Regulating the thriving market of writing contests

ALTHOUGH being busy is a common lifestyle for students at Fudan University, I was especially busy on the week-long National Day holiday earlier this month, not because of my own studies, but because of my little cousin’s. She was working hard on a provincial writing contest while I was invited by my aunt to be her adviser.

I was shocked on the first day to guide her: My little cousin was trying to remember a 400-page “Writing Guidance,” a book highly recommended by her teacher. The book introduces “Golden Rules of Writing” for higher scores in writing contests: To write five paragraphs in all and each paragraph contains four sentences, beginning with a story of somebody and ending with famous quotes.

The “Golden Rules” sound ridiculous. Although these rules introduce a basic frame to students in an understandable way, they limit the creativity of young students in some ways. Students following the “Golden Rules” are making up compositions which are much similar to other people’s work. In other words, original thinking is somehow stifled.

An obvious difference between writing and calculating is that there is no such rule like 1+1=2 in writing, which tends to be emotional, and close to the heart. A good piece of writing flows from the soul. If Henry David Thoreau had not lived in Lake Walden for two years, could he have come up with his masterpiece?

In the case of my cousin, I am afraid the “Golden Rules” have shackled her imagination.

Furthermore, I wondered: Do such writing contests offer students a platform to display their writing skills, or just add to the study burden?

More and more parents hope their children can be admitted to famous universities through various writing contests. However, such contests should be a concern, according to a recent Xinhua report.

First, the elimination rate of some writing contests is very low, which means almost all the participants can win a prize.

Secondly, the participation fee is quite high, including the registration fee, the course fee, the tuition fee and so on.

Thirdly, some brokers sell compositions written by paid writers to participants, developing a “black market” of writing contests.

Remedies

In April, the Ministry of Education announced a list of writing contests for primary and secondary school students in 2019, which recognized only three writing contests as valid: the World Chinese Student Composition Competition, the National Science Composition Competition for Middle School Students and the Ye Shengtao Cup National Composition Competition.

Last September, the Ministry of Education began to tighten regulation of the nation’s student writing contests by issuing the Regulations on the Management of National Contests for Primary and Secondary School Students (Trial).

However, reducing the number of contests is only the first step for regulating student writing contests. The writing contests market requires further management and regulation.

Most important, more policies are needed to help improve the quality of writing.

On the one hand, the qualifications of the organizers and panel need to be regulated; on the other hand, only those with real talent should win. To some extent, the writing contest is closely related to the admission mechanism.

Only by launching policies to regulate student writing contests, can we help students develop real interest in writing, and ensure that someone with good writing skills could be admitted into his or her dream college.

Otherwise, only the brokers stand to gain from the messy situation.

The author is a graduate student at the School of Journalism, Fudan University.