Winners of the National Creative Story Writing Competition and Launch of Chinese Graded Readers
Published Date: 12 October 2020 12:00 AM
1. A total of 36 students are recognised today for their creativity and writing skills in the National Creative Story Writing Competition for Secondary Students.
2. The competition, jointly organised by the Committee to Promote Chinese Language Learning (CPCLL) and the Singapore Centre for Chinese Language (SCCL), aims to instil in students an interest in the Chinese language and produce local reading materials for secondary students.
3. Held in August 2019, the competition received an enthusiastic response from schools and the community. About 400 entries were received in total, for both the Student Category (for students from secondary schools, junior colleges and Millennia Institute) and the Open Category (for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents).
4. Contestants were required to create a story based on prescribed topics. Displaying immense creativity in their writing, the winning entries featured whimsical and fascinating elements such as uncharted adventures, identity swops, time travel and journeying into virtual worlds. The list of prize winners can be found in Annex A.
Launch of Chinese Graded Readers
5. The winning entries have also been published as a set of eight Chinese Graded Readers by the NTU-SCCL Press under SCCL, and was launched by Minister of State for Education, Ms Sun Xueling, at the virtual prize presentation ceremony today. Named “Qi Shi Miao Xiang”《奇狮妙想》, the Readers are designed to be used as supplementary reading materials for secondary students and will add diversity to local Chinese language reading materials. It also features original illustrations by local artists.
6. Using SCCL’s language grading software, the entries were classified into four grades (with two books per grade) according to the difficulty level of the language used. Each grade is meant for students from a particular academic level (e.g. Grade 1 Readers are recommended for Secondary 1 students). Depending on the student’s language abilities, a teacher may also recommend the student a Reader of a different grade.
7. The Readers will be distributed free to all secondary schools in January 2021. To ensure that schools have sufficient copies of the publication for use during lessons, each school will receive 42 sets of the Readers. The set of Readers will also be available for purchase from SCCL by end-January 2021.