Students in Volta Region benefit from Junior Graphic’s writing clinic
Some basic school students in the Volta Region have benefitted from a workshop organised by the Graphic Communications Group Ltd (GCGL), through its brand, the Junior Graphic, to help them improve on their writing skills and the technicalities of writing good essays.
The workshop, which had over 250 participants from 20 schools, was also aimed at preparing students for this year’s Junior Graphic National Essay Competition (JGNEC) as well as helping them write good essays during the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
It was the first to be held for the sessions planned for this year.
Essay
This year’s essay competition is on the theme: “Impacting society with imaginative abilities: The role of children.
It is sponsored by FBN Bank, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Advisory Unit Office of the President and Cowbell.
This year, the target is to get more than 10,000 schoolchildren to participate in the workshops.
Junior Graphic
Addressing the participants, the Managing Director (MD) of the GCGL, Ato Afful, stated that the workshop on essay writing empowered both students and their teachers because the services of seasoned examiners were engaged for the students to know the dos and don'ts in essay writing to enable them to score high marks in their examinations.
He said beyond the workshop, it was also important for the participants to improve their reading habits, acquire more knowledge and broaden their horizons.
He said, for instance, the Junior Graphic newspaper educated children beyond the classroom since the workshop sharpened the skills of young readers and potential writers, as well as offered both students and teachers the opportunity to socialise for future networking.
Participants in the workshop
Mr Afful said the price per copy of the Junior Graphic newspaper had been subsidised to enable children in all the 16 regions of the country to have access to the paper, which was educative, informative, entertaining and also served as a reading material which had been well edited.
Cleanest city campaign
The GCGL MD also used the opportunity to talk about the Clean Ghana campaign the GCGL and the cleanest region competition launched in Ho recently, stating how impressed he was with the cleanliness of the regional capital.
He said to win the competition, a region had to pass an inspection of itst surroundings by an environmental team and tasked the students to assist stakeholders to ensure their region became the cleanest in the country.
Social media
The Editor of the Junior Graphic, Hannah A. Amoah, advised the students not to allow social media to distract them from reading their books but rather work hard to achieve academic excellence.
She asked them to read the instructions for the contest carefully before answering since in previous editions, most of the essays were disqualified because the students had not followed the instructions.
The Head of Retail Banking, FNB Bank, Bennet Frimpong, said he was happy that such a workshop was being organised for the children to get the fundamentals right before they participated in the essay contest.
Impact
The facilitator of the workshop, Samuel Kwaku Ayisah, took the students and teachers through descriptive, narrative and argumentative essays, as well as the format for formal and informal letters.
He also taught them how to enrich their essays by using idiomatic expressions.
In an interview with a student of the Sonrise Christian International School, Janell Dzamesi, she was grateful for the workshop which she described as very educative because some of the things she learnt were yet to be taught in class.
Another participant, Christabel Kossi, a JHS 3 student of the Anglican JHS, stated: “I am a candidate and I have learnt so many things that will help me to write good essays in the BECE.
I am grateful to the organisers and sponsors of the programme.”