows of cynicism and the ice of pessimism, then you’ve grown old, even at 20; but as long as your aerials are up, to catch waves of optimism, there’s hope you may die young at 80. Ambition There is a strong view that holds that success is a myth, and ambition therefore a sham. Does this mean that success does not really exist? That achievement is at bottom empty? That the efforts of men and women are of no significance alongside the force of movements and events now not all success, obviously, is worth esteeming, nor all ambition worth cultivating. Which are and which are not is something one soon enough learns on one’s own. But even the most cynical secretly admit that success exists; that achievement counts for a great deal; and that the true myth is that the actions of men and women are useless. To believe otherwise is to take on a point of view that is likely to be deranging. It is, in its implications, to remove all motives for competence, interest in attainment, and regard for posterity. We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or in drift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed. In the end, forming our own destiny is what ambition is about.
