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Under a spell
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The National Spelling Bee contest was quite reassuring for those who think the English language is on the brink in these days of SMS usage
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THE BUZZ The contest attracted over 1,000 contestants Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy
Every local linguist who fears for the fate of the English language need only have been at the St. John's Auditorium last week. Even as most adults complain about the havoc the SMS revolution has been wreaking on spelling and grammar, students from a host of schools around the State proved them wrong at the National Spelling Bee 2006 organised by Annapurna.
The Bangalore leg of the eight-city spelling contest garnered entries from over 1,100 students between standards four and seven, representing more than 60 schools, some as far away as Tumkur and Mysore. And though the organisers claimed that Bangalore stood high above the other cities, the average vocabulary levels displayed were adequately impressive to say the least.
Like Olympics
At first glance, a spelling bee is somewhat suspect. Going by the standards of American competitions, most spelling bees seem like nothing less than the Olympics for cerebral children. After all, a typical word list in those competitions would feature brain-boilers like mycestimus and scripophily. Even most adults attending the event are flummoxed by the majority of words, never hearing them anywhere except in a spelling bee. The pressure from just about everyone involved is unbelievable. One student in the U.S., for example, fainted in the middle of the contest, forced himself to get up and finish spelling the word.
The scene at St. John's however, was pleasantly different. As "Spellmaster" Giri Balasubramaniam explained, the focus wasn't on lengthy unheard of words. "We've tried to concentrate on words that are a part of their everyday life, focussing on the logic of spellings, like the difference between independent and dependant. One of the toughest words in the prelims was guillotine, which they have read about in their history books."
The on-stage rounds too followed in the same vein, with words ranging from photography to mesmerise to entrepreneur. At the end of the day, the only real difference between the winners and those eliminated along the way was their ability to decide which vowels to use and which consonants to repeat.
There were the students who prepared for the competition — two days studying the dictionary, a long evening of dictation with parents and even a week's worth of free periods slogging with the English teacher. For the most part, however, students claimed that they didn't really feel the need to work for the competition. Arjun Ramamurthy (New Horizon Public School), who claimed third place at the competition, said: "I got the information about the competition only yesterday, and so I didn't really have any time to prepare. I just clarified some of the hard spellings that I wasn't sure of, that's all." Rohan Chandrasekhar (Delhi Public School, North) and Shalini Rajan (Vidyaniketan, Hebbal) who beat him to first and second places, also felt the competition wasn't too hard.
What's more, the competition didn't only test students abilities to memorise random spellings, but was rather designed like an interesting word game, with rounds in the finals that had them guessing words from their meanings, making multiple words out of a single large word and so on.
Packaged as fun and exciting, the event seemed to give children a reason to want to work at their academics. "Events like this get kids excited about their studies. Finally, there's a place where the things they learn in class can be used to get a tangible result," said Savitha Radhakrishnan, a participant's parent.
Lack of diction
The event wasn't without its difficulties, however. Faced with a much larger turnout than expected, the organisers seemed to fall short on the planning front. "They should have designated seats for each school, and should have arranged for writing boards for all the kids. It was sad to see kids running around for a board at the last minute," said Kavita Vij, another parent. Another grouse that came up was the spellmaster's lack of diction in many cases. His tendency to mispronounce words such as mesmerise, amnesia and so on, elicited bewilderment from many of the participants. On two occasions, his improper pronunciation of humbug and impromptu might even have cost some participants their chance.
Aside from these glitches, the National Spelling Bee 2006 was a unique experience, an entertaining morning for hundreds of children and a welcome break from run-of-the-mill quiz shows and talent contests.
RAKESH MEHAR
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