Scripps National Spelling Bee

Catching the bee buzz

Anonymous — Tue, 08 Aug 2017 19:39:38 +0000

Catching the bee buzz Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/08/2017 - 13:39

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Taste of top-notch competition whets 12-year-old’s appetite to return to national spelling bee

Until he participated in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., in May, Niwot’s Ben Lenger, 12, and his family didn’t realize that such competitions are virtually unknown in countries where English is not spoken.

That little nugget of information—confirmed by John McWhorter, the famed linguistics professor at Columbia University—was provided during the competition by Jacques Bailly, a Denver native who won the bee in 1980 and is now associate professor of classics at the University of Vermont. Bailly has served as the official “pronouncer” for the national competition since 2003 and was featured in the 2006 film, Akeelah and the Bee.

Ben Lenger, the Boulder Valley spelling bee champion, competes in the national bee in May. Photo courtesy of Scripps National Spelling Bee.

“He explained why spelling bees work in English but not in other languages,” said Ben’s mother, Audrey Lenger. “In French, once you learn the rules, or in Spanish or German, spelling is pretty uniform. There is not the sense of adventure you have in English.”

Thrilled to have earned a trip to the finals after winning his local bee and the regional finals in February, Ben technically tied for 41st along with scores of other spellers. He survived the first two rounds onstage but, he says, “messed up a couple of roots” on a written vocabulary and spelling test, preventing him from moving on.

“I feel I did as well as I could have hoped for,” Ben said. “I had a great time, but professional is a very good word for (the finalists). They are just on an entirely different level.”

The �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Arts and Sciences has provided funding for the families of Boulder County winners to travel to the finals for three years.

“Thanks to the support from CU, and watching our nickels and dimes, we were able to take the whole family,” said Audrey, who traveled with her husband, Steve, and younger son, Jon, to cheer Ben on.

The family enjoyed being in the ballroom where the competition takes place, but decided to watch the final rounds from the comfort of their rented condo, where they could enjoy snacks and drinks while listening to the announcer’s “sports” commentary — Ooh, this one might trip him up … watch that second vowel … this one comes from the Greek… — Audrey said.

Of course, the trip wasn’t all about Latin roots and spelling bee trivia. They visited the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution and its annex, a top priority for aerospace-fascinated Ben.

“I think my favorite part was the North American X-15, the rocket plane that took pilots into the fringes of space at five times the speed of sound, including Neil Armstrong before he did the moon landing stuff,” Ben said. He was only slightly less awed at seeing the Concorde, Lockheed Martin’s SR71 Blackbird, the space shuttle �鶹��Ƶy, and the Enola Gay, which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The family also visited George Washington’s home at Mount Vernon, where Ben was particularly impressed to see an actual piece of the Bastille sent to the American president by the Marquis de Lafayette.

Two weeks after the competition, the family traveled to Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy and the United Kingdom. Since returning to Niwot, Ben has been “checking out a lot of books on rocketry, the history of space travel and the space race from Longmont Public Library,” as well as playing a little Minecraft and Jurassic World.

But he’s also making time to study up on Greek and Latin roots before heading off to eighth grade at Sunset Middle School in August.

“Do I want to go back to the finals? Oh, yeah,” he said. “It was really fun being part of something so huge and famous and well-known.”

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Spelling-bee champ muses on luck and rockets

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 23:09:48 +0000

Spelling-bee champ muses on luck and rockets Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/25/2017 - 17:09

Clay Bonnyman Evans

College of Arts and Sciences sponsors local spelling bee winner’s travel to national competition

Ben Lenger is surprisingly nonchalant about winning the 2017 Barnes & Noble Regional Spelling Bee on Feb. 25 in Broomfield, which netted him an all-expense-paid trip to the national finals in Washington, D.C., in May and other prizes.

But perhaps that’s no surprise. The seventh grader at Sunset Middle School in Longmont is an old hand at spelling bees, and has learned that anything can happen.

“In third grade, I made it to the third round at the Niwot (Elementary School) bee, and I said to myself, ‘Hey, I like this,’” says the 12-year-old Niwot resident.

He’s studied hard for every competition since, with mixed results. He’s bombed out and won at the school level, lost in the first round of the regional competition, and this year, beat out the 2016 champion, Cameron Keith.

“It’s luck,” he says. “I didn’t prepare any harder this year than last year, when I was out in the first round of the regionals.”

He means, quite literally, the luck of the draw. Sometimes you get a word that hangs you up, as last year’s champ did this time around. Other times, you don’t.

It doesn’t hurt, of course, to be extremely well read, and to have a PhD in organic chemistry for a father and a former English teacher for a mother, which is, Ben muses, another kind of luck.

Ben Lenger onstage during this year's regional spelling bee. He attributes his victory to good luck. Photo courtesy of Audrey Lenger.

