上海宏润博源学校英语演讲比赛中，参赛同学表现都很出色。其中有两位同学的论点刚好相反：9年级1班的Elanor认为合作更重要，而10年级2班的Jimmy认为竞争更重要。以下是两位同学的演讲，你会被谁说服呢?

Cooperation is more important

You know, in America, there’s a pretty popular saying that’s been around for a while, and I’m guessing that there’s probably some sort of Chinese translation. It goes like this: “Be nice to nerds, you’ll end up working for them someday.”

Totally irrelevant to a comparison of cooperation versus competition, right? That’s talking about how you need to respect people who study and do well in school, because one day they’ll get a scholarship to a good college and they’ll get a good job and they’ll have a good life and all that. But the reason that they’re at the top is because they ended up beating everyone else with perfect test scores and 1st place in the science fairs, also known as competition. Nerds worked hard and shoved their way to the top, overthrowing everyone else.

英语演讲比赛

But that’s the exact reason nobody likes the nerd. Everyone else comes to the conclusion that they only work hard to show off and everyone has some amount of pride that makes it seem that way. And this means that the nerd most likely doesn’t have any friends. You see, when you break it down, whether you’re the nerd who works hard by themselves or the athlete who plays with the team, it reflects personally on your own opinions and preferences of the competition or cooperation.

There are two very distinct things about them: Cooperation, in all, cares for the majority and harbors to those on the same side, meanwhile competition nurtures the individual. I, myself, am more with cooperation, but specific traits usually appear within people depending on which they prefer.

People who tend to teeter towards cooperation, to start us off, happen to be extremely empathetic, meaning they have the ability to relate and put themselves into other people’s shoes, therefore leading to a strong sense of kindness. And for me, I tend to be a bit lazy; maybe due to the fact that if you do a group project, for instance, you’re doing less work than you would if you were all alone. You’d probably become a bit of a social butterfly, since if you’re empathetic, everyone else will approve you. And if you happen to be social, you’ll probably be somewhat confident from people liking you. There, of course, are chances of flaws that might spring up from being more cooperative: Perhaps there’s a bit of dependency, or being slightly dependent. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it still might be there.

And for others who enjoy competition—and win—will often be found confident and proud. Sometimes it ends up being so much that they are just plain cocky, but for the most case, if you’re a decent person, that won’t happen. They’ll also end up being twice as hardworking, since competition requires you doing even more than you might if it’s simple cooperation. There’ll be a sense of independence, opposing cooperation, seeing as one would have to be if they end up spending most time working against others. Such means that a person will know how to take care of themselves properly, proving to be self-reliant. People who go for competition and manage to win during them, they reach the top. And if they lose competition, they end up being toughened up a bit.

And while we’re at it: At my old school back in Arizona, there two distinct characters at my school who stood out as following the basic traits and principals and traits I listed.

There was this one boy—I’ll call him Rafae—who was the most obnoxious kid I’ve ever met. And that isn’t exaggerating. He really boasted and bragged, so much that almost everyone hated him. He was incredibly smart, and he realized that and took it the wrong way. Such was the description of a person who strongly believed in competition, and I kid you not, I bet he’s going to be quite successful someday if he dulls down his attitude.

But then there was this other boy that we’ll call Jack. Now Jack fits into the category of cooperation. He had, well, not the best grades, and wasn’t even that good at sports. He was a social guy who was decently funny. Everyone liked him, even if they fell prey of his teasing. He was that one guy in class who would raise his hand and ask the same question for every assignment of “Can we work with a partner?” Now, he clearly didn’t try all that much and was what would be described as average. He’s not the person who’s going to work as a CEO, but the worker who is underneath the CEO and makes the CEO’s coffee. But what was a priority to him was that everyone liked him and thought he was a pretty cool guy.

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And because of such is why, in the long run, cooperation ends up being the ending factor of the major decisions in life, supporting my own opinion. You might be a genius, but it’s really how you act about being one that makes the difference. Let’s use Rafae as an example again. Say, he wants to get a job at a giant business, and his credentials are great! But throughout the face-to-face interview, he acts prideful and rude, annoying the employer. And maybe there’s someone that has lesser accomplishments but personality-wise is some sort of angel. If you were in the employer’s shoes, you wouldn’t want to hire a jerk, but instead someone who can grow and understands that mistakes happen.

I’m not saying competition is bad or anything, it’s just at some point, how you interact with people is even more important. Obviously a little competition is needed to stand out, but you’ll end up standing out in the wrong way and nobody likes you. To say the least, cooperation is more than necessary in order to make it in life. Sure, maybe competition is necessary with material things, but human relationships and what you do with them also impacts life, probably even twice as much as materials do.

Now, if you ask a person the briefs of what they want to have in life, it’ll go something along the lines of this: “Go to college, get a good job, have a happy marriage, have a kid, and in general have a long and happy life.”

As essential as colleges and occupations are, you can’t really have a happy life without some sort of social life, even if it’s only a few friends. You can’t be married to a job if you want to be truly happy, especially with goals such as getting married to someone you love.

