Joan and I recently (OK, about two weeks ago) attended yet another English contest put together by ambitious student at ZUT.

This contest was much different than the ones I've been to previously -- and was set up much like a game show with six teams and four (or five) rounds.

Round 1: Multiple choice.
Students first choose a number, which corresponds to a multiple-choice question. The questions were on all sorts of topics.

Sample question: In Western homes, people usually eat bread with a fork. True or False.

Round 2: Music recognition.
Clips of music were played for contestants, who then had to guess the name of the title from a multiple-choice selection of three. A few times some of the titles meant to confuse the students were made up.

Sample fake music titles: "Batter man" and "Solid I loved you."

Round 3: I want to be a sports announcer!
A clip from an NBA All-Stars game (with Chinese subtitles) was played for each team. One person from each team, after the preview, then had to act as the game's sports announcer.

Our first contestant tried to get the audience all worked up with his sports-announcer voice, then the game began. Both teams were throwing up some crazy shots and missing every one of them, and each time someone missed a shot, our announcer yelled into the microphone, "And it's no good!" (I can't tell you how many times he said that).

A few more contestants took a stab at sports announcing, but I don't remember anything from those so their performances probably weren't all that exciting. Last but not least, it was time for the lucky lady from the all-girl team to try her luck at sports announcing.

Things seemed to be going well with her performance, and Joan and I were quite impressed with her English. Then, Shaquille O'Neil was fouled and about to take a freethrow when, as he is concentrating on the hoop and everyone in the audience is silent, our announcer blurts out, "Oh! He really has a good body!"

(If only all sports announcers were women...)

The contest ended with some sort of memorization contest and then the tally of the final score. As a judge, I was disappointed that the all-girl team and their great sports commentary didn't win.