28 Aug 2019

A total of 130 spellers from primary and junior schools across the country are expected to converge at Kanye Education Centre from August 30 to 31 for the seventh national Spelling Bee Competitions.

The competitors will come from both government and private schools.

Spelling Bee is a United States of America concept which started locally in 2012 with the intention to improve children’s grammar and pronunciation through spelling.

It is expected to improve their command of English and confidence to express themselves.

In an interview, Spelling Bee Botswana founder Ms Tshepang Thibedi said the six national overall winners, three from primary and three from junior secondary categories, would represent the country at the fourth annual African Spelling Bee competitions penciled for Uganda on October 20.

She noted that last year one of the national representatives from Ghanzi region finished in the fourth position at the championship level held in Kenya.

She noted that they started the competitions from grassroots level through class, school-house, and school and proceeded to regional contests which ended last week in Lobatse.

She explained that the idea was to select the crème de la crème from schools with rigorous and fair selection processes.

She said a total of eight regions participated but because only two schools from the Kweneng region participated, they had to merge them with the South East region.

She also said only one school from Kgatleng region participated hence the school would participate as an individual school against other regions.  

Ms Thibedi noted that since inception, the programme had made a positive impact on children’s communication skills as teachers had indicated there was an improvement in composition writing.

This, she said, was positive feedback, considering that new-age technologies such as social media had corrupted pupils’ spelling skills.

However, she noted that some contestants were selected every year thereby resulting in having the same people in the competition.

This, she noted, could not be avoided since the competition was open to all. Ends