20 March 2017 was just the third day of the school holidays. However, it marked a significant day for the English Language Centre because we held an enriching and fun-filled English language event at the school early in the morning. Yes! It was Hin Hua English Language Olympiad. This event included a variety of activities, with the aims to provide our learners with a supportive English learning environment and to enhance their creativity and innovation in using English.
13 teams consisting of 39 participants from all levels excitedly joined the games. Mdm Boo, the Vice-principal and Head of the English Language Centre gave an inspiring speech to start off the Olympiad. She mentioned that the Senior Three students have been giving their constructive comments on the activities organised by ELC over the past few years. They sincerely urged that ELC could organise a wide variety of language-related activities for our students. With this in mind at all times, the ELC management committee decided to come up with something special for our learners this year. Hin Hua English Language Olympiad was thus initiated, followed by several discussions, and preparation started in stages when ideas took shape. All happened at the end of last year, carried on to year 2017 and materialised today.
Mdm Boo specifically expressed her appreciation towards all the English teachers for their time and effort in ensuring the smooth running of this one-day event. Additionally, she extended her heartfelt thanks to the ELC patron, Puan Sri Kai Yeong Yeoh, for her generosity in sponsoring all the prizes for this event. She emphasized that ELC teachers will be continuously working together in introducing creative ideas in teaching and learning to motivate our students.
The participating teams started registering at 7.30am. and each team received a bag consisted of lanyards, a program booklet and stationery to be used during the competitions. The first competition to kickstart was Listen Up!.
In Listen up! there were two tasks involved, which were note taking from a video and creating a mind map. The competition started with a 5-minute video being played twice. The participants watched and listened attentively to the video and took notes. They then created a mind map based on the content following the Buzan Mind Mapping Laws. The completed mind maps were displayed for judging and voting by other participants, staff, teachers and students. The mind map that was created by Phang May Chih (S1 Melbourne), Yong Huey Yee (S1 Washington) and Annabelle Kang Huei Min (S1 Canberra) from Team 3 had got the highest score combined (the judges and votes). They were thus declared the winner of the Best Mind Map.
According to Ms Prem, the chief judge, all the judges were impressed by the way how the participants had presented the details in their mind maps. They successfully demonstrated creativity and good colour coordination, and the key points were well-reflected in their mind maps. As for the WOW factor, the images were well portrayed but some participants had not adhered to Buzan mind map concepts which emphasises on colour coordination, connection, images and keywords.
The event ‘Shake the Spears’, was a competition that involved writing a poem based on an image. They had to collaborate with their members to produce a poem based on the projected image. Soft music was played to create a relaxed and casual atmosphere. It took the teams close to 10 minutes to get their ‘creative juices’ going as the image was rather unexpected and abstract. As time progressed, the teams were seen getting enthusiastic and deeply engaged in their discussions. Some teams got each of their members to write a poem and then they chose the best from the lot, while others, were still putting their heads together to arrive at one poem, unanimously. It was very stimulating to the observing teachers to see the ‘poets’ emerging from within their students. Soon after they had drafted their poems, the teams excitedly took off and keyed in the poems at the Multi-media labs at ELC. There was a lot of ‘hustle and bustle’ as the team members made last minute changes to their drafts on their computers. At the ring of a bell, the competition ended and the teams adjourned for their tea break, anxiously in anticipation of the results. In the meantime, the poems were quickly printed and displayed for viewing, voting and judging.
In her feedback, the judge Ms. Jilian Estrop, expressed her great awe at the impressive outcome, which had been blended with brilliant effort and ended by saying that the ‘teams had effortlessly done what poetry should do.’ She revealed in the observation that the teams had communicated the theme well and thought ‘out-of-the-box.’ This was in relation to the difficulty level of the theme, which required quick and profound thinking. She had noticed that the variety of poems presented had been designed around nature, technology and family. Ms. Jilian extended her congratulations to every team, especially the best poem winners, Joshua Lim Jia Sheng (J3 Chicago), Bernard Siow Terng Fong (J3 Chicago) and Lai Zi Xuan (J3 Chicago), from Team 10, and encouraged all of the participants to continue to pursue excellence in the English language.
In Screw the Alphabet, which was actually a Scrabble game, participants from different teams were re-assigned to groups of 3 to compete with one another at different tables. After a short briefing on the rules and regulations adapted from the standard Scrabble rules and how words on a Scrabble board are formed, all the 36 participants got down to work, taking turns to form words as quickly as they could. The game lasted 30 minutes. The participants had an exciting though mentally exhausting time, trying to come up with impressive words that would secure them higher scores. It was not easy at first as most of the participants did not have much exposure to this board game. They needed to learn how words were placed, how the total score of a word was added up, the meaning of ‘double/triple letter’ and ‘double/triple word’ score and so on and so forth. At the end of the game, though not many long words were spotted, it was good to see some less common words like taunt, rabid, teal, felon and pug on the Scrabble boards. This goes to show that some Hin Hua students are very well-read and do have a reasonably high level of vocabulary. The highest score was 124, secured by Lai Zi Xuan (J3 Chicago) from Team 10 and he was ultimately declared the Best Speller.
In her comment, one of the judges, Mrs Siow said that playing Scrabble is an excellent way to improve one’s word power and hoped that this event was just the beginning for the participants and that they would start playing the game more and promote it among their peers.
In Tedx Hin Hua, 13 themes had been pre-designed for the participants. Each team was required to send a representative to pick a theme from the selection box and collaborate with their team members to write a 3-minute speech that depicted the theme chosen. The competitors were allocated 45 minutes to prepare the speech without depending on any electronic devices. The participants were seen enthusiastically discussing to gather ideas for the speech-writing. Though the presenters looked nervous, they managed to come up with wonderful speeches with tremendous ideas. After all the speakers had delivered their speeches, Mr. Muqriz, the chief judge, also the debate trainer of the ELC debate club, gave his general comments on the presentations based on his point of view. He first complimented that most speakers had the ability to come up with speeches connected to the themes chosen. He also pointed out that the messages conveyed through their speeches should reach out to the audience. Most importantly, Mr. Muqriz highlighted that the students of Hin Hua High School have a huge amount of talents based on his observation for the past one year. He felt amazed to see students being able to give a good presentation in just 45 minutes. Overall, he congratulated the participants on their great performances. Finally, the Best Speaker was announced. Derek Yuen Yee Jun (S1 Washington) from Team 5 who delivered a speech entitled ‘Are you smarter than your smart phone?’ was declared as the winner. Even though it was a challenging competition, the participants as well as the audience had a great wonderful time.
The Olympiad came to an end at 3.30 pm after the comments given by the chief judges and winners’ names announced. The participants truly had a great and enriching time having participated in all the challenging competitions. The whole event ended with a group photo portraying a sense of accomplishment among all that were involved. It was indeed a successful event organised for the first time by ELC. We look forward to organising more fun-filled activities and competitions for our students in the near future.
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