The 9th edition of Spelling Bee competition has been launched in Accra.

The contest under the auspices of the Young Educators Foundation (YEF) is to improve the spelling abilities of school children and also equip their teachers with the approaches to teaching the English Language.

The YEF is the local version of the internationally acclaimed 'Scripps Spelling Bee', based in the United States of America (USA) which makes Ghana the only African country eligible to participate in event.

This year’s competition has as its theme, "Unearthing our Speller-brities" and an estimated 200 schools are expected to participate in competition.

The top prize is a trip to the USA to participate in the Scripps National Spelling as Ghana’s representative. All participating spellers will receive souvenirs from sponsors.

The competition which is currently running in Nigeria will also be launched in Namibia and Kenya.

Speaking at the launch, the Country Director of YEF, Eugenia Tachie-Menson underscored the need for teachers to be abreast with the current teaching and learning techniques to enable the children improve their grade.

“The Spelling Bee has an element of fun as a way of getting children to be interested in reading whilst broadening their vocabulary base and learning skills such as confidence and critical thinking which are not taught in the classroom” she stated.

The YEF Country Director called on the Ghana Education Service to make co-curricular activities such as The Spelling Bee part of the curriculum.

Mrs. Tachie-Menson also urged parents to encourage their wards to participate in the competition “so we can imbibe the art of learning in a fun environment in our children”.

She said even though they are committed to getting a lot more children especially in the public schools onboard, some of their sponsors have withdrawn their funding due to the economic challenges.

The Director of Basic Education at the Ghana Education Service (GES), Stephen Adu commended YEF for the initiative.

He appealed for more collaboration with the organization to improve the vocabulary of pupils especially in public schools.

Mr. Stephen Adu urged pupils to take advantage of the opportunity to improve upon their English vocabulary.