quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:
I am shocked that you all are so surprised that the contestants are given the material to study. A spelling bee is basically an oral exam. There are over 1000 words, most uncommon, used in the contest. You thought these kids were just up there "sounding it out".....lol.

I remember in grammar school we would have a spelling bee each year. No one ever shared shit with us! We were told this was in preparation for finding people to compete in the local, then state, spelling bee.

Had they shared the words i'm sure plenty of us would have done better than we did.

quote:

Originally posted by pbramlett:

quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:
I am shocked that you all are so surprised that the contestants are given the material to study. A spelling bee is basically an oral exam. There are over 1000 words, most uncommon, used in the contest. You thought these kids were just up there "sounding it out".....lol.

I remember in grammar school we would have a spelling bee each year. No one ever shared shit with us! We were told this was in preparation for finding people to compete in the local, then state, spelling bee.

Had they shared the words i'm sure plenty of us would have done better than we did.

Likely the schools list was built from your spelling words. If you advanced to the next level that's when the common lists come in.

It is the only way to keep it fair. It is the only way to stop the accusation of Suzy gets asked to spell 'Potato' and Mary gets asked to spell ' Papahanaumokuakea'

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:
Yes actually. I thought that was the whole idea, that one would use the word's origin, meaning, sound, etc to figure out the most likely spelling. Simply memorizing it? Then who cares if the word is from Latin or whatever? Why would they need the definition? Yeah, I'm not so impressed anymore.

This.

I remember doing the spelling bee thing in school, though not at National Spelling Bee level, and there was never any prep material handed out.

Now that I know they get crib sheets beforehand, I have completely lost the respect I had been granting the winners for the vocabulary depth I had assumed the prior winners must have had, to correctly spell words that I myself had to look up.

That said, I do retain my respect for their ability to deal with the pressure of competition, and to memorize a constrained list beforehand. That is not nothing - those are useful skills. Thus, my hat remains off, but not raised as high.

Maybe they really didn't run out of words and just thought it best that they all get a trophy so no one felt bad.

Let's consider the following:

1 India has been a British colony and have been exposed to their educational system.
2. As a colonized culture, they are driven to prove themselves.
3. India does have a higher level of education per capita compared to, say, Americans.
4. As a culture, they are driven to achieve records; Indians hold the guiness book of world records record for the nationality with the most Guinness book of record records.
5. They have a strong family structure. Most still follow arranged marriages. Those highly educated very driven parents inculcate those very same traits into their children.

quote:

Originally posted by Rey HRH:
4. As a culture, they are driven to achieve records; Indians hold the guiness book of world records record for the nationality with the most Guinness book of record records.

Not that remarkable. India is the 2nd largest country in the world by population, and the only one besides the US in the top 5 that has been part of the UK commonwealth or had extensive English language influence.

The Guinness Book is, after all, a UK publication. I imagine things would be rather different if it was the Guangzhou Book of Records instead.