Principal of Ahmadiyya Secondary School, Alhaji Abdul Karim Sesay on Thursday November 14th 2019, addressed the National Scrabble Association of Sierra Leone (NSSAL) that his teachers and pupils are mentally prepared to play the game of Scrabble. Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. Alhaji Karim said, “It has been found that people who play Scrabble have improved their standard of English and this will help our young kids,” he added. He said his pupils will start using the word game as a teaching tool for English, adding that over 100 pupils have shown interest already. “We can improve their command of English in a way by playing the game. It allows them to improve their spelling, learn new words and also encourages reading habits,” he said He assured members of the association that he would do all he can to popularize the game in the entire school. Ishmael Sesay, a member of the association, said the “Scrabble to School” program is intended to boost English proficiency among pupils. When asked how the game is played, he replied: “The game contains 100 tiles, 98 of which are marked with a letter and a point value ranging from 1 to 10. The number of points for each lettered tile is based on the letter’s frequency in Standard English; commonly used letters such as vowels are worth one point, while less common letters score higher, with Q and Z each worth 10 points.
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Ishmael continued: “The game also has two blank tiles that are unmarked and carry no point value. The blank tiles can be used as substitutes for any letter; once laid on the board, however, the choice is fixed. Other language sets use different letter set distributions with different point values”. He however added, “If one has to be successful in Scrabble you must learn as many valid words as possible, but in order to take your game to the next level you also need to improve your anagramming skill, spelling and probability analysis”, he cautioned.
16/11/19
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