She looked intimidated by the dazzling lights of cameras and the flash bulbs of the chandelier. Her small frame sandwiched between officials of the Spelling Bee Competition, 12 year-old Zainab Olawale looked overwhelmed by the call of fame.
Yet, this 2014 winner of the maiden edition of the national Spelling Bee Competition looked the part when she declared the second season of the competition open on Wednesday in Lagos.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I have the singular honour and privilege to declare the second edition of the Scripps Spelling Bee Competition duly opened,’’ said Zainab with a shy smile.
The competition is organised by the Young Educators Foundation, a franchise holder of the Scripps National Spelling Bee of the United States of America. The second edition of the competition, according to the organisers, will be limited to 25 schools from each state of the federation. The final comes up in Calabar, Cross River State next year.
For Zainab, it was the same apprehension she felt when the journey to stardom began in 2013. A Junior Secondary 2 pupil of Unity Middle School, Osogbo, Osun State, Zainab was one of the 120 pupils from 40 schools at the finals. It was a keen competition, and the pupils strove to outshine one another in spelling such tricky words as dyslexia, tapestry, infinitesimal, and pogrom.
According to the Lead Trainer of the programme, Mr. Emmanuel Afful, the competition aims at encouraging pupils to improve on their knowledge and application of the rules guiding the use of English Language.
The contest, he added, was to understand and know the 13 origins that the English language is derived from and how they affect English pronunciation.
He noted also that finalists at the competition asked questions, such as the meaning and usage of the word before attempting to spell any word. He maintained that this approach did not give any undue advantage to the finalists.
The Country Director, YEF, Ghana, Mrs. Eugenia Tachie-Menson, said the competition taught participants self-confidence, among other things.
“The Spelling Bee takes a lot of time from the participants. That is why the competition is for pupils aged between eight and 14. They are very impressionable at this stage and it is easy to instill the habit of reading and questioning in them.
“The competition is so stringent and we encourage them to take their time. We teach them to question the examiners and not to take anything at its face value or jump to conclusions,’’ she said.
For her industry, Zainab received a one-week all-expense paid trip to Washington DC, where she was a guest at the 87th Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The young lass also received a laptop, N250, 000 cash prize and other gifts.
“The competition has had a great impact on my life. It has exposed me to the world,’’ she said.
Though the organisers collaborated with Nigerian firms, such as Dufil Nigeria Plc., makers of Indomie Noodles and the Sheri Care Foundation, the non-governmental organisation of Mrs. Sherifat Aregbesola, wife of Osun State governor, the majority of the panelists were from Ghana.
However, Afful added that the unique pronunciation difference between Nigeria and Ghana would not affect the quality or outcome of the competition.
“We trained the teachers in linguistic features. The pupils also have the grace to ask the examiners to use the word in a sentence or ask for its definition. This way, the pupils know the exact word in question. As long as we know that the spelling is not necessarily phonetics, we are fine,’’ he said.
The Head, Public Relations and Event, Dufil Nigeria Plc., added that the competition was different from the Lagos Spelling Bee Competition, which produces a one-day Lagos State governor.
“What we are doing is not what they are doing. We have different formats. With the Scripps Spelling Bee, we take you through training and it is a process where you learn the origin of the word,’’ he said.
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