The Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee is coming! This annual contest features adolescents from all over the country spelling words most of us have never heard of. It will air live on ESPN Wednesday and Thursday.
I won a school spelling bee in the 8th grade, but we never had words like these kids have to spell. Unfortunately I will miss it this year, but I always enjoy watching it. The first year I saw it I ended up in front of the TV, riveted, for more than two hours, watching to the end. These are some great kids, doing their very best.
I like to look at the index of Spellers and try to find a kid sponsored by a local newspaper.
Have you seen the film Spellbound? It’s a documentary about the 1999 National Spelling Bee that’s supposedly pretty good, Oscar nominated, yadda yadda. Haven’t seen it, but if you’re a fan I’d check it out. It’s in theaters now, I think.
I’ve read Ebert’s review, and it sounds great, but of course it isn’t showing anywhere near me. :rolleyes:
I was in the National Spelling Bee in 1997.
Spelling bees are grueling. I did them for years. It takes hours upon hours of practice.
From what I’ve heard of that National Spelling Bee, those kids do an awful lot of work! (I have a copy of Death by Spelling, which I picked up in a Portland bookstore at least ten years ago on a whim)
F_X
Wait, I just watched this last weekend on ESPN. Don’t tell me that they were showing a rerun? Do they rerun spelling bees? It was embarassing that these kids were accurately spelling words which I’d never heard of. One boy subdivided onychophagic into the Greek roots, then spelled the word correctly. It was more than a bit humbling. And he lost.
I have $10 that a homeschooled kid will win.
They nearly always win stuff like this.
I got second in the state spelling bee as a middle schooler, but not up to nationals. Probably would have made it if I’d bothered to study a bit more… oh well. As it is, I never have to use the spell check. I AM the family spell check! 