Two children aged eight and eleven, with parents from BANGLADESH, VIETNAM and MALAYSIA, yesterday (wedn) took out the NEW SOUTH WALES Premier’s Spelling Bee state finals.
(ms) KATRINA CHAU, a Year Three student from GUILDFORD West Public School, and (mr) ISHRAQ AHMED, a Year Five student from CASULA Public School, beat out over 800 students statewide to win their divisions.
The Deputy Premier and Minister for Education, (mr) ANDREW REFSHAUGE (ref-shaw-ghee), is ecstatic at the public response from the first ever event.
He is especially proud that the children came from the city’s Western suburbs, from no particular privilege, and their parents speak more than one language at home.
F207-a 1 REFSHAUGE 22 secs
There was a large number of children from non-English speaking backgrounds. And I think that is worthy of mention because we also see that those that come from a non-English speaking background often do better than the others, people who come from English speaking backgrounds, in their literacy and numeracy tests, particularly literacy. We often find that in our basic skills test in year three and year five.
Eleven-year-old ISHRAQ, who only started to learn English when his parents arrived in AUSTRALIA from BANGLADESH when he was three, wants to be in medicine or engineering when he grows up.
The family all hail from DHAKAR, the Bangladeshi capital, speaking Bengali at home because, ISHRAQ says, his parents can’t speak English that well.
ISHRAQ’s father is in I-T and his mother takes care of their home.
Both ISHRAQ and his younger sister speak English around the house.
F207-b 1 AHMED 11 secs
I normally study myself, and my sister has her own study. We collected heaps of resources, found out the words I didn’t know how to spell, or didn’t know the meaning of, then revised them every night.
Little KATRINA, the winner of the Year Three division of the spelling bee, which makes her all of eight-years-old, confidently spelled “intrigue” to beat her last competitor.
She was born in AUSTRALIA, and speaks Cantonese and English at home with her parents and brother and sister.
F207-c 1 CHAU 14 secs
My dad’s from Vietnam and my mum’s from Malaysia. They give me lots of words each day, they look in lots of books and get the words and write them down on pieces of paper. My dad and my mum test me and I practice spelling bees at school.
KATRINA wants to be a writer or an artist when she grows up.
Following the radio broadcast of the spelling bee last night, the Premier’s office has been swamped with listeners’ calls celebrating the intensity of the competition.
But the real winners, says Mr REFSHAUGE, are already the children who have grown up with the influence of other languages at home.
F207-d 2 REFSHAUGE 21 secs
It seems that having a separate language, another language other than English, and then having to learn English as well, the effort that is put in there and I suppose the comparisons you can do, certainly raises their capacity in language. In many ways this has just been a reinforcement we’ve known from studies before. Within a couple of years, they’ve not only caught-up with their collegues from Australia, but they’ve often surpassed them.
