A spelling bee is a competition where the contestants are asked to spell letters one by one based on the selected word. To win the competition, contestants must remember the spellings of words correctly. Contestants should spell English words spoken by the pronouncer. Contestants who misspelled the word are eliminated. With billions of words in English, the spelling bee is a competition that is hard to crack. On October 27, 2023, the Student Executive Board of the Faculty of Education and Humanities (BEM FKHUM) held the Spelling Bee Contest 2023 with the theme “The Gospeller”.
“It’s not just the regular spelling bee you know” was the contest’s tagline. This contest included Christian elements, and participants were asked to share the gospel. The words were derived from the Merriam-Webster dictionary and Smith’s Bible Dictionary. The contest participants were high school students from seven Christian and Catholic High Schools in Yogyakarta. SMA Budya Wacana, SMA Olifant, SMA Bopkri 1, SMA Stella Duce 2, SMA Katolik Sang Timur, SMA Bopkri 2, and SMK Bopkri 1 took part in this contest. Each school sent one team consisting of three students as their representative.
In the technical meeting held on October 25, 2023, the committee explained and demonstrated the rounds of the contest. There are three rounds in this contest. The first is a preliminary round to test listening and spelling skills by writing down the correct spelling from the pronouncer. There are 50 words pronounced. and three schools with the lowest score will be eliminated from the contest. The semifinal and the final round have the same technique, where each group listens to the words pronounced by the pronouncer. They have 30 seconds to discuss before finally raising their sign to spell. The semifinal round eliminated two groups. The last two groups standing qualified for the final round to fight over the championship.
Yesha Victoria Atmaja, Spelling Bee Contest 2023 committee member, said that after preparing for around one month, the event was a success and full of excitement. As a freshman, Yesha also stated that this event gave a lot of benefits, such as having new friends and a fun experience in the first year of college. The contest was very tense since every group had good spelling skills. At the end of the competition, SMA Olifant won first place, while SMA Bopkri Satu 1 came as the runner-up. The competition received a good response from the schools for holding a well-prepared contest. The Spelling Bee Contest 2023 is one of BEM FKHUM’S first offline events in the last three years. (FKHUM/AV/ed.drr)