The Scripps National Spelling Bee (formerly the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and commonly called the National Spelling Bee) is a highly competitive annual spelling bee in the United States, with participants from other countries as well. It is run on a not-for-profit basis by The E. W. Scripps Company and is held in the ballroom at the Grand Hyatt Washington hotel in Washington, D.C. Historically, the competition has been open to, and remains open to, the winners of sponsored American regional spelling bees. Over the years, the competition has been opened to contestants from Canada, Mexico, Jamaica, New Zealand, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Ghana, Germany, South Korea, and the Bahamas. Participants from countries other than the United States must be regional spelling-bee winners as well. Since 1994, ESPN has televised the later rounds of the bee; since 2006, earlier rounds have aired on the cable channel during the day, and the Championship Finals have aired live on ABC from 8 P.M. to after 10 P.M., EDT.
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History
The National Spelling Bee was formed in 1925 as a consolidation of numerous local spelling bees, organized by The Courier-Journal in Louisville and having nine competitors. Later, the E.W. Scripps Company acquired the rights to the program. The bee is held in late May and/or early June of each year. (Noah Webster, whose spelling rules codified American English, died on May 28, 1843 - so the late May timing of the Bee is a fitting historic tribute as well as being a post-standardized testing period in the academic year.) It is open to students who have not yet completed the eighth grade, reached their 15th birthday, nor won a previous National Spelling Bee. Its goal is educational: not only to encourage children to perfect the art of spelling, but also to help enlarge their vocabularies and widen their knowledge of the English language.
An insect bee is featured prominently on the logo of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The origin of the word "bee" as used in "spelling bee" is unclear. "Bee" refers to "a gathering", where people join together in an activity[1]. While the similarity between these human social gatherings and the social nature of bees is evident, recent thinking is that the origin of this sense of "bee" is related to the word "been" [2]. But the link between spelling and bees seems to reach some kind of historical exaltation in the work of under-celebrated natural history genius the Rev. Charls Butler, who combined the study of bees with early attempts to reform English spelling.[citation needed]
The Bee is the nation’s largest and longest-running educational promotion, administered on a not-for-profit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company and 288 sponsors in the United States, Europe, Canada, New Zealand, Guam, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.
Sponsorship is available on a limited basis to daily and weekly newspapers serving English-speaking populations around the world. Each sponsor organizes a spelling bee program in its community with the cooperation of area school officials: public, private, parochial, charter, virtual, and home schools.
Schools enroll with the national office to ensure their students are eligible to participate and to receive the materials needed to conduct classroom and school bees. During enrollment, school bee coordinators receive their local sponsor’s program-specific information—local dates, deadlines, and participation guidelines.
The official study booklet is available free online[3].
The champion of each sponsor’s final spelling bee advances to the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in Washington, D.C.
The Spelling Bee Competition
Qualifying Regional Competitions
To qualify for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, a speller must win a regional competition. Each region may set its own rules for a spelling bee. Regional rules may not correspond exactly with the national spelling bee.
Most school and regional bees (known to Scripps as "local spelling bees") use the official study booklet. Until 1994, the study booklet was known as "Words of the Champions"; from 1994 to 2006, the study booklet was the category-based "Paideia", and in 2007 was changed to the 701-word "Spell It!". The current booklet is published by Merriam-Webster in association with the National Spelling Bee. "Spell It!" contains about 1150 words, divided primarily by language of origin, along with exercises and activities in each section. This booklet will be changed yearly. Bees preliminary to the regional level mostly use the School Pronouncer's Guide which contains a collection of Spell It! words as well as 'surprise words', words not in Spell It! but in Scripps' official dictionary, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged.
The regional bees are given a Sponsor Bee Guide by Scripps. There are two volumes, which each contain Spell It! words as well as surprise words. Bees need not use the words from Spell It! to be considered official.
Sponsors
To participate in the national competition, a speller must be sponsored. Scripps has 288 sponsors (mostly newspapers) from the U.S., Canada, Bahamas, New Zealand, and Europe covering a certain area and conducting their own regional spelling bees to send spellers to the national level.
National competition format
Round One
In the few years prior to 2008, Round One consisted of a 25-word multiple-choice written test. However, as of 2008, changes have been made in the formatting of this test. Now referred to as the "Round One Test", it consists of 50 words, 25 of which are deemed "score words". The score words are the only words that will count towards a speller's overall score, and their status is undisclosed until the actual results announcement. This test will be taken electronically (on a computer) during pre-assigned time slots throughout the day on Tuesday, May 26, 2009. Spellers use headphones to listen to a recording of Dr. Jacques Bailly, the Bee's official pronouncer, pronouncing each word, its language of origin, definition, and usage in a sentence. Spellers then type the correct spelling of each word using the computer keyboard. They may correct their spellings as much as they wish until they complete the entire test.
Because the spellers do not take the test at the same time, they are absolutely prohibited from discussing Round One words with anyone, including their parents and official escorts. To do so would be cause for disqualification according to the rules.
Each correctly spelled "score word" on the Round One written test is worth one point.
Round Two
Round Two is an oral round in which spellers spell a word from the Bee's official dictionary, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, which has over 476,000 entries. Every speller participates and has a chance to take the stage. A correct oral spelling in Round Two is worth three points. In 2008, the judges totaled the scores from the Round One test and the oral round of spelling to reach the speller's score. Using these scores, the quarter finalists were determined.
