Bilingual Spoken Word Competition

Department/Committee/Team: English Department & Chinese Department

Leader(s): Soo Ling, Lanfang, Jason
Member(s): Ying Tyng, Henry

1.  What was the current need/gap that you were addressing?

1. Students in S2 are offered a range of Oracy experiences at the Cohort level (S2 Poetry Jam & Dramafest). However, no follow-up activities in S3 allowed students to extend and deepen their learning in S2. 2. The English and Chinese departments were also looking for ways to innovate and iterate on the experiences provided by the Bilingual Literature Camp for the Secondary 3 post-exam period. 3. It is a tradition for the Secondary 3 Humanities Programme / Advanced Literature students to put together a poetry jam event for their Secondary 2 juniors. However, they did not have a platform to contribute towards creating rich learning experiences for their peers.

2.  How had it been experimented and enacted?

The bilingual spoken word competition sought to address the above three gaps by iterating on the Secondary 2 Poetry Jam into a bilingual experience for the Secondary 3s. The objective of this event was to experiment with combining the Spoken Word form (which is traditionally done in English) with bilingual elements in a cohort-wide exploration. Each class had a pair of performers who prepared a spoken word piece of 3-4 minutes long that featured bilingual elements. The event was student-led with guidance by the teachers. The Sec 3 Advanced Literature students teamed up with the CLEP students to host the events. They formed an organising team that saw students taking on production, programming and mentorship roles. Each class had an Advanced Literature mentor and Chinese Literature mentor to help facilitate the writing and presentation preparation of the performers. The teachers also invited an established spoken-word artist as well as an established Chinese poet to share on their respective written artforms and provide feedback on the pieces. The event was divided into four portions: (1) Sharing by judges, (2) presentation of spoken word pieces by the judges, (3) prize giving, (4) feedback & closing words by judges.

3.  Which group(s) had benefited?

Students (Entire Cohort)

4.  What was the positive impact?

(1) The general cohort benefited from the experience - either being given the opportunity to present an item as a performer, or as an audience member who was able to see different forms of bilingual spoken poetry. This was an extension from what they have learnt in Sec 2. (2) The Advanced Literature and Chinese Literature students gained valuable experience in organizing a large scale event and mentoring their peers. (3) The event also saw the English Spoken Word poet attempting the Chinese, and Chinese poet sharing her poetry and reflections on learning about Spoken Word - this modeled authentic learning of published poets showing their lifelong learning attitude

5.  What is a future need that this IdEas@work could meet?

When developed fully, this programme has the potential to become a niche for NYGH as there are no bilingual spoken word events currently held locally, much less at the school level. There is the possibility of innovating a new form of spoken word poetry. Future developments can also include opening up the competition to other schools.

Remarks: Treated as combined submission with Bilingual Current Affairs Quiz - the combined submission will be awarded Stage 3 for the wider scope of impact on Bilingualism in the school and the collaborative effort across departments.