Three students share their experience of winning international awards

KUALA LUMPUR - Three students have made our country proud in recent years by bringing home medals and awards from international academic competitions.

Sharing their experiences with Bernama, Arman Iskandar Asrul Akmal, 16, Muhammad Al Amin Amran, 22, and Ameerul Atef Mohammad Nazir, 20, hope their success could motivate others to keep Malaysia’s flag flying high.

Arman Iskandar was crowned champion in the Bee 8 Oscar’s category at the Eurasian Spelling Bee Lexical Skills Competition at Gdansk, Poland in November last year.

He represented Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan (SMK) Pondok Upeh, Penang and was motivated to participate in more competitions like these in the future when he saw his school’s flag at the stage.

"I also hope that this success can inspire other school friends not to feel inferior even if they come from rural schools because we have the same opportunities if we work hard," he told Bernama.

Arman Iskandar said the selection was based on his school examination results and English proficiency and the competition was divided into four stages, namely preliminary, quarter-final, semi-final and final.

"However, I was able to divide my time to study and practice well because the first three phases of the competition were during the Movement Control Order (MCO)," he added.

Meanwhile, Muhammad Al Amin won the bronze medal by beating competitors from 10 countries in the secondary school category at the 13th International Standards Olympiad in South Korea in 2018 when he was a student at SMK Baroh Pial, Kelantan.

The biology student at Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) in Shah Alam said the competition was designed to provide opportunities for students around the world to demonstrate their knowledge and to share new ideas on standards and technology.

"I was picked to enter the competition after winning first place in a national-level essay writing competition organised by the Department of Standards Malaysia in 2017,” he added.

Muhammad Al Amin said if he was given a chance, he would like to enter more international programmes that could inculcate the sense of pride of being a Malaysian.

Ameerul Atef, a former Sekolah Sultan Alam Shah Putrajaya student had participated in a parliamentary debate competition at the Hwa Chong Model ASEAN Summit in Singapore in March 2019.

"I was selected after the screening results were made by school teachers who examined my soft skills, basics of debate and general knowledge regarding geopolitical issues in the Southeast Asian region," he said.

Ameerul Atef added that he successfully returned home with the Best Delegation award and Honorable Mention award.

"After a week of living in a village and socialising with students from the Asean region, my confidence to speak and socialise in English gets higher and the spirit of love for our homeland is getting stronger," he said. - BERNAMA