You are not an ordinary student. This is not an ordinary writing contest.

Posted by Chong

If you do not find the 10 X RM100 cash prizes attractive enough, we give you 10 more solid reasons why you should join our writing contest immediately. Remember, the deadline for submission is 18 May 2014.

10 Reasons Why You Should Join Our Writing Contest

You are not an ordinary student.

1. You think you are just an ordinary student attending the same national secondary schools (S.M.K.) like hundreds of thousands others, sitting for the same SPM examinations like tens of thousands of SPM candidates every year, going through the same education like your elder siblings did. Yet you are not an ordinary student. Your favourite teacher and subject are different from your best friends, you get different grades compared to your classmates for different subjects, you all do not have the same hobbies or same talents, different topics of news interest you to click and read and like and share on Facebook... and the list can go on and on. Our point is, you are truly special, uncommon, exotic, extraordinary and amazingly-limited edition (only one YOU in the whole world). Those who make you to believe otherwise are nincompoops who love to belittle you and give you foolish ideas of who you actually are. Stop believing those morons!

2. Your education experience is unique. What you have experienced throughout your education, from the formal learning in classes, in tuitions, your own hard work during exam revision and test preparation, are truly unique and personal. You face different challenges and obstacles in your education journey first-hand, you need to tackle specific difficulties to comprehend a particular subject because you have little interest at it, you cannot focus in your studies during a particular period because you are having family problems... All these especially your individual learnings are good topics to be shared with all students in Malaysia.

This is not an ordinary writing contest.

3. We value ideas much more than English writing skills. Judging criteria: 90% on the insightfulness/usefulness/practicalness of the ideas you share in your writing and only 10% on English grammar, spelling, word choice and sentence structure. No need to use those bombastic words that many of us need to check dictionary many times just to understand one paragraph of your writing. If you have good vocabulary, use it! However, please do not feel pressured to fake your vocabulary.

4. No topic set. We do not want to limit the creative YOU! Feel free to write on any topics as long as it is relevant to students in Malaysia. In fact, remember to brainstorm a catchy and creative title for your entry.

5. No minimum length and no word limit. As long as you are able to convey your main ideas or messages clearly and concisely, any length will do.

6. Extremely high chance of winning. We received entries from less than 10 participants in the first two weeks since the announcement of this writing contest. If our writing contest were to open for two weeks only (like we did in 2008), all of them are winners automatically. During our last writing contest held in 2008, the winning rate was 25% which mean one out of every four who took part won the prizes.

7. Get your ideas or stories read by monthly 100,000 students who visit our blog and 20,000 readers who subscribe by email. We try to publish all entries we receive on our blog, regardless winning or not. Where else can you find an easier way to get your writing read by so many real students like you? Newspaper huh? Newspaper is so out nowadays, who care what is published there except maybe your grandfather and grandmother who have no other choice due to Internet-illiteracy, in fact why get your hands dirty flipping through yesterday 'news'? Your personal blog huh? Tell us how many years do you need to get your article read by 1000 real humans, unless if you are a super famous blogger.

8. Mention that you took part in this writing contest in your resume; national level participation for sure, and if you win, it is a national level achievement; ask your school teacher to give mark in your co-curricular assessment. While we cannot guarantee the participation or winning achievement will earn you any mark in your co-curricular assessment, we can say for sure that you can definitely put this as participation in your resume. We are the most popular education blog in Malaysia, featured by daily newspapers numerous times. As a result, a lot of employers know us.

9. Browse through our archives for ideas and inspirations. We have hundreds of quality writing that you can refer for ideas. If fact, feel free to write a much better, updated and improved version of any existing articles we have. Analyse what articles get most likes, most comments because those are the ones that give the most impact and add the most values to the readers who share them on social media and discuss them in comment section actively.

10. Two most reputable and highly similar education portals in Malaysia co-sponsoring our writing contest. Have you ever seen Coca-cola and Pepsi sponsoring the same event? Nike and Adidas? McDonald and KFC? Well, you witness this extraordinary phenomenon happening in our writing contest. It is co-sponsored by Hotcourses Malaysia and EasyUni!

Bonus: If you miss this year's World Cup, you will definitely feel bad and regret as you need to wait for another four years for the next one. Our first writing contest was held in 2008, this year is our second writing contest, if you miss this one, please be early when the next writing contest opens in 2020!

Convinced? Take action now: read the contest rules and send us your entry now. It won't take you more than 30 minutes - remember how much time you took to finish writing an essay for SPM continuous writing or MUET essay? It's that easy. Liked this post? Subscribe now to read more post like this one! Tweet