Spelling competitions are an annual feature in most schools around the country. Many students dread these events and are glad to be eliminated in the early rounds, but some enthusiastic spellers study dedicatedly for months, hoping to participate in the National Spelling Bee. Many kids who enjoy spelling and English games have been stung by the Spelling Bee at least once, but make no mistake; the National Spelling Bee is as rigorous a test of your intellectual measure as any math or science Olympiad. So here are 3 useful tips to get you started on the path to spelling glory.
5 Tips to Win the Spelling Bee
1. Read, read, read
That’s what a toddler building his basic vocabulary does and that’s what an aspiring Spelling Bee winner needs to do. Try and read as much and as many genres as you can – poetry, fiction, biographies, news – and anything else you can think of. A voracious reader encounters strange words in unexpected places and if you make the effort to master new spellings you stand a better-than-average chance of winning the spellathon. Reading a dictionary might be a tad boring compared to reading fiction, but it’s a good way to memorize unfamiliar words. The organizers of the National Spelling Bee usually announce which dictionary will be used because dictionaries sometimes spell certain words differently.
2. Play English games
English games that teach kids to spell have three important benefits:
English games such as word sorting help kids to develop their proofreading skills and train them to notice the important features of the words they need to study in order to win spelling championships. Word hunting is another useful English game that encourages players to actively engage in searching for new words that they need to learn.
3. Deduce the spelling
The official Spelling Bee rules allow contestants to ask a certain number of questions before attempting to spell it. If you are unfamiliar with the word, you are allowed to ask what part of speech it is, its language of origin, how it is used in a sentence and its pronunciation. Knowing the etymology (or origins) of a word and the language it comes from can make all the difference between winning and losing.When the pronouncer pronounces a word, you may not get all the clues you need to spell it, but if you are aware of spelling patterns of all the major languages, you stand a good chance of cracking the Bee. You might also want to play English games to build your repertoire of root words.
As with most ambitious goals, winning the National Spelling Bee is all about building upon your existing knowledge of words and taking small steps to enhance it.
5 Tips to Win the Spelling Bee
1. Read, read, read
That’s what a toddler building his basic vocabulary does and that’s what an aspiring Spelling Bee winner needs to do. Try and read as much and as many genres as you can – poetry, fiction, biographies, news – and anything else you can think of. A voracious reader encounters strange words in unexpected places and if you make the effort to master new spellings you stand a better-than-average chance of winning the spellathon. Reading a dictionary might be a tad boring compared to reading fiction, but it’s a good way to memorize unfamiliar words. The organizers of the National Spelling Bee usually announce which dictionary will be used because dictionaries sometimes spell certain words differently.
2. Play English games
English games that teach kids to spell have three important benefits:
- They are interesting enough to hold players’ interests and motivate them.
- They enable players to compete on equal footing with other players of varying spelling skills.
- They expose players to a wider variety of words and spellings than they would otherwise encounter.
English games such as word sorting help kids to develop their proofreading skills and train them to notice the important features of the words they need to study in order to win spelling championships. Word hunting is another useful English game that encourages players to actively engage in searching for new words that they need to learn.
3. Deduce the spelling
The official Spelling Bee rules allow contestants to ask a certain number of questions before attempting to spell it. If you are unfamiliar with the word, you are allowed to ask what part of speech it is, its language of origin, how it is used in a sentence and its pronunciation. Knowing the etymology (or origins) of a word and the language it comes from can make all the difference between winning and losing.When the pronouncer pronounces a word, you may not get all the clues you need to spell it, but if you are aware of spelling patterns of all the major languages, you stand a good chance of cracking the Bee. You might also want to play English games to build your repertoire of root words.
As with most ambitious goals, winning the National Spelling Bee is all about building upon your existing knowledge of words and taking small steps to enhance it.
