Students Tackle Mysteries of Spelling in National Spelling Bee
Washington â€" The unflappable winner of the 80th annual national spelling contest -- known as the National Spelling Bee -- is a 13-year-old math whiz and composer whose first piano concerto is in the rehearsal stage. In the nationally televised final round May 31, Evan O’Dorney, from Danville, California, who is schooled at home, won by spelling “serrefine” -- a small forceps for clamping a blood vessel.
(Media-Newswire.com) - Washington – The unflappable winner of the 80th annual national spelling contest -- known as the National Spelling Bee -- is a 13-year-old math whiz and composer whose first piano concerto is in the rehearsal stage.
In the nationally televised final round May 31, Evan O’Dorney, from Danville, California, who is schooled at home, won by spelling “serrefine” -- a small forceps for clamping a blood vessel.
The 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee featured top spellers from across the United States and competitors from Europe, Guam, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, American Samoa, Canada and New Zealand.
Spellers from New Zealand, Canada, the Bahamas and Jamaica made it into the quarterfinals.
It was Evan’s third consecutive trip to the national finals. In 2006, he tied for 14th place. In a television interview, Evan's said of his participation, “I don’t really like it.”
Spelling bees go back at least as far as the early 19th century in America, according to the event’s sponsor. Many American children first encounter spelling bees in the primary grades as competitions teachers stage to make spelling fun and to spur achievement.
With its tens of thousands of words borrowed from other languages, English can present a difficult challenge for native and non-native speakers alike. Children sometimes consider English’s linguistic heritage a source of torment: Those borrowed words resist spellers’ attempts to spell by sound.
The runner-up in the national spelling bee was Nate Gartke, from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Gartke speaks Lithuanian at home with his mother, a school principal, and his father, a math teacher. He attends Victoria School for Performing and Visual Arts in Edmonton, playing the cello, bass guitar, piano and other instruments.
Nate matched Evan word for word in the high-pressure final round, held in Washington, until he was given the medical word "coryza" to which he incorrectly added the letter "h." Three students tied for third place.
Participating in this year’s national final were 286 champion spellers, just over half of them girls, ranging in age from 10 to 15 years old.
To qualify for the national competition, each speller won locally sponsored spelling bees.
U.S. first lady Laura Bush met with the 15 finalists at the White House May 31, searching in vain for a word they could not spell.
Among the finalists, the youngest at 11 years of age, Kavya Shivashankar, tripped over “cidice” ( a hairshirt ). Cody Wang met his match in “apozem” ( an infusion ) and Amy Chyao in “grognard” ( an old soldier ). Joseph Henares managed to spell “punaise” ( a bedbug ) and “triticale” ( an amphidiploid hybrid ) but stumbled over “aniseikonia” ( a vision defect ). Nithya Vijayakumar heard the fatal bell for her effort on “pelorus” ( a navigational instrument ) and Claire Zhang for adding a “t” to “Urgrund” ( a primal cause ). Anqi Dong had difficulty with “bouleuterion” ( an ancient Greek council chamber ). Tia Thomas misspelled “zacate” ( herbage ), Connor Spencer missed “cachalot” ( a sperm whale ), Matthew Evans, “fauchard” ( a medieval weapon ), Prateck Kohli, “oberek” ( a Polish folk dance ), and Isabel Jacobson, “cyanophycean.”
The purpose of the National Spelling Bee is to help students improve spelling, increase vocabularies, learn concepts and develop correct English usage that will help them all of their lives, according to the E. W. Scripps Company in Cincinnati and 280 local sponsors, most of them daily and weekly newspapers. The program is open to students who have not reached their 16th birthday on or before the date of the national finals and who had not advanced beyond the eighth grade by Feb. 1.
Evan, as champion, won $35,000 cash, a $5,000 scholarship, a $2,500 savings bond and a set of reference works.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BEE CHAMPION
Americans love competitions. On May 23, an eighth grader won a similar bee focused on geography because she knew which Vietnamese city, split by a river with the same name, served as an imperial capital for more than a century. ( Answer: Hue. )
Caitlin Snaring of Redmond, Washington, became the first girl in 17 years to win the National Geographic Bee. Some 5 million fourth-to-eighth graders participated in National Geographic Bee competitions nationwide, with the championship held in Washington. The prize for finishing first: a $25,000 U.S. college scholarship and lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society.
More information on the 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee is available on the Scripps Web site.
Related Content
Release Date
This story was released on 2007-06-04. Please make sure to visit the official company or organization web site to learn more about the original release date. See our disclaimer for additional information.