Spelling is a crucial part of everyday life, whether your in school writing an essay, or you're writing an email to your boss. It is necessary to be able to have proper punctuation and spelling. And how is the best way of learning how to spell? In a Spelling Bee Competition!
Throughout the world, people have participated and organised Spelling Bees to be confident with their spelling as well as consolidate their vocabulary. The first national spelling bee dates back to almost a century in 1925 when 9 newspapers decided to join together and host a spelling bee. This would lead on to millions of people internationally participating to win the role of the best speller!
Within a spelling bee, a word is pronounced and the participant should be able to know the word as spelt within a dictionary and spell it out aloud, without the help of writing it down. Some challenges they may face could be varying pronunciations, difficult spelling patterns (such as ~gh~ making an ~f~ sound in words such as ‘cough’) or homophones. To help combat this, a speller would most likely have access to the etymology/definition of a word and the ability to hear it in a sentence.
Many schools appreciate the practise of allowing students to participate in a competition as spelling plays a big part in exams. A good example for this is Bow School who has done their First Annual Spelling Bee, with the winner being able to donate a set amount of money to a charity of their choice.
The Spelling Bee gives students a chance to really appreciate how to spell words and how it could impact them in significant parts of their lives such as assessments
It is agreeable upon many that spelling is important, and we might as well do it in the best way possible.
