Thailand and China make history at the Qooco Asia Spelling Cup 2017

KUALA LUMPUR: Jaratpat Akkanimanee,10, made her country proud by winning the first ever first place prize for Thailand in the primary level of the Qooco Asia Spelling Cup 2017 that concluded on Sunday while China’s Zhu Weizheng,13, emerged China’s first secondary school level champion.

A post event release issued in Singapore today said since the spelling competition started in 2013, there has been no winner for either levels from Thailand until Jaratpat’s success.

While China has won the Primary level competition before, there has been no Chinese secondary school winner until Zhu’s victory .

The statement also quoted Qooco CEO David Topolewski as saying; “This year the Qooco Asia Spelling Cup 2017 was even bigger, and every year I am more and more impressed by the standard of English these kids possess” .

At the primary level, the three finalist after round seven - Natasya Hon ( Indonesia), Xie Zhenghan ( China) and Jaratpat faced off, spelling words such as ‘alcazar’, ‘ pinafore’ and ‘dreidal’, before Jaratpat emerged victorious, correctly spelling ‘harpoon’.

On the secondary level, 12-year old Aariz Salimee IIhan Salimee of Malaysia fell to the Italian- origin word ‘ bravura’, leaving China’s Zhu Weizheng and Indonesia’s 14-year old Zydan Fathussalam to battle in the finals before Zydan fell at the word ‘roodebok’.

Overall, 56 students from China, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia took part following a pre-selection round that involved over 200,000 students from across all four countries apply via the mobile application Qooco Arena.

A separate China Spelling Cup was held in Beijing, with the winners of the pre-selection round receiving an all expenses paid trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

In both categories, first place winners received US$ 2,000, second place winners received US$ 1,000 and third place winners each received an iPad. — Bernama