An innovative writer grabbed the limelight School Essay Competition by University of Reading Malaysia

        Our heartfelt congratulations to Chan Ning (S3 Adelaide) on her notable achievement in the School Essay Competition 2021! 

        It was our first time receiving an invitation from the University of Reading Malaysia to promote this essay competition to our upper secondary school students. The competition was open to two categories of students: Category A – Secondary level students, studying SPM, IGCSE or equivalent. Category B – Pre-university students, studying UEC, A-level, STPM, university foundation or equivalent. All the participants were to submit an original essay (of between 2000-2500 words) relevant to the topic "How I would help lead Malaysia to a brighter future". The submissions were evaluated based on the assessment criteria which included the originality of content, clarity and structure, as well as how inspiring the essay is. 

        Chan Ning’s essay stood out and impressed the expert panel from the university because she had personalised the context with her own experiences, analysed the current problems critically and provided solid improvement plans elaborately. Therefore, she won the third prize under Category B, and proudly walked away with RM500 and an RM1888 bursary for  study at the University of Reading Malaysia.              

        Again, we would like to express our sincere congratulations to Chan Ning on her remarkable performance. We hope that she will continue to sharpen her writing skills alongside her  pursuit of tertiary education.

Chan Ning (S3 Adelaide)

        When approached with the question of what I would do to change Malaysia for the better, my first thoughts were to remedy our country's politics, economy, or even the judicial system. Those are tricky topics to tackle, as I am no expert on those subjects. But it came to me that being a high school student, I have experienced firsthand what Malaysian education looks like, and have a better idea of what can be done to amend it.

        Undeniably, writing an essay this long was a first for me, and it was more exhausting than expected. Still, the extra time provided due to home-based learning gave me more than enough time to research various education models, process the facts and write them down. I am grateful to the English Language Centre for promoting the competition, as without it, I would not have participated in the competition, and learned so much during the whole writing process.