Round Three
Round Three is an oral round in which every speller spells a word from either Spell It! (the official study booklet) or from a list of extra words released only to the spellers. Like Round Two, it is worth three points. The judges then total the scores from the first three rounds to determine the spellers' scores. The maximum possible score is 31. The spellers who attain a score of 31 qualify for Round Four, followed by the spellers who attain a score of 30, and so on, until there are no more than 50 spellers qualifying for Round Four.
Round Four
Beginning in Round Four, each speller participates in a single-elimination oral round, and is given one word to spell. If a speller spells incorrectly, he or she is eliminated. If he or she spells correctly, he or she moves on to the next round.
Rounds One, Two, and all rounds from Round Four until the end of the contest are "dictionary rounds." Words in these rounds may or may not be found on old published study lists.
Remaining Rounds
Rounds continue until a champion is declared. If, at the end of a particular round, there is only one speller remaining, he or she must correctly spell one additional word to win. If he or she misspells his or her word, then all spellers who were present at the beginning of the previous round return, and the next round begins. If there are two or three spellers remaining at the beginning of a round, the pronouncer moves to the Championship Words section of the word list. The spellers alternate spelling words from this list of 25 words until only one speller remains. However, if all 25 Championship Words are exhausted before a champion is declared, then all remaining spellers are declared co-champions.
Regulations of oral rounds
Before 2004, spellers were not asked to spell any word until the judges deemed that the word had been clearly pronounced and identified by the speller; only then would the judges force a speller to begin spelling. Starting in 2004, the Bee adopted new rules.
A speller is given two minutes and thirty seconds from when a word is first pronounced to spell it completely. The first two minutes are "Regular Time"; the final thirty seconds are "Finish Time". During this time limit, a speller is allowed to ask the pronouncer for the following information:
- The word's definition
- The word's part of speech
- The word's usage in a sentence
- The word's language(s) of origin (not the complete etymology, though some spellers call the language(s) of origin the etymology)
- The word's alternate pronunciations
- Whether the word contains a specified root; this may be asked only if the speller can state the root in question, the root's language of origin, and the root's definition.
Once Regular Time has expired, a chime sounds, and the judges inform the speller that Finish Time has begun. The speller may watch a clock counting down from thirty seconds; no timing devices are allowed onstage. No more requests may be made to the pronouncer, and the speller must begin spelling the word. Any speller who exceeds the time limit is automatically eliminated; judges do not acknowledge any letters given by the speller after the end of Finish Time.
A speller is also allowed to start over spelling a word, but may not change the letters already said, which counts as a misspelling and causes automatic elimination.
Recent spelling bees
| Year | Competition Details |
| 2006 | 79th Competition |
| 2007 | 80th Competition |
| 2008 | 81st Competition |
| 2009 | 82nd Competition |
Champions and winning words
Prizes
The winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee is awarded a $30,000 cash prize and an engraved loving cup trophy from Scripps, a $2,500 savings bond and reference library from Merriam-Webster, $3,800 in reference works from Encyclopædia Britannica, and a $5,000 cash prize from the Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation.
All spellers receive a commemorative watch (manufactured by TimeCal) from Scripps, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged on CD-ROM from Merriam-Webster, the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award which is a $100 U.S. Savings Bond, and a cash prize from Scripps. These cash prizes are determined based on the round in which the speller is eliminated. They range from $100 for a speller eliminated before the Quarterfinals to $12,500 for the second place finisher.
Criticism of the spelling bee
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High element of chance
The contest's format does not guarantee that the speller with the greatest vocabulary (of correctly spelled words) will win due to the element of chance involved in the competition. Each contestant spells different words, so a contestant may be able to spell all the words the eventual champion spells, but not one that he or she is given. Similarly, the eventual champion may not be able to spell some of the words that other contestants spelled correctly.
Homeschool advantage?
In the last few minutes, several bees have been won by homeschooled students. Some suggest that they have an advantage because they can forego their studies to prepare for the bee. Homeschoolers respond that, while they do have extra time to devote to spelling practice, such extra time does not come at the expense of their other studies; rather, lessons can be completed in a shorter time when one omits the travel time, change of classes, roll call, large class sizes, etc. that school students must endure. This is referenced in the South Park episode Hooked on Monkey Phonics, in which two homeschooled children win a local spelling bee.
Publicity
In film
Documentary
The 2002 Academy Award-nominated documentary Spellbound follows eight competitors, including eventual national winner Nupur Lala, through the 1999 competition.
Fiction
The 2005 film Bee Season, based on Myla Goldberg's novel, follows a young girl's journey through various levels of spelling bee competition to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, as did the film Akeelah and the Bee the following year. Contestants in the Broadway show The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee are competing for a spot in the National Spelling Bee. The 2007 novel Spelldown by Karon Luddy is a fictional account of a South Carolina girl's journey from the Shirley County spelling championships to the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Nonfiction
The book American Bee, by James Maguire, profiles 5 spellers who made it to the final rounds of the competition: Samir Patel, Katharine Close, Aliya Deri, Jamie Ding, and Marshall Winchester, as well as giving an overview of the history of the bee.[4]
References
- ^ Online Etyomology Dictonary
- ^ What is the origin of the term spelling bee?
- ^ Spell It!
- ^ Bruno, Debra (2006-05-28). "Word Nerds: Superbright youngsters who vie to make the best-speller list". Chicago Sun Times.
External links
- Official website of the Scripps National Spelling Bee
- 2008 Spelling Bee Press Release
- Final rounds of 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee to be broadcast live on ABC during primetime (press release)
- Related media sites
- When Spelling Bee Champs Grow Up on Time.com (a division of Time Magazine)
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