Summary: The 2010 winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee won with the word stromuhr. Learn about it--and the competition of spelling--in today's post.
Spelling bees have always captivated and intimidated me. I liked participating at a school level when I was a child, but believe it or not, it was the public speaking component of the contest that really frayed my nerves and wound up seeing me lose. Although I usually made it to the finale, I just couldn't concentrate through all that nervousness!
A few years ago, my nephew beat my record and made it to the next round, the local multi-school competition for East Central Indiana. He also got tripped up by the pressures of performing in public. (Something tells me the entertainment gene runs latent in our family.)
But those amazing young pupils who make it all the way to Washington, D.C. to compete in the Scripps National Spelling Bee not only love words (and know how to study them), they find ways to be fearless in the face of mounting performance pressures. The Bee is televised now, and not just on a buried cable channel as in days of yore, but on primetime TV for up to 3 nights. This year, 14-year-old Anamika Veeramani competed her way from Royerton, Ohio, to the prime spot of Number One, taking the trophy (and the monetary prizes that can be applied to further education). Her winning word: stromuhr.
Stromuhr (STROW - mohr) - (n.) A medical device that measures both the amount and the rate of the flow of blood in the body. Invented in 1867 by Karl Ludwig and later improved by others, the stromuhr is presently produced by many of the world's leading pharmaceutical and medical device companies. The word stromuhr was introduced likely around the same time period from German. It literally means steam clock. Its ancestor, ur, is the Old High German word for hour.
With palms sweating, hearts palpitating and blood coursing through their veins at paces only measurable with stromuhrs, the world's serious spellers are practicing for the 2011 Bee today. Let's cheer them on.
© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2010
Showing posts with label spelling bee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label spelling bee. Show all posts
Jul 12, 2010
Aug 19, 2009
TRULY SPEAKING: How Do You Spell Relief?—Seriously, I Don't Know!
This week's word is onomatopoeia—a word I've known, recognized, and been able to use in a sentence since high school. Yet I still had to look it up in my computer's dashboard dictionary before I wrote Monday's blog post.
Why? I can't spell onomatopoeia: There are too many vowels that make too many different sounds, not to mention I frequently want to put a T in place of the N at the beginning (probably because I pronounce the word so quickly that I don't enunciate, thereby confusing even myself with what I'm really saying).
It's pretty easy to spell onomatopoeia—that is, to spell onomatopoeic words, like crunch, munch, whomp, and buzz. But what happens when you want to spell something harder? How do you look up a word if you don't know how to spell it—especially if, when you sound it out to try and spell it, you're sounding it out incorrectly? What then?
My dashboard dictionary was little help. I suspect my regular print dictionary would have yielded the same mystifying results. Luckily, many online dictionaries will auto-generate words with similar spellings to the one you're trying. I used my favorite standby, Merriam-Webster.com, and was kindly asked, "Did you mean ...?" to help me find the right word with the right spelling.
According to author and college instructor Dustin Wax, "a study of Fortune 500 human resource employees were published, saying that of the people they had interviewed, some 85% threw away a resume or cover letter that had as little as one or two spelling errors. The logic was, if you didn’t care enough about your application to make sure everything was spelled correctly, then you couldn’t be trusted to care enough about your job—where a tiny spelling error might undo an important business deal or cost the company money." Spelling counts!
To read Wax's helpful article—with links to other spelling resources—click here. And remember these pointers:
1. Making a list of words that commonly trip you up is helpful. Once you've identified these tricky terms, practice reading and writing them as often as possible—with the correct spelling!
2. One of the best helpers for finding proper (and improper) word spellings is the spell-checker tool in word processing programs, such as Microsoft Word. Work with this feature turned on regularly, and pay attention to which phrases, proper names, and other words are repeat offenders in your writing. (This will help you, too, with Pointer #1.)
3. If you're seriously committed to improving your spelling, you might want to work with a pro: Just as you can hire the services of a professional speech or writing coach, you can also work with a spelling coach. Many competitors in the National Spelling Bee contest have done so—with amazing results.
© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009
Why? I can't spell onomatopoeia: There are too many vowels that make too many different sounds, not to mention I frequently want to put a T in place of the N at the beginning (probably because I pronounce the word so quickly that I don't enunciate, thereby confusing even myself with what I'm really saying).
