Chief Judge commends parents’ teachers and schools for an exciting Kwéyòl Spelling Bee Competition

Meanwhile, Chief Judge of the primary schools Kwéyòl Spelling Bee competition, Delia Cuffy-Weekes, described the day’s event as exciting to see the children spell the creole words, and “experiencing our youth being well-ingrained into our culture”. She said this provides hope for Dominica’s culture, because the children can comfortably spell creole words. She congratulated the teachers and parents who prepared the children.
“When you consider creole is not a language that is being taught at school, it is a humongous fit. And to see how the children have performed, you have every reason to be proud,” Mrs. Weekes said. She said the judges noted that some of the participants learned the words by writing, and thereby knew how to spell them, while others have “actually mastered the art of the phonetics of the language” which was “particularly apparent with some of the contestants, in the way that they pronounced the words before spelling, after spelling, and then the way that they broke them up into different syllables in order to spell them”.
This was apparent during the tie breaker round; after exhausting the list of words sent to the schools, the students had to spell words from a list that they had never seen. Mrs. Weekes encouraged the schools that do not participate in the annual competition to come on board. She challenged the teachers to find creative ways to get the students to use the words.