Teacher Discussion Forums

Nimen hao! Last summer I taught at Wuhan Da Xue's first Intensive English Institute, and a large part of the curriculum was focused on preparing students for speech contests. I'm now writing a pro seminar paper for my M.A. in Linguistics/TESOL on the teachers' experiences in that program, and I'm trying to find some cultural/philosophical background of these pervasive English speech contests in China. Can anyone provide any insight or direction for research?

Xie xie nimen!