With all this, I still think competition is decently useful, but a somewhat meaningful life is pretty appealing. I mean, we do need to learn to toughen up and losing to someone can do so, but what about learning of how the loser feels? Sure, maybe it seems miniscule, but when you’re the loser, you wouldn’t want somebody coming up and mocking you for not making it. You’d want to have a consoling individual that can support you enough to lift your mood and give you the confidence to try twice as hard next time.

In all, one can easily have too much competition. Either someone can turn out to be discouraged from their lack of wins, or incredibly cocky from how well they’ve done. But with cooperation, you can never have too much, because each time you’ll have the chance to experience new issues involving different types of people and adjust to society. Competition, as useful as it can be every once in a while, is majorly trumped by cooperation in the long run.

学校教室

Competition is more important

Good afternoon everyone! My name is Jimmy, from class two, grade ten. I’m very proud and honored to stand on this stage. I’m grateful to the teachers for giving me this chance.

Today, my topic is cooperation and competition. From of old, cooperation and competition is always a hot issue among people. And first, on this stage, I should make my position clear. I’m in favor of the opinion that competition (benign competition) is more important than cooperation, and I’ll explain my reasons in the speech.

To start with, let’s go back to the ancient time. When human beings were still ape men, what promoted their evolution? The answer is competition! If they just gathered together and joined hands in the cave, dancing and singing, like the little girls playing outside, will the ape men evolve so fast up to today’s level? Of course not! Only the fittest can be survived from natural selection. Darwin had clearly explained this viewpoint in his theory of evolution. Actually, our ancestors, the ape men, they fought against fierce animals, they competed with other species, and of course, they also competed with other ape men in different tribes. That was what made them grow stronger and smarter, competition! The consequence caused by enough competition is obvious, the society, and the whole world steps forward at a spectacular rate. From these facts, we can easily jump to a conclusion that competition certainly accelerates the speed of development.It pushes the history of mankind forward at a relatively high speed. And how about cooperation? I admit that it can lead to a development as well. However, we can also easily discover that without enough competition, the world would not be so highly developed as today.

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Not only in ancient times, but also in modern times. Different people in different companies or countries compete with each other. For example, INTEL and AMD. Through the ages, the two companies have always maintained a tacit competition. They have competed with each other in every field, such as system development, hardware updating for a long time. And it’s this competitive relationship that leads to the success of both companies. If one example is not strong enough to support my idea, here is another. Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola are two magnates in coke production. There is no doubt that the competition between the two companies is considerably drastic. In 1939, Coca Cola sponsored New York World’s Fair and published the photograph of celebrities who were sipping coca cola on the cover of magazines in order to make a propaganda. However, Pepsi Cola’s idea seemed to be more creative. They specially designed a cartoon and created an advertising song that was very popular in the USA. And we can still see the profound influence nowadays. Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola still stand on the world stage after decades. This, is the power of competition!

The content that I have expounded may be lame because I have always been talking about countries, societies, companies etc. These things may be, in a sense, too large to understand. So why not narrow the size of what we are talking about? Have you ever wondered if an individual can benefit from competition? Oh, yes! You must have this question, and the answer, unquestionably, yes!

Actually, competition can benefit the individuals by unleashing the potential, generating positive motivation and promoting continuous improvement. Just as what Lenin had said—“Competition fosters enterprise, perseverance, and daring in a wide range.”

Scientists found that people can only give play to their potentialities at two to thirty percent. However, while competing with others, people stay in a stressful condition, and it helps people to perform better. In that way people can better improve their own ability and realize their own value. While in cooperation, people work in a team. Unquestionably, it is quite helpful in fostering team spirit. Nevertheless, in a team, sometimes, not all the team members have a chance to state their own opinions. They are bound to other members’ thoughts, compelled to carry out the assignments, they don’t even have the “right” to do and think what they truly want! This is one abuse of cooperation comparing with competition. And there is another abuse. If you stay in a group that nobody wants to progress and nobody has the thought of surpassing others, then you would corrupt too. But if everyone, or at least some of them have a sense of competition, then things would be different. There is a very famous theory about competition—The Catfish Effect. Fishermen in ancient Japan found that if they put some naturally active pilchard in a flock of lazy catfish that has been fished out. The active pilchard strays among the catfish. The catfish then struggles because of a sense of crisis. The wise fishermen found the way of preventing the catfish from suffocating to death. From this effect, the conclusion that competition can facilitate people’s enthusiasm is no longer an obscure.

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Furthermore, there are many other benefits that competition can bring. Competition can help people to think more independently and to better aware of the importance of self-reliance rather than blindly relying on others. Competition assists people in estimating themselves in a more objective way and find their disadvantages or advantages. They can then learn something from the analysis of themselves and make progress. Competition makes our life more vigorous, more interesting and more diverse. And more importantly, competition promotes the efficiency in learning and working, just as a saying goes—“A horse will never gallop unless a horse is running after it!”

I think I have stated my viewpoint and the reason for it very clearly. Over the past hundreds or thousands of years, people were always competing with each other. The competition fosters hundreds and thousands of elites, and these elites were always creating a new world that was different from any world throughout history. Imagine that if there were no competition, what would happen? It is hard to imagine. Perhaps the creature standing on this stage is no more a human being. Who knows?! Competition is everywhere, in the past, at present, and in the future. It is an essential element in the course of history. And what I want to say is that—the world needs competition!!!

Thank you!

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