DESPITE the pressure, spellers from the Corporate Communication and Innovation Unit, George Town World Heritage Incorporated (GTWHI) and the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO) emerged victorious in the 6th Oh, My Spelling! Competition held in Komtar here.
While many went prepared for the competition, some succumbed to pressure and misspelled.
In the earlier rounds, 10 teams (consist of three members in a team) tried their best to score points to make it to the next round, where only five shortlisted teams could qualify.
Each speller went up to the microphone to receive the word that escaped from the pronouncer’s mouth.
Among the words thrown to the spellers were horseradish, counterfeit, committee and sarsparilla.
GTWHI communications and collaborations manager Josephine Jalleh was named the best speller at the end of the competition, while her team was placed second overall.
“We are happy to win. We entered the competition to have fun and to do something as a team.
“Prior to the competition, we test each other with popular spelling bee words from Google and words from dictionary.
“However, most of the words we practised did not come to our team,” she said after the competition at Auditorium A, Level Five in Komtar today.
She took home RM100 for being the best speller.
Assistant information officer Tanushalini Moroter said some of the words were quite difficult.
“Personally, the words were quite hard. I was pretty nervous,” she said.
Her teammate Thaarshenii Kumar said she was emotionally stressed most of the time.
“We are grateful to have a very supportive team member Raja Syarafina Raja Shuib, who was there to help and support us along the way,” Tanushalini and Thaarshenii said.
Raja Syarafina said the experience was memorable and jokingly proposed to the organiser to increase the prize value next year. She received the special mention title after the competition.
Raja Syarafina, Tanushalini and Tanushalini who represented the Chief Minister’s Office came in third.
The team from the Corporate Communication and Innovation Unit won the competition and took home RM300.
The second and third placing team won RM240 and RM180 respectively.
The competition was organised by the state Corporate Communication and Innovation Unit of the Penang State Secretariat.
Story by Christopher Tan
Pix by Ainul Wardah Sohilli