It's pretty easy to spell onomatopoeia—that is, to spell onomatopoeic words, like crunch, munch, whomp, and buzz. But what happens when you want to spell something harder? How do you look up a word if you don't know how to spell it—especially if, when you sound it out to try and spell it, you're sounding it out incorrectly? What then?
My dashboard dictionary was little help. I suspect my regular print dictionary would have yielded the same mystifying results. Luckily, many online dictionaries will auto-generate words with similar spellings to the one you're trying. I used my favorite standby, Merriam-Webster.com, and was kindly asked, "Did you mean ...?" to help me find the right word with the right spelling.
According to author and college instructor Dustin Wax, "a study of Fortune 500 human resource employees were published, saying that of the people they had interviewed, some 85% threw away a resume or cover letter that had as little as one or two spelling errors. The logic was, if you didn’t care enough about your application to make sure everything was spelled correctly, then you couldn’t be trusted to care enough about your job—where a tiny spelling error might undo an important business deal or cost the company money." Spelling counts!
To read Wax's helpful article—with links to other spelling resources—click here. And remember these pointers:
1. Making a list of words that commonly trip you up is helpful. Once you've identified these tricky terms, practice reading and writing them as often as possible—with the correct spelling!
2. One of the best helpers for finding proper (and improper) word spellings is the spell-checker tool in word processing programs, such as Microsoft Word. Work with this feature turned on regularly, and pay attention to which phrases, proper names, and other words are repeat offenders in your writing. (This will help you, too, with Pointer #1.)
3. If you're seriously committed to improving your spelling, you might want to work with a pro: Just as you can hire the services of a professional speech or writing coach, you can also work with a spelling coach. Many competitors in the National Spelling Bee contest have done so—with amazing results.
© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009
Jun 10, 2009
SPEAK YOUR TRUTH: I Hate Dictionary Words
When I was in the 3rd grade, I missed a lot of recesses. My teacher used it as a motivational tool whenever I was behind on homework. And while I loved learning—especially when it came to language (I aced the class spelling bee and earned the second-most construction-paper-ice-cream scoops for A grades on assignments), I hated one weekly assignment in particular called "Dictionary Words."
The concept was, Mrs. Church would write a word on the chalkboard at the beginning of the week. And at some point throughout the week, each student would use his or her free study time to lug the heavy class dictionary off of its shelf and look up that word, then write it neatly along with its definition on a ruled sheet of notebook paper.
That was the part I loathed. My handwriting has never been neat. And the dictionary was really heavy. So, I figured out that if I got behind by a couple of weeks on my words, Mrs. Church would plop the heavy tome onto my desk and command me to stay inside from the playground and copy down their meanings until I was no longer lagging in assignments. It never took me much recess time to catch up on the work. And when my friend Cassie was behind on her Dictionary Words, too, we got to stay inside together and share the heavy book. Sometimes we would stay inside for the entire recess period, because there was rarely a teacher in the room to supervise us. We'd look up extra words in the dictionary, like "crap." (It was really in there!) Or I'd teach her all the curse words my hearing-impaired cousin had taught me in American Sign Language.
You don't have to miss your recess to look up this week's word. What's stopping you today from doing the heavy lifting? Try any of the links you see in this blog to learn the meaning of "tergiversation."
(c) KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009
The concept was, Mrs. Church would write a word on the chalkboard at the beginning of the week. And at some point throughout the week, each student would use his or her free study time to lug the heavy class dictionary off of its shelf and look up that word, then write it neatly along with its definition on a ruled sheet of notebook paper.
That was the part I loathed. My handwriting has never been neat. And the dictionary was really heavy. So, I figured out that if I got behind by a couple of weeks on my words, Mrs. Church would plop the heavy tome onto my desk and command me to stay inside from the playground and copy down their meanings until I was no longer lagging in assignments. It never took me much recess time to catch up on the work. And when my friend Cassie was behind on her Dictionary Words, too, we got to stay inside together and share the heavy book. Sometimes we would stay inside for the entire recess period, because there was rarely a teacher in the room to supervise us. We'd look up extra words in the dictionary, like "crap." (It was really in there!) Or I'd teach her all the curse words my hearing-impaired cousin had taught me in American Sign Language.
You don't have to miss your recess to look up this week's word. What's stopping you today from doing the heavy lifting? Try any of the links you see in this blog to learn the meaning of "tergiversation."
(c) KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009
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