PDF-based study guide aids Spelling Bee contestants
After 20 rounds of tense competition–the first National Spelling Bee finale broadcast live on network television–a 13-year-old New Jersey girl heard the pronunciation of a German word that, if she spelled correctly, would make her the 2006 national champion.
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Admitting later that a small amount of luck had contributed to her winning performance–drawing a word she had actually studied rather than the words that eliminated the eventual third- and fourth-place contestants, which she also didn’t know–the victorious student enjoyed the spotlight in her fifth and final national spelloff. Her many years of studying words and word meanings had paid off.
This week the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship takes place in Washington, D.C., opening with a 25-word, multiple-choice written test followed by two days of oral sparring. What will begin with 286 spelling champions from around the U.S. and several other countries will end Thursday evening with another two-hour, live television faceoff among the still-standing participants. Results from each round will be posted on the Bee’s website.
The site includes a variety of study resources, including a multi-part Consolidated Word List containing 23,413 unique words, compiled from previous Bees dating back to 1950. The PDF-based listings are broken down into three categories:
• Words appearing infrequently: From abacist to zymotic
• Words appearing with moderate frequency: From aardvark to zythum
• Words appearing frequently: From aardwolf to zymology
The Bee’s word panel has composed a list of more than 1,000 words to be used in the 2007 championship. One will be the deciding factor.
