Malaysian and Indonesian Students Emerge Victorious in the Asia Spelling Cup 2015

The day commenced with the Primary school category students competing, which ended up going into eight rounds before a winner finally emerged. The entire group, who’s oldest competitor was 12 years old, were strong during the earlier rounds, before slowly thinning out when faced with words such as ‘fuselage’, ‘knavery’ and ‘rhetoric’. Third place went to Karrthik A/L Sathiyamoorthy of Malaysia who won an iPad, and second place went to Anna Ng of Malaysia who won USD$1,000. The winner was 10 year old Felicia Danielle from SDK 2 Bina Bakti Matius School, Indonesia.   After a short break, it was the secondary school students’ turn to take the spotlight. Nerves showed quite early with eight contestants leaving by the end of round four. However, the students then started to hit their stride, correctly spelling words such as ‘rhinoceros’, ‘guillotine’ and ‘impetigo’. It took until round six to reduce the group to the last three, Samuel Tang of Indonesia, Iskandar Ameen Bin Suhaimi of Malaysia and Darren Leong or Malaysia. All three refused to budge, effortlessly spelling words such as ‘Tchotchke’, ‘Conquistador’ and ‘Synchronous’. Finally by round 11, Samuel Tang emerged as the winner, with Darren Leong in second and Iskandar Ameen Bin Suhaimi in third.   The event was judged by the former President of Thailand TESOL, Associate Professor Chaleosri, and Associate Professor Suchada Nimmannit, Associate Professor in TESOL at Chulalongkorn University Language Institute Thailand. The initial round to pick the finalists was conducted via the Internet and mobile, whereby students from schools in Thailand, Malaysia, China and Indonesia were required to conduct an online text. From there, six finalists from each country (three Primary and three Secondary) were chosen, and flown out to Bangkok for the Asia Spelling Cup.