Could American buzz about spelling cross the Atlantic?Reported by Metro.co.uk on Wednesday, 13 June 2012 (on June 13, 2012)
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*In the US, the Scripps National Spelling Bee is broadcast live on a sports channel and captivates the nation – but could such an event become just as big in Britain? Metro dusts off his old spelling jotter to find out why getting the words right can be so important.*
In focus: US spelling bees
'Overall, it was just boring.' It's not quite what you expect to hear from a competitor who has just been ejected from a major televised tournament with a £20,000 prize at stake.
But this was the pronouncement offered by Lori Anne Madison after she had been eliminated from the biggest spelling competition in the world last month.
It might seem a rather petulant verdict – until you realise that she is only six years old.
Lori Anne was the youngest child ever to take part in the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, which began in 1925. The event is now so popular it is broadcast live by ESPN and has been the subject of novels and an award-winning documentary film, Spellbound.
This year almost 300 children up to the age of 15 took part, taking it in turns to stand on a stage in front of a microphone while attempting to spell out a series of words called out by a judge.
After spelling 'dirigible' correctly in the first round of the competition, Lori Anne was stumped by 'ingluvies' – which as we all, ahem, know is the pouch found in the oesophagus of a bird.
First place was eventually grabbed by 14-year-old Snigdha Nandipati, from San Diego, California, who spelled 'guetapens' (meaning 'ambush') to collect the title.
Snigdha Nandipati, 14, of San Diego wins the 2012 National Spelling Bee (Picture: AP)
'I knew it, I'd seen it before,' she said of the winning word afterwards, collecting a £3,200 scholarship as well as the cash prize.
Spelling, it seems, is cool. With a capital C. So cool the British government wants to get in on the act.
Under proposals unveiled by education secretary Michael Gove this week, the school curriculum could be taking a more traditional approach, with a compulsory spelling list for nine- and ten-year-olds.
It is unlikely that spelling contests will become the phenomenon here that they are across the Atlantic – even though a 1938 BBC show called Spelling Bee, featuring adult contestants, is thought to be the world's first TV game show.
But there are still signs of their growing popularity.
'There's a real tradition of it in the States that is very established and very different,' said Elena Dalrymple, of TheSchoolRun.com, which provides education information to parents of primary school pupils.
'I can't somehow imagine it becoming the equivalent of Britain's Got Talent. I can't see people taking it to heart in that way.
'But there are lots of different ones here and if a child is interested and that's how they want to learn and have fun, that's great.'
Ms Dalrymple believes spelling bees – the word 'bee' describes a get-together where a specific action is being carried out – can be an effective tool in helping children to learn in a fun way.
She does not see them as pressure cookers for impressionable youngsters.
'I think what's nice about them is that competitive element,' she said. 'You add an element of competition to it – a game element – that works with kids.
'Life's about competition. The rest of your life, you have to compete for a job and everything else.'
The key, she says, to engaging children with spelling is by avoiding the old school routine of getting pupils to copy out words 50 times before regurgitating them.
'There's no question that spelling, like times tables, is not the most exciting thing to do and no one is going to know how to spell "separate" until they learn how to spell "separate", she added. 'You just have to learn it.
'You can make it fun, you can try lots of different things but at the end of the day you just have to learn it.'
But bad spelling can cost you a career, she also warned.
'Spelling is still really important for parents, it's still important for teachers and it's certainly important to employers,' she said.
'If you are somebody who knows how to spell and cares about spelling, the moment you see a spelling mistake in a CV, it's out.
'It's as simple as that. And how sad really to be let down by such a mechanical thing. I can see a mistake on a printed piece of information and it actually makes me shudder.
'How many people feel the same way as me? Fewer and fewer, I would imagine.'
Mencap has just launched its own online spelling bee, Spellathon and more than 40,000 people are already registered to take part.
It's a subject the learning disability charity is keen to tackle – last month, it commissioned a survey of 2,000 adults that revealed almost one in five people rely on computer spell check applications to correct their work.
The result is that Britain has an 'auto-correct generation', according to Faith Ingham, assistant director of fundraising at Mencap.
'There is undoubtedly an increased reliability on such sources like spell check,' she said.
'It's almost like the default position, it does it for you. It makes it quite difficult not to rely on it.'
Next week, the final of the The Times Spelling Bee Championship will be held in London.
About 1,200 schools will take part in the fourth annual competition, with each team made up of three players and local heats held online to avoid.
Last year's winners, four grammar school boys from Colchester had been drilled for two months beforehand by their teacher at a spelling club.
Greg Hurst, education editor at The Times, said: 'Words are the lifeblood of learning and sharing information.
'Spelling will remain crucial whether people read books – or newspapers – on a printed page, online or on a tablet device.
'Spelling bees have a longer history and therefore deeper roots in America but we have been delighted with the enthusiasm we have found in schools.'
Links:  Full news story
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