Over 25 schools take part in Bogor spelling bee
Gerald Donovan, Contributor, Bogor
At 06:30 a.m. There were still two hours before Sekolah Bogor Raya's inaugural interschool spelling bee, but Nadia Firdaus, 12, was already preparing herself for the day's event.
"P-e-r-c-e-p-t-i-b-l-e" she spelt under her breath while uncovering the word in the dictionary to check her accuracy.
Even at this early hour, the lobby of the school was a hub of activity with contestants already starting to arrive and sponsors and stallholders setting up in the large open air canteen area.
Banners were still being erected and display cabinets assembled.
Giggling with excitement, a group of girls from a national plus school in Bandung got out of their bus and came to the registration desk. Despite being the furthest competitors away from Bogor, they were the first arrivals; "we got up at 4:00 am this morning," explained one. "We had breakfast in the bus."
"This is the first time we have run this competition," explained bee coordinator Nurlaila Rachman, as she examined the judges' table to make sure it was ready.
"We have tried to plan for every eventuality, but you never know what is going to happen. If there is a power cut, we are in real trouble. Our generator is missing-in-action."
With a total of around 300 spellers competing from over 25 different schools around the country, she had good reason to worry. Parents and teachers were taking the event very seriously and the stakes were high.
The winners at each grade level were to receive a Rp 500,000 top prize, and the runners up a new bank account containing Rp 250,000 from Panin Bank. Some spellers' parents had been drilling their children for months in preparation for this day.
In the first round students were given a written test of 30 words in the classrooms, while downstairs, guests enjoyed some piano and guitar music.
Half way through the qualification round, two parties of spellers from Jakarta showed up, very late. There had been chronic traffic and the toll road at Cibubur had turned into a four lane car-park.
After some negotiation, they were allowed to join in and sit the written qualification test separately. The atmosphere in the classrooms was tense, with participants straining to listen carefully to every word while racking their brains for spellings.
"It's the double letter words that will help us eliminate spellers," laughed coordinator Miavarani, and she was proved right as many in the qualification round misspelled words such as "affinity", "classically" and "disappear".
At the end of the first round, the written tests were marked and the top five scorers at each level went on to the final round. Students poured downstairs from the classrooms, some bounding with confidence, some shaking their heads in frustration and a few near tears. The 45 finalists -- five from each of the nine grade levels -- were announced along with the rules of the competition and some firm words of warning to parents.
"Please don't call out anything or mouth letters," said Miavarani. She wanted a clean contest on behalf of both the parents and participants.
The first-graders were the first on stage. Little Raymond Victorio eyed the microphone suspiciously as he stepped up to spell his first word. Clutching his hands together as the reader Mark Havard read the word "try".
"Could you repeat the world, please?" he asked nervously.
Judges Douglas Horley of Sekolah IPEKA, Pak Wahyu of LIA and Carl Turland of the British Institute listened carefully to each student as the participants spelt out the words. Not only did they have to listen for the correct spelling but for the correct pronunciation of each letter. No Indonesian letter pronunciations were allowed in the competition.
It was the word "scariest" that caught out Pradya Nindhita. "Machinery" got Nadia Wahika and "Frenchman" stumped two finalists.
The third-graders found their words a piece of cake, flying through the final round. The last two spellers matched each other word-for-word and had almost come to the end of the 50-word list for grade 3, at which point the round would have been declared a draw and the prize shared.
The organizers were exchanging worried glances with each other when finally Zerlinda Rachel misspelled "immigrant". Adiva Nindito stepped up and successfully corrected her mistake. He was able to spell the next word "airplane" correctly to be crowned the grade 3 champion.
The competition went smoothly and without any major hitches all the way up to the ninth-graders. Many had not been able to make it at this level because of the national examinations, but those who did make it put in a strong effort and the final round was won with the word "speakerphone".
The students were all winners as they trooped off stage with prizes in hand; ready to spell the end of their day with a well deserved "r-e-s-t." -- The writer works for Sekolah Bogor Raya