Advertise your Business to 30,000 Verified Online Readers with 150,000 Page Views Per Month, please email info@ipohecho.com.my for more details.

Ipoh Echo Writing Competition

ipoh | December 21, 2009 | 0 Comments

The Ipoh Echo writing competition closed with a bang recently when prize winners in both the Senior and Junior categories were invited to the paper’s office in Jalan Lasam for tea and to receive their cash prizes.

The competition which ran in six issues of The Echo over a three month period, saw a poor response of only 10 entries in each of the categories with a trickle of entries in the first two months and a sudden burst in the final week before the competition was declared closed. In fact, some came in by the skin of their teeth on the very last day.

Promote English

The original intention behind the competition was to promote the use of English as a medium of communication, a mission that is aligned with that of the Ipoh Echo; and to stimulate creativity in thought and expression. If the winning entries in fiction for this competition are an indication, then creativity is well and truly to be found in abundance in Perak. All three winners in the Junior category chose fiction and their stories are being featured here in this and future issues.

Junior Winners

Leading the way is, coincidentally, our Ipoh Echo’s very own Miss Echo of Issue 85, Jessica Lee Jiun-Xiu, a 19 year old student who has just completed her A levels and is making up her mind as to what and where she will study next. Her winning entry ‘The Journey’ is featured here on the next page. First runner-up Felicity Chong is a 17 year-old from Taiping whose story ‘The Bus Driver’ and second runner-up Nabilah Musa’s story ‘The Wonders of Perak’ will be appearing in forthcoming issues. The Ipoh Echo predicts that these budding young writers will do Perak proud as their talents blossom into full flower later in their careers.

Senior Winners

In the Senior category the first prize went to Sandra Rajoo who wrote a lively and captivating piece on ‘Ipoh’s Iconic Polo Ground’ (this page) while second prize went to Lam Yean Ping’s (also from Taiping) evocative, spine-chilling fictional tale ‘The Nest’ and third prize went to Yew Sook Moy who as the shy and relunctant winner, declined the invitation for tea and refused to be photographed for the Echo. Her winning piece ‘Will Perak Experience a Renaissance?’ had an urgency in its call for action, an incisiveness in her style that belies her amateur writer’s status.

The judges, consisting of Fathol Zaman, Jerry Francis and SeeFoon Chan-Koppen who between them share more than 80 years of journalistic experience, had a hard time picking the winners as the standard was generally high and the winners selected won by a narrow margin. Entries were judged on six criteria: composition, grammar, style, expressiveness, captivating and storyline.

SFCK

http://ipohecho.com.my/v2/2009/12/21/the-journey/

http://ipohecho.com.my/v2/2009/12/21/winner-senior-writing-competition-2009/