It was literally a war of words as 230 students from ten different schools of the city were tested on the intricacies of the English language, in a State -level spelling competition held here on Sunday.
The students from class I to XII were grouped into six categories and put to a series of oral and written tests at the MaRRS International spelling bee contest. Ten top-scoring children from each category were awarded certificates and prizes.
The oral round consisted of a ‘parody competition' where the children were asked to spell out the same five words. The top scorers were then put through a ‘knock-out' session where they were tested on spellings till they spelt a word wrong. Dictation tests, jumbled-word applications, crossword puzzles and sentence completion tests were also conducted as part of assessing their skills on paper.
“The whole idea is to encourage the children to use the correct form of the language in terms of spelling, usage of words and pronunciations, by involving them in various playful activities,” said D. Manivannan, Proprietor, Septcon Ventures that organised the event on behalf of MaRRS Intellectual Services Pvt Ltd.
The learning process, he said, goes on alongside the event throughout the year. “We have regular training sessions on the use of idioms, phrasal verbs and more importantly phonetic transcriptions, where we acquaint the children with internationally acclaimed pronunciations of words,” Mr. Manivannan said.
“It's actually a mother's event,” said P. Suresh Kumar, one of the organisers, referring to the efforts taken by parents throughout the year in grooming the children in different aspects of English communication.
While most parents and the children themselves say that the dependence on the internet and web educational applications is heavy, some feel it's equally important to be trained in understanding etymologies of words, linguistics, phonetics, and learning to use dictionary often in an effective manner.
However, a few participants feel it is the habit of reading extensively that helps one develop the knack of understanding words better.
“I read a lot and that is what helps,” says Nikhil Ravikumar, a Class XI student of Chettinad Vidyashram, who won the competition in category 5 with the highest margin. The winners of the six categories of the competition were Sanjana Balaji, Graahita Saraathi, Hariharan, Nikhil Ravikumar, Balajee, all from Chettinad Vidyashram and M. Arvind of Schram Academy. The MaRRS spelling bee, held in 24 states across the country, has around 2 lakh participants.
About 220 top scoring students will compete at the national level spelling bee competition scheduled to be held in Kolkata next month.
