IT was a happy ending for eight-year-old Isaac Chung. The “little boy who almost could“ became the boy who did at the RHB-New Straits Times Junior Spell-It-Right (SIR) Challenge last weekend.

Isaac breezed through the junior challenge, getting all his words right

Andrea rejoices over her win

Isaac had participated in the senior challenge earlier this year but did not make it to the Sarawak state finals.

In the junior competition, he aced his way through to the top position against 33 other participants.

He spelt “grab“, “lack“, “inject“, “selfish“, “modify“ and “tighten” to take home the RM1,000 prize and laptop computer.

Isaac's mother, teacher Low Hee Ping, says the competition was his from the start as he had no difficulty with any of the words and got all of them right.
She added, however, that many children from good schools had not entered the competition, and her son may have had to fight harder for the victory had he been given the more difficult words tackled by contestants in the Sabah leg of the contest.

An avid reader of Doraemon comics in Bahasa Malaysia and Mickey Mouse comics in English, Isaac also enjoys children's books such as those by Enid Blyton. He also reads the newspaper — since SIR started in April, he has been looking out for coverage of the challenges in the NST.

Isaac is still on a high from his win and says he will definitely be back next year for the spelling contest.

In Sabah, meanwhile, state Junior SIR champion Andrea Glorie Javino was propelled to victory by a simple love for learning.

Her parents, geologist Fredolin Javino and teacher Annie Pius Intiang, were not expecting her to win — they had not pushed her to prepare for the competition as they believe in learning for fun.

But the determined nine-year-old pupil of SK St Anthony, Penampang, had a strong motivation to win, thanks to the first prize of an Acer laptop computer.

Andrea being an avid player of computer games, her parents had intended to get her a personal computer when she got to secondary school.

Her participation in the challenge has galvanised a greater awareness of spelling in the cheerful girl.

“She is more alert with words,“ says Annie. “When she sees them, she'll be spelling them.“

The competition has also boosted Andrea's confidence and she looks forward to competing in future contests.

SK St Anthony has done well in the SIR Challenges — student Noor Syazwani Sapri came in third in the senior state contest, where the school also won the top school prize.

Teacher Florencia Balagut, who accompanied students in the senior competition and encouraged her pupils to participate in the junior one, says the challenge has inspired pupils in her school to brush up on their spelling. The school now plans to hold its own spelling contests.

Andrea had so much fun at the challenge, she looks forward to participating in more spelling challenges in the future.

Runner-up Matthew Dominic Chu also clearly enjoyed performing at the contest. The seven-year-old stole the hearts of judges and audience alike, eagerly bounding up to the microphone and coolly handling words such as “scone“, “siren“, “satin“, “tamarind“ and “quaint“.

His first stumble was when he missed out one letter in “porcupine“, and was relegated to second place by misspelling “luxurious“ in the tiebreaker.

Frustration at coming so close to winning the laptop he had been gunning for brought him close to tears, but the second-place prize of RM800 cheered him up a little.