By Ebele Orakpo

Mr. Kelechi Chioma is the Senior Facilitator at Protégé Centre, an outfit with the vision and mission of teaching scrabble in schools. The 2006 Applied Biochemistry graduate of Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka and 2010 graduate of Samsung Real Dreams (an after school development programme), spoke with Financial Vanguard recently in Lagos and said he decided to take scrabble to schools because he discovered it will help the pupils/students improve their grasp of the English Language and subsequently, their understanding of other subjects. Excerpts.

According to Mr. Kelechi Chioma, he started playing scrabble after his secondary school education. “I first played scrabble after I finished writing the West African School Certificate exam. I was staying at home sleeping, eating, discussing with friends while waiting for PHCN to bring light so we could watch television and most times, we were disappointed.

I was becoming bored. One day, I went to visit a friend close to my house, and I saw them playing scrabble. I took interest in the game. That was the first time I played the game and I fell in love with it. It is a remarkable game. We played almost every day and it became so competitive.

Because we wanted to do well in the game, we had to study the dictionary and learn new words. It impacted me remarkably as a person because any time I played it, I learnt new words. I was more like a walking dictionary because I always beat my friend who was also very good and very intelligent; therefore, I had to constantly learn new words. I started with the A words until I got to the Z words.”

Practice, they say, makes perfect and so as he continued the game, he discovered some patterns in the English language. “For example, until recently, you could not have a Q word without a U so as I played the game, I discovered that there are some exceptions. It helped my spelling, vocabulary and thinking.”

Upon graduation from the university, he did his one year compulsory national youth service in Taraba State where he taught chemistry.

While in the university, Kelechi said he played scrabble once or twice and after his youth service, he went back home, saw his old friends who had also finished school, and they started playing the game again.

“I was playing scrabble one day with a friend of mine and I said to him, “this game has really impacted us, don’t you think we should encourage children in primary and secondary schools to play the game?” He said it was a good idea but will involve a lot of work like writing proposals and convincing school owners.

I said let’s do it, but he was not interested anyway, he wanted to make money faster than I was thinking. I took the bold step and started sending proposals to schools. I sent about 20 or so but did not get a single reply,” he said.

Not one to be discouraged by what he saw as a temporary setback, he continued his marketing job which involved convincing people to build web sites for their organisations and use bulk SMS solutions.  “I was passing one day and saw Chrisland Schools.

I decided to take the proposal to them. When I got there, I submitted the proposal at the gate because they did not allow me to enter. It was when I went for a follow up that I met my teacher in secondary school who was a guidance counsellor there.

We exchanged pleasantries and I told her why I was in the school. She invited me to her office and guess what I saw? Stacks of scrabble board! I asked what she was doing with them and she said they were trying to introduce the game in the school and were searching for someone to handle it,” he said.

It was like a dream come true. “I decided to teach her and she said since I could play very well, I should come at break time and teach the children. Two months later, I quit my job, I wanted something else. I went back to see her. She took me to the head teacher and said I will be taking the scrabble class.

We did the test-run for about two months. The children really liked it so she encouraged me to do a proposal to the managing director of the school, telling her  that we should start effectively in the school and here we are.”

On whether scrabble really helps children educationally, he said, “Scrabble can help improve our standard of education remarkably. The standard has fallen both at the basic and higher levels and to get it right, you have to go back to the basics.

For instance, when I was learning physics in secondary school, to most of my colleagues, it was a challenge because of the language barrier. The textbooks were written in English, sometimes very old English so if you read the textbook, you have to translate it twice unlike someone whose first language is English.

I am aware that in places like China, France, Germany and India, textbooks are written in their native languages so that barrier is not there and that is why they do very well in science/ technology because they understand it just the way it is. So we have a peculiar case. We have to break that barrier if we are going to do well. So either we begin to write our textbooks in our local languages or Pidgin English which I don’t think is feasible, or we improve

our pupils’  English language vocabulary at a very rapid pace. We have to improve the pupils’ vocabulary so that they can understand these subjects better. When I went to the university and decided to read again those textbooks I was reading in secondary school, I understood better because I knew more English then.

So if we can bridge that gap, I think we will have better science, arts and English students because their vocabulary will improve and it will affect every other area of our academic life. That is what scrabble does, it builds vocabulary, it’s fun and enjoyable.

If you bring it to the class from as young as age one and keep playing it, and get familiar with spellings, words, and check up the meanings etc., before they know it, their vocabulary would have improved and they will understand maths and sciences much more than we did in our own time.”

The former head of marketing in an IT consultancy firm said they have been able to introduce the game in about 13 private and 30 public schools in Lagos with the hope of going to other parts of the country.

Apart from the annual Winifred Awosika Scrabble Tournament for Schools and the Protégé Scrabble League, Kelechi said they organise scrabble competitions in schools too. “Protégé Scrabble League basically celebrates the anniversary of scrabble which was invented over 60 years ago,” he said.