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Can you spell the word…?
As most of us already know, that a spelling bee is an oral competition where contestants are asked to spell English words and failure to spell a word correctly disqualifies a contestant, resulting in their elimination from the competition. Spelling Bee competitions are common practice at both regional and national levels all around the world. A spelling bee is essentially a spelling competition amongst school children and is mostly organised at school level. Winners then participate in a regional/national, inter-school spelling contest.
As part of “Dawn in Education” Programme, Dawn conducted the first ever National Spelling Championship in Pakistan in Jan-Feb 2005. The spelling bee aimed at expanding children’s horizons beyond the classroom and to enhance their process of learning. It was designed to help students improve their spellings, increase their vocabulary, learn new concepts and develop the correct usage of the English language.
The Dawn Spelling Bee Championship is supported by the British Council which constitutes the panel of judges and pronouncers for the competition, according to a coordinator of the programme.
In 1998, Dawn became the first and the only newspaper in Pakistan to launch a Newspaper in Education Programme (NIE). Such programmes are a common phenomenon in various continents of the world including Europe, North and South America as well as Asia.
The objectives of NIE Programmes are to create an awareness among students of what is happening in their community, city or country, and make them realise their responsibilities to them via the medium of daily newspaper. In this way, children gain a better understanding of the reality issues like pollution, traffic rules, civic behaviour and the importance of being citizens of the world in the true sense of the word.
As a result of this initiative, schools consider “Dawn in Education” to be a vitally important value-added component to their curriculum as it has been actively supporting a range of quality education projects across Pakistan.
Spelling bees are a great way of learning as well as teaching children more about the English language. More such events should be organised throughout the country, especially in summer and winter vacations so that the young children can not only represent their respective schools and colleges, but also represent themselves as well as their country on international levels.
Spelling bee’s help children improvise and use their imagination while forming words with letters, that too according to the principles of English language. The earliest evidence of the phrase “spelling bee” in print dates back to 1825, although the contests had apparently been held before that. The practice basically originated in the United States and has since spread elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
Spelling bee competitions are said to contribute a great deal towards the psychological development of young children as far as the language is concerned. Spelling bee competitors study root words and etymologies (the study of the origin and history of words), and often foreign languages from which English draws upon, in order to spell challenging words correctly. This in turns helps them academically.
Students bury their heads in dictionaries for hours to prepare for the big day, which not only extends their vocabulary but also provides them with extra general knowledge, stuff they would not find out or learn on their own otherwise. It gives them the habbit of memorising the spellings of words they use on a regular basis so that they don’t have to refer to dictionaries or the Internet everytime they want to spell a difficult word.
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