“I love etymology, and that’s something I’ve worked on with the kids, especially with Greek and Latin roots,” says his mother, Audrey Lenger. “Not because of spelling bees, but with an eye toward general literacy and enjoyment of the English language.”

Ben agrees that having such knowledge is helpful when parsing out words.

“Obviously, knowing the roots helps a lot,” he says. “But I know most of the words just because I read a lot and I’ve seen them.”

In fact, reading his father’s college-level biology textbooks helped send him to the national competition—that’s where he first encountered “lysis,” which he successfully spelled to claim this year’s trophy.

Some of what Ben reads isn’t surprising. He loves the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson novels, as well as “The Lord of the Rings.” He enjoys reading about history. But he also makes a habit of regularly poring over the DK Encyclopedia of Science, which he received for his sixth birthday, and scouring the internet for articles about “cars, rockets, and various jet engines.”

“I want to work in the aerospace industry and rocketry,” he says.

Participating in a spelling bee in the nation’s capital is a great honor, of course, but he’s most excited about visiting the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. And he’s not just biding his time at home: He loves building and launching Estes model rockets, which have been thrilling enthusiasts young and old since 1958.

“I’ve got this one I haven’t built yet, but it looks totally awesome. It’s a multi-re-entry vehicle, so there are three stages that fall off,” Ben says. “I’ll have to launch it on a non-windy day, or the stages will be all over the place.”

He also plays viola in his school orchestra and enjoys bicycling and skiing.

Students have participated in local and regional spelling bees to reach the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 1925. In 2017, an estimated 11 million children participated.

The CU Boulder College of Arts and Sciences has provided funding for the families of Boulder County winner to travel to the finals for three years. Ben will travel with his parents, Steve and Audrey, and younger brother Jon to this year’s competition, which starts May 28. The finals are scheduled for June 2.

“We are very grateful for the financial assistance from CU,” Audrey Lenger says.

Ben Lenger is surprisingly nonchalant about winning the 2017 Barnes & Noble Regional Spelling Bee. But perhaps that’s no surprise. The seventh grader at Sunset Middle School in Longmont is an old hand at spelling bees, and has learned that anything can happen.

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Tenacious tyke, 10, tackles National Spelling Bee

Anonymous — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 23:43:02 +0000

Tenacious tyke, 10, tackles National Spelling Bee Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/08/2016 - 17:43

Clint Talbott

College of Arts and Sciences sponsors young competitor’s trip to national spelling finals, where he dabbled in both mordancy and jocosity

Cameron Keith is a consummate word guy. He’s also 10 years old. Cameron made it to the semifinals in the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee and was poised to advance to the finals when he was asked to spell “noncompos.”

He paused as he approached the final letters of the word, and he used an “a” for the final vowel.

Cameron Keith competes at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, this spring. Photo courtesy of Scripps National Spelling Bee.

For the second year running, Cameron won the Barnes and Noble Boulder Regional Spelling Bee. And for the second time, the CU Boulder College of Arts and Sciences sponsored his trip to Washington, DC, to compete in the national bee.

Cameron says participating in spelling bees—a possibly quaint pursuit in the age of Twitter—has taught him a lot. The value of hard work is paramount, he says.

Now I use these strange words in conversation and when I write stories, and it’s really fun.”

“It’s one thing to hear teachers and your parents tell you that, but it doesn’t really mean anything until you experience it for yourself,” he adds.

Cameron has also learned how to keep calm under pressure and on national TV. “I think that will help me in life.”

Studying and staying calm under pressure certainly helped him this year, as he faced the cameras and correctly ticked off the spelling of words many adults never use: parquetry (inlaid wood in geometric patterns), cameist (a maker of cameos), and solenoglyphous (having tubular, erectile fangs).

To clinch the win in the Boulder Valley Spelling Bee this year, he nailed the spelling of mordancy, which is a biting and caustic quality of style. And among the 10 other words he spelled correctly in Boulder this year was “jocosity,” which is jesting or joking.

But it is no joke that knowing such words would facilitate Cameron’s success in college. That’s one purpose of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which aims to help students “improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts, and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives.”

Cameron’s plan is to keep studying and returning to compete in the national bee as long as he can. He’s got time. Of 285 competitors this year, 267 were one to four years older than he is.

And for Cameron, the National Spelling Bee confers other advantages, such as fostering a love of language. “You love the words because they become such a big part of your life,” he says.

For months before the national bee, he spent at least an hour a day studying, learning new words, their definitions and their origins. “Now I use these strange words in conversation and when I write stories, and it’s really fun.”

Last year, Cameron recalled, his weakness was vocabulary. This year, “all my focus was on learning vocabulary,” and he got one of the highest scores in the bee in the vocabulary section. This coming year, he plans focus on spelling – especially of French words, “which I’m really bad at.”

But, he adds, “I have learnt that if I set a goal and do the work, I can achieve it, no matter what it is.”

Vérité.

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