The Seventh Day Adventist College at Lalovaea hosted their English Day at the school main hall on Wednesday under the theme of “Enriching English in the new Normal”.

Four teams of students presented and performed skits in five different categories. Adding some literary inspiration to their team efforts, the four teams were named after popular Samoan Writers including Team Ruperake Petaia, Team Lani Wendt Young, Team Albert Wendt and Team Emma Kruse Vaai. The five categories that each team competed in were Soliloquies, Poem Recitation, Story Telling, Library Section and Impromptu Speech.

The program started with a school parade to the hall, followed by the worship led by Brother Evander Tuaifaiva. The opening remarks were made by School Principal Mrs Tepora Fuimaono followed by the introduction of Judges, Teams and Categories with the opening items ‘I believe the Children are the future' by Maryjune Sefilino.

Vicce-Principal Trevor Bauelua said the English day was to promote and encourage children to learn the language, excel at it and feel confident so as to have a better future. 

"This is a program we have once every year, and what we normally do is promote a theme about English and the students put together performances according to their levels, and compete in different categories," said the Vice-Principal. 

"According to our curriculum, English is the main subject. It's compulsory and that is why we want to promote this subject. Most of them, the students, struggle a little bit with English as our second language so at least they have a day in a year for it to be promoted as a whole. We also bring their parents along to witness and support them.”

According to Bauelua, the theme - Enriching English in the New Normal - points to our new normal, living with a pandemic that is affect everyone is the world. 

"Everything is new, everything we are living in is changed because of the pandemic. New means of communications and all these things and that’s why we promote English to this new normal we are living in now." 

The Vice-Principal added that they have a lot of students who use social media and other online platforms, so they also use those as tools to promote English as well. 

"There are always good sides and bad sides and the challenges that kids using these platforms can easily be destroyed, especially from their studies and schools assignments.“ 

We also spoke with Rhys Tautalafua, Year 13 and school prefect, who said that “The importance of today is to develop and better our English, when we perform skits, poem and sing songs, its helps us to understand and develop our English skills and also when we sit down and listen, it tells us and teaches us many different lessons. So it is a good day for us. The only problem is the stage, it’s too small and makes us nervous to present and perform our dance.”

The programme closed with items by the Year 9 students and a prizegiving with feedback from Judges and a closing prayer by the Chaplin.