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Grade 9 Spelling Bee: a Spell-tacular Contest

June 10, 2014

Grade 9 Spelling Bee: a Spell-tacular Contest

Do you know what “zucchini” or a “chlorofluorocarbon” is? Can you spell “judgmental” or “questionnaire” correctly? Maybe it is not a piece of cake even though you say some of these words as frequently as you eat cake.

On June 3, 2014, grade 9 and 10 students of SHSID had the annual Spelling Bee contest in the auditorium. The 16 candidates from grade 9 were selected by the English teachers after the pre-contests. After reading dictionaries for weeks, the spellers were fully prepared.

At the beginning of the contest, Ms. Erin McGinley, the announcer, explained the rules—each word can be repeated only a few times, and a definition and sentence containing the word was also given. The first speller moved forward. When the announcer spoke out the first word, “inertia,” the spectators were in a tumult and the speller seemed nervous. Although the word is used a lot in physics class, the speller failed to spell it. After the first round, about 1/3 of the candidates were eliminated with the lament of the audience. Kids, you really need to use less autocorrect functions.

Several rounds later, there were only 5 grade-9 spellers and the tension was mounting in the auditorium. For relaxation purposes, 3 girls were invited to present a performance. After the hot pop dance, Kyra Chong, Ricky Pan and other spellers returned to the stage for the competition.

When the final round came, there was only one grade-9 speller, Kyra Chong, to compete with the other grade 10 student. The seesaw game began, and everyone was engrossed in this battle. The two girls worked through “Carrefour” and “chlorofluorocarbon," and finally, Kyra missed a letter in “idiosyncrasy," and won the second prize in the contest. But the other students still applauded for the honor she brought to grade 9.

(Written by Gao Yi Picture by Mark Wu)