When I was in elementry school, Thursdays were spelling days. In other words, Thursdays were the days that, after spending the whole week prior practicing with my (hapless, but committed) mother at the dining room table, I would arrive at the spelling test and always inevitably forget the exceptions to the “i before e except after c” rule (curse you, “surveillence,” “beige”, “deity”, and a metric butt ton of other words) and talking into my paper to try to remember my teacher’s absurd pronunciation of onomatopoeia (ON-OH-MAT-OH-POE-EE-EYE-EY) so that we would spell this absurd word correctly.

Basically, spelling in English is challenging. If it weren’t for auto-correct, I, and I’m sure many others, would have no hope of ever sending coherent written media content out into the world. Heck, I’ll probably make a bunch of spelling and grammatical errors in this post without realizing it before tossing it out into the depths of the internet for the rest of the world to see and pass judgment over me. P.S., did anyone catch the misspelling of the words elementary and surveillance above?

Yes? Good for you. No? That’s fine, because, as I said earlier, spelling in English is challenging. Lots of words in English have crazy long strings of vowels (I’m looking at you, queue), aren’t pronounced anywhere close to the way they appear (gonna have to call out the word queue again; who allowed this word to happen.), words change in meaning depending on how we spell them (there, there, it’s not their fault they’re so difficult to spell)… the list goes on.

In contrast to Spanish, which is what we would refer to as a transparent language because we pronounce words almost exactly how they appear on paper, English is a very non-transparent language for the aforementioned reasons. Sin embargo (however), that doesn’t scare the students at Italo Costarricense; despite the challenges that English spelling and pronunciation pose, there’s always a brave crowd of students that turns out to participate in the Spelling Bee and other categories that are a part of the annual English Festival.

What began as a Spelling Bee competition, the first Costa Rican National English Festival was held in Guanacaste in 2014. Over the next couple of years, the Impromptu Speech and Impromptu Conversation categories were added to make the English Festival as we know it hoy en día. If you’re interested in reading more about the rules and categories in the festival, you can check those out here: English Festival Rules & Manuals.

English Festivals in Costa Rica aim to promote confidence, student participation, self-discipline, and motivate students to appreciate the importance of language learning in today’s increasingly globalized society. It also provides a space where students can showcase and be recognized for the strides they’ve made with their English language learning, which is awesome, because these students have a lot to show off.

Impromptu Conversation all-stars

Institutional English Festival preparations begin around February-March for English Festivals that are held in May-June. These students work #very hard with their English teachers for months practicing conversation techniques, listening to spelling audios over and over (and over and over) again, and preparing short discursos (speeches) to present during the festival. Watching and having the opportunity to participate in all of the behind the scenes work that goes into putting on these events was both (super) exhausting and (even more) rewarding. Here’s a quick sneak-peek into the day of Italo Costarricense’s Institutional Festival that was held this past June:

Judge’s Table

First things first, it wouldn’t be a real event in Costa Rica without some good old manualidades (crafts). In my short few months of experience here, I have witnessed teachers and students go H.A.M. creating beautiful decorations and detalles for any and all gatherings. Truly though. Check these out:

Everything in these images above was created from scratch from foam paper, wood, scissors, paint, and dreams. It’s a level of expertise crafting perfection that one could only ever aspire to achieve.

I present you with my debut into the world of foam and silicon. As one of my duties to support the English Festival, I was tasked with creating these little bees and hives on sticks. It was as fun as it was frustrating. It was very frustrating. Helped give me an even stronger sense of respect for anyone that can create something beautiful out of this strange squishy paper.

The day started with an acto cívico (assembly) featuring a few words (in both English and Spanish) from our school director and fearless leader, Mario:

Mario speaks Spanish and can hold his own in both English and Italian. Colour me impressed. Incredibly active in the school and invested in the success of his students, his motivation to learn other languages and motivate others to learn are nothing short of inspiring.

After his opening message, a few students shared a message about the importance of language learning (again, in both English and Spanish):

This was followed up with some impressive musical and dance performances by some of our stellar students who are more talented than I could ever hope to be:

Some highlights from the festival:

Judge’s Panel:

Spelling Bee set-up:

Certificates and name tags. Canva.com is my go-to for any and all posters, handouts, certificates, business cards, etc. (P.S. – not getting any commission, just trying to spread the word about a dope service)

The winners!:

The only way to truly conclude a festival; queque and confites (cake and candy, bb)

These are some of the most valiente students I know. As I worked with them over the past couple of months to prepare them for the festival and saw them go up on our little “stage” to put all of their hard work into practice, I couldn’t help but think back to where I was at with my Spanish learning when I was their age. Hint – I was nowhere near where they’re at right now. I would have never had the courage to participate in a judged 4 minute conversation with a native speaker in my non-native language, or give a 2 minute impromptu speech in Spanish on the famous sports legends of my country when I was 16 years old. The thought of it even now intimidates the heck out of me.

The fact that English Festivals exist in Costa Rica is pretty rad; the fact that they are held across the entire country is downright incredible and progressive as heck. As a language teacher, it’s exciting to have the opportunity to work in a country that recognizes and promotes the importance of language learning with this type of motivating activity not only at a local, but at a national level. It is something that I think a lot of other regions of the world would be better off for if we could take a page out of Costa Rica’s book with respect to language learning.