Scripps National Spelling Bee
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The Scripps National Spelling Bee (formerly known as the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and commonly referred to simply as the National Spelling Bee) is a highly competitive annual spelling bee. 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, and the Bahamas. Participants from countries other than the United States must be regional spelling bee competition winners as well. In recent years, the Championship Finals have aired live on ABC from 8:00 PM to after 10:00 p.m. EDT.
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[edit] History
The National Spelling Bee was formed in 1925 as a consolidation of numerous local spelling bees, organized by the Louisville Courier-Journal 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, and 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].
[edit] The spelling bee competition
[edit] 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. It is the prerogative of each regional bee to set its own rules with the caveat that there is no recourse for a speller if the rules of the regional competition disqualify the speller from the national competition.
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 701 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. However, any official bee, regional or not, can choose not to use the words from Spell It!.
[edit] Sponsors
To participate in the national competition, a speller must be sponsored. Scripps has 275 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.
[edit] National competition Format
[edit] Round One
Round One consists of a 25-word multiple-choice written test. One word on the written test is taken from Spell It!, the official study booklet; Dr. Jacques Bailly, the Bee's official pronouncer, pronounces each word, its language of origin, definition, and usage in a sentence. Round Two is an oral round in which all spellers spell a word from the Bee's official dictionary, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, which has over 476,000 entries.
Each correct word on the Round One written test is worth one point.
[edit] Round Two
Round two is an oral round. Every speller participates and has a chance to take the stage. A correct oral spelling in Round Two is worth three points. The judges find the lowest of the 90 highest total scores (Rounds One and Two combined) to find a minimum qualifying score for Round Three. All spellers attaining this score, called the "Threshold of 90," advance to Round Three, while all others are eliminated.
[edit] Round Three
Beginning in Round Three, 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.
[edit] 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 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.
[edit] Regulations of Oral rounds
Before 2004, spellers were not asked to spell any word until the judges deemed that the word has 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 a word in its entirety. The first two minutes are known as "Regular Time", the final thirty seconds is known as "Finish Time". During this time limit, a speller is allowed to ask the pronouncer for the following information:
- The definition of the word
- The word's part of speech
- The word's usage in a sentence
- The word's language(s) of origin (not the complete etymology, even though some spellers refer to the language(s) of origin as the etymology)
- Alternate pronunciations of the word
- Alternate definitions of the word
- Whether or not the word contains a specified root; this may only be asked providing 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 will sound, and the judges will inform the speller that Finish Time has begun. The speller gets the benefit of watching a clock count down from thirty seconds, as 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 that exceeds the time limit is automatically eliminated on the grounds that judges will not acknowledge any letters given by the speller after the end of Finish Time.
A speller is allowed once during the bee to ask for Bonus Time which is a one minute continuation of Regular Time. Bonus Time must be requested before Finish Time commences.
A speller is also allowed to start over spelling a word, however, he or she may not change the letters they have already said. Doing so counts as a misspell and automatic elimination.
Any speller that exhausts Regular Time twice will be subjected to Abbreviated Regular Time (90 seconds) instead of Regular Time.
[edit] Prizes
The winner of the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee was awarded cash and prizes totaling over $42,500. These include: a cash prize of $20,000 and an engraved cup from Scripps, a $2,500 savings bond and reference library from Merriam-Webster, a $5,000 cash award from Leapfrog, a $5,000 cash award from Franklin Electronic Publishers, over $5,000 in reference works from Encyclopædia Britannica, and a $5,000 college scholarship from the Sigma Phi Epsilon Educational Foundation.
In 2006, every speller received a commemorative watch (manufactured by TimeCal) from Scripps, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged on CD-ROM from Merriam-Webster, a $100 Series EE U.S. Savings Bond, a $20 gift certificate from Franklin Electronic Publishers, a Fly Pentop Computer from Leapfrog, and a cash prize from Scripps. These cash prizes are determined based on the round in which the speller is eliminated. They range from $25 for a speller eliminated before the third round with less than 13 points, $12,000 for the second place finisher, to $20,000 for the champion (not including prizes from other sources).
[edit] Criticism of the spelling bee
[edit] Unfair element of Chance
A critic may argue that the contest's format does not guarantee that the speller with the greatest vocabulary (of correctly spelt words) will win due to the element of chance involved in the competition. The word list for the competition is fixed in advance, but individual words are randomly assigned to competitors. This leaves open the possibility that the speller with the greatest vocabulary could lose to a competitor with a smaller, but different vocabulary. Consider the following scenario. Speller A's vocabulary consists of the set X of words. Speller B's vocabulary consists of the set Y of words, which is smaller than set X, but does not entirely overlap with X. Speller A may be assigned a word which is in set Y, but not in set X. Speller A would then misspell the word, which would allow Speller B to win. This may seem unfair to speller A because his/her vocabulary is greater than speller B's.
However, it may be countered that in the long-run the law of large numbers will prevail. Applied to the spelling bee, the law dictates that while an individual competitor with the greatest vocabulary may not win a given competition, it also dictates that in the long-run those individuals with the greatest vocabulary will win most of the time. Or in corollary, the best chance for a competitor to win is to have the greatest vocabulary.
[edit] Homeschool advantage
Some suggest homeschooled students have an advantage, that they can forgo 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.
[edit] Recent spelling bees
| Year | Competition Details |
| 2005 | 78th Competition |
| 2006 | 79th Competition |
| 2007 | 80th Competition |
[edit] Champions and winning words
The following are the previous champions, their sponsors, and the final word in competition (i.e., the word that was correctly spelled to be declared the champion).[1] The Scripps National Spelling Bee was not held in the World War II years of 1943, 1944, and 1945, and co-champions were declared in the years 1950, 1957, and 1962.
1 Jacques Bailly is now the pronouncer of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
2 Now Paige Kimble, director of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
3 Blake Giddens is now a judge of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
[edit] Publicity
[edit] In film
[edit] Documentary
The 2002 Academy Award-nominated documentary Spellbound follows eight competitors during the 1999 competition, including the 1999 spelling bee winner, Nupur Lala.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ "Champions and Their Winning Words". Scripps National web site. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
- ^ Bruno, Debra. "Word Nerds: Superbright youngsters who vie to make the best-speller list", Chicago Sun Times, 2006-05-28. Retrieved on 2007-02-26.
[edit] External links
- Official website of the Scripps National Spelling Bee
- 2007 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)
The E.W. Scripps Company |
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Corporate Leadership: Kenneth W. Lowe (President & CEO) |
| Annual Revenue: $2.2 billion USD (2004) · Employees: 10,000 · Stock Symbol: NYSE: SSP · Website: www.scripps.com |
