Fun all theway
A student writes about her team’s mission to produce an excellent Mag Inc contest entry while enjoying themselves in the process.
HAVING fun while learning is definitely the prescription to studying English among students.
English language teachers are always searching for new ways to make students learn the language but sometimes, their efforts come to a dead end.
More teachers should know about this fun way — Newspaperin-Education (NiE).
Having this competition was truly a brilliant idea to encourage the use of English among students. The push is gentle but the effects can be clearly seen.
Students in our school often shy away from anything that concerns English.
The mere mention of an English language competition would get few responses and it even invoked fear among some students.
The noisiest students in the rowdiest class would turn silent when asked to speak in English.
However, come March and April, our teachers will be bombarded with queries regarding The StarPizza Hut Mag Inc contest by students from all classes.
There was no question of being embarrassed (if you had produced the plainest magazine) as our teacher often said that each magazine is a masterpiece if done wholeheartedly.
For us, we decided to present something close to our hearts — we were going to share our experience and feelings regarding the contest.
We have been participating in the contest for the last few years and our team consists of Thunisah Devi Santhira Segaran, Tai Sher Chee, Nur Hazwani Hassan, Saiyidah Nur Zarifah Abdullah and myself.
We have been trying hard to win ever since Thunisah’s sister’s group won a Merit prize three years ago.
All this while, we wrote about serious stuff such as teenage angst, environmental issues and health topics.
It was a resounding “NO” this time around. We wanted to have fun.
Topics ranging from serious grammar to wacky English usage were argued upon.
Meetings were held after school and over weekends.
We scoured for materials and produced many drafts, all the while communicating and even arguing in English!
Jokes were cracked and many facts about the language were uncovered.
We also learnt new words and read English poems.
Often, in the midst of a discussion, Sher Chee or Thunisah would start singing a song and the rest of us would join in.
Our teacher would express her amazement at our ability to sing in flawless English and compare it to our rather disastrous essay-writing skills.
As we were busy with school activities, extra classes and tuition, it was often hard to meet up.
Other teams looked at us and wondered why we were trying so hard. They said that we would still be getting a pizza each, regardless of the result.
We were silent but prayed in our hearts that we would win.
We visited Jubilee Park in Sungai Petani for our photo shoot.
It was incredibly fun as we sat under the trees and on the stone slides, all the while posing for our photographer friend who patiently followed us around the park and snapped our pictures.
As we entered the last phase of the project, we felt that we had been more serious this time around as compared to previous efforts.
We really want to win but no matter what the outcome, we realise that we have indeed won.
We not only produced two magazines but we actually created memories — ones that would last a lifetime.
There is nothing else to say but this... it was fun to be a participating team in this contest!