A poorly conducted competition

Jun 06, 2008 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
A few weeks ago I watched what I believe was a poorly conducted Spelling Bee competition at the Republic Bank in Rose Hall Town.

I say ‘poorly conducted’ because I believe it was done to great injustice to the children that represented primary schools in Region Six. Furthermore, I say that it was ‘poorly conducted’ because this leg of the Spelling Bee was conducted by an officer within the Department of Education in Region Six who I expected better from.

Let me point out the major blunders of the final of this competition which was aired on television for all to see. Many of the words that the students were asked to spell were not pronounced properly. It is my knowledge that the part of speech of the word, the origin, usage within a sentence, and the correct pronunciation (nothing further from that) have to be made known to the spellers so that their work would be made easier. That is my idea of a spelling bee. Has this method changed? I really do not know.

However, I made a list of several words that were mispronounced sinfully. They were (and I am writing them as they were pronounced by the esteemed moderator for the spelling competition that day: ‘suffishant’, ‘lie-sin’ for ‘license’, ‘inventry’, ‘fricken’, ‘voucha’, ‘statchutary’, and ‘sinario’ for ‘scenario’.
On the other hand, several words which none of the students were able to spell were not even spelt so that they might’ve learnt how they are spelt.

I found that very presumptuous since this was a Spelling Bee competition and the words that either team could not spell should have been spelt by the person/s conducting the competition.
Anyhow, for the information of the spellers, here is a list of the words and their correct spellings – spellings they did not receive during the competition: corporal, maintenance, questionnaire, commemorate, resurrection, substantially, pronunciation, commendable, curriculum, discrepancy, retaliation, differentiate, etc.

Finally, new words were being called out even while the audience was clapping loudly. The whole thing was ridiculous.
Leon J. Suseran

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News