KARACHI: After weeks of gruelling competitions at the regional level, Thursday finally brought up the moment of truth for the cream of spelling wizards arriving here at the Arts Council of Pakistan from all over the country to take part in the national round or the final of the 14th Dawn in Education Spelling Bee — A Spectacular Spelling Face-Off.

The format of the nationals is quite different from that of the regional championship. Unlike there where you have teams of three students from every school, at the nationals each student who had progressed from the regional championship stood his or her own ground. Thus there were nine students in each of the three age groups (15-17, 12-14 and 9-11) categories, though only seven showed up this time in the 12-14 age category due to the security situation in the country.

But while two could not come, there was also Khushnaseeb Aziz from Multan in the 15-17 age category who deserves a special mention. After her flight from Multan got cancelled due to the disturbances, her parents put her on a train to Karachi. And after reaching here at 3am on Thursday the girl came to the nationals after getting very little rest or sleep. Not appearing at the final event after working so hard throughout the championship was unthinkable for her.

The 15-17 group was also first to go, at 9am. The format comprised two main rounds — the Categories round and the Rapid Bee round. Each student walked up to the single microphone on the stage to select from four categories, namely, ‘Dawn’, ‘Animal world’, ‘Geography’ and ‘Silent letters’. They were to spell five words and they could not choose the same category more than twice. ‘Dawn’ seemed to be everyone’s favourite as it included words from the newspaper which were rather common in nature. But if they selected ‘Animal world’ and expected to be given something like zebra, giraffe or lion to spell, they were in for a shock as they got ‘nilgai’ and ‘lechwe’.

‘Geography’ was no better as one was expected to spell places such as ‘Appalachia’ and ‘Liechtenstein’ not London or New York! And with things going so wrong most didn’t even attempt ‘Silent letters’.

The Rapid Bee round included those with top points to quickly spell a succession of words thrown at them in a given time. There was really no time to ask the pronouncer for a word’s meaning or to use it in a sentence as that would take time and then the student would get to spell fewer words. So if they didn’t understand a word it was better to just say pass and attempt the next one.

Some students did exceptionally well in this round by correctly spelling 10 or 12 words. Since the round was so fast the judges sometimes needed replays so that they were sure a word was spelt correctly. Points were added or deducted accordingly. In case of a tie among any students, there were also the sudden death rounds in between to determine the winners.

Ameena Saiyid, chairperson of Oxford University Press (OUP), who was also the chief guest on the occasion, gave away the shields and prizes to the winners. There were also consolation prizes for those who could not win. “Congratulations to all children who took part because participation is important as well. Well done!” she said showing her appreciation to them.

“Spelling is so important,” she said, “and in order to spell well you need to read. It improves your educational performance too,” she added saying that the Dawn Spelling Bee’s contribution to the country’s education in the last 14 years has to be appreciated.

Dawn Media Group’s director of circulation Niloufer Patel thanked all their partners in particular OUP for their support over these years. She also thanked the judges, pronouncers, students, parents, coordinators and school principals of the 700 schools all over Pakistan before coming to her Dawn team.

WINNERS

15-17 age category

1st: Muhammad Zulfiqar Ali (Happy Home School, O-Levels, Karachi)
2nd: Mariam Shahabi (Mama Parsi Girls Secondary School, Karachi)
3rd: Eeman Fatima Hamayun (Roots School System, DHA-1, Flagship Campus, Rawalpindi)

12-14 age category

1st: Kiran Khan (Convent of Jesus & Mary, Karachi)
2nd: Emman Rashid (DHA Education System, Girls, Phase-5, Lahore)
3rd: Istaara Amjad (Khaldunia High School, G11/3, Islamabad)

9-11 age category

1st: Syed Saad Kamal (Roots Inter­national School, Gandhara Campus, Wah Cantt)
2nd: Raaed Mujtaba Ashar (St Michael’s Convent School, Karachi)
3rd: Shehzeen Suhail Farooqui (Mama Parsi Girls Secondary School, Karachi)

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2018