TS,Sunday August 15, 2010
Spelling competitions have mushroomed globally due to its universal appeal.
Organisers of such events should be lauded as they promote mastery of vocabulary and
spelling, which is much needed to counter the effects of abbreviations and misspelling as these
are not appropriate in formal writings.
The contestants usually study to thoroughly prepare for the competitions, which are exciting
with many heart-stopping moments.
However, any type of competition that becomes increasingly common would soon lose its luster.
As such, new and more meaningful competitions should be introduced.
Spelling contests are impressive as they require the participants to string the right letters
into meaningful words, but I think everyone can learn much more if they are required to
define, describe or explain a word.
It would be very interesting to hear the contestants’ interpretation of words such as
attitude, compassion, courtesy, cooperation, courage, discipline, diversity, gratitude,
harmony, honesty, integrity, justice, leadership, love, patriotism, punctuality, rationality,
respect, solidarity and many more.
These are common words that can be very challenging and useful for our everyday lives.
High marks are to be given when the contestants can relate their personal experiences and
beliefs to these words. It will be a truly great learning experience for all.
These competitions can be held for all levels of society. For example, corporations keen
on practising social responsibility can sponsor such contests for our senior citizens who will
gladly share their pearls of wisdom.
More importantly, it can be a revelation to those who think they know a lot by just being exposed
to huge amount of information.
They will soon realise that knowledge at a superficial level is not of much use.
It will pave the way especially for undergraduates and make them realise that they have to
learn deeper for a fuller and better understanding of common words.
It will be pointless for them to produce an impressive thesis – mostly through copy and
paste – when they cannot even explain the subject in their own words.
We cannot afford to have too many of our people equipped with only superficial knowledge
and shallow thoughts.
They could be identified as soon as they speak up.
YS Chan
Kuala Lumpur
No comments:
Post a Comment