• Home
• /
• Education

79 students battle it out at Spelling Bee Championship

The finalists of the UAE Spelling Bee Championship participate at the convention centre of Jumeriah Beach Hotel.

Students at the preliminary round of Spelling Bee Championship in Meyana Auditorium, Jumeirah Beach Hotel, on Saturday.- KT photo by Grace Guino

About 79 school students from across the UAE gathered at the convention centre of Jumeriah Beach Hotel on Saturday to battle it out for the title of champion speller.

The finalists of the UAE Spelling Bee Championship, accompanied by one or both parents, had come from Sharjah, Al Ain, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The words were called out by Kavya Shivashankar, the 2009 US Spelling Bee champion, who won for her final word, ‘laodicean’. She’s an old hand at this, present even last year at the competition.

After the first half of the competition, the students broke for lunch at 1.30pm and resumed in 45 minutes. Majority of the contestants, even in the lunch break, were seen cramming from the given word list. Those who weren’t skimming on ipads were seen revising actual paper print outs — stapled or spiral bound and as thick as a telephone directory.

Sixth grader, Mayur Raikar, was one of the more playful students at the venue. Mayur was accompanied by his mother, Asha, an anesthetist like her husband in Fujairah. Instead of sitting quietly, and absorbing more words, Mayur seemed committed to having a good time, and was scampering about with his friend Hari, who buoyantly declared that he had gotten out in the first round (but impressively knew that a ‘brivet’ was a document).

Mayur’s word in the first half of the day was ‘gerund’. In the post-lunch round, unfortunately he stumbled on ‘Chrematistic’ (meaning of, relating to, or occupied in the gaining of wealth), missing out the ‘h’ in the second place.

Other words heard during the day were caliginous, creophagy and pusillanimous. Ninth grader, Nisha Venkat, who spelt pusillanimous correctly, said she was determined to win. “I want to get to the top 10.”

‘Manna’ and ‘demurs’ were other words in the day she spelt correctly.

The champion and winners were announced later in the evening. Cash prizes ranged from Dh25,000 for the champion and Dh15,000 and Dh7,500 to the runners up. — news@khaleejtimes.com