Spelling Bee

Well, it looks like I'll have a fair bit of waiting to do today, while the computer takes its sweet time processing (admittedly huge) image files.  So here's something that happened a while back that I've been meaning to write about:

 

Some time in January one of the actresses with me in The Jungle Book asked if I could help out a friend of hers with a recording or some sort of project.  I agreed.  Somewhere in the explanation of what her friend was doing I must have mis-heard, because in late February, a week after I got back from Japan, I found myself moderating a spelling bee.  Ironic, and nostalgia-inducing, because I used to do quite well in spelling bees.  Anyway, it wasn't exactly moderating, but reading the words and helping keep track of things, like what words we'd used and on whom.  Towards the end, this became a particular issue, because the best students knew most all the words we had to throw at them, so we ended up recycling a bunch of the more difficult words.  In the beginning though, kids were dropping right and left.

 

Well, almost.  There was one group that got out in the second round, and another that got out in the sixth round, with a scattering in between.  This was an English hagwon, and 35 kids of 10-12 years and widely varying ability, plus their mothers (along with the odd father), were crammed into a single classroom.  Except for a couple kids, who clearly harbored no hope of winning, everyone progressed easily through the first round.  Then things started getting interesting.  There were a number of students who did quite well, although many got out eventually.  There was also one girl, who at first reminded me of me, because she kind of had stage fright, but did really well, but then made a dumb mistake and was really upset because she should have done better.

 

She got a second chance several rounds later, when we had a losers' bracket for everyone who didn't make it to the last couple rounds (about 25 kids out of 35).  However, she never really recovered, couldn't get up without crying, and ended up getting out on a word that was marginally difficult, but that she should have had, if she was good.  So then I still felt bad for her, but no longer identified with her.  Cause when that happened to me I came back and placed (5th) in the regionals.  Not to brag or anything...

 

The best part though, had to be the misspellings.  I managed to keep a straight face and appropriately stern demeanor throughout the proceedings, but after hearing a couple words mispelled I realized that I would be doing the world a disservice if I did not keep track not only of which words were misspelled, but how.  Some were normal, things you'd hear from English speakers of the same reading level (e.g. "beek for beak"), while others were understandably due to applying Korean phonics to English, and the students' unfamiliarity with native pronunciation (e.g. 'beans' for 'bins').  Then there were a couple kids who didn't know the whole alphabet, and would just say sounds for some letters (e.g. p'-A-R-muh-E-R for 'farmer').But some things were inexplicable and priceless.  Following are the misspellings as I marked them down.  See if you can guess what the actual word was.  (This is not to mock the kids, learning a foreign language is really difficult, I know.  But some of it was pretty darn funny.)

 

1. healty

2. p'-A-R-muh-E-R

3. drew

4. toch

5. nummer

6. thirt

7. lite

  ooh, this one is good:

8. hunchy

9. beek

10. sesons

11. chous

12. beans

13. solty

14. skared

15. strang

16. bottels

17. A-muh-A-zhuh-I-N-G (the kid was given credit for this one)

18. suprise

19. excty

20. dilliousi

21. pangin

22. hoilday

23. foverite

24. sapant

25. spure

26. diffrent (also differente)

27. moire theatre

28. amunt park

29. baby sister

 

 

 

Now, check your answers!

 

1. heavy

2. farmer

3. draw

4. touch

5. number

6. third

7. light  (although we did not get nite or kwik)

8. hungry (did you get that one?)

9. beak

10. seasons

11. chase (bet you didn't get that)

12. bins (don't know why they used plurals)

13. salty

14. scared

15. strange

16. bottles

17. amazing

18. surprise

19. excited

20. delicious

21. penguin

22. holiday

23. favorite

24. selfish

25. special (yes, you are)

26. different

27. movie theater

28. amusement park

29. baby sitter

 

 

P.S.  I've just been given an ice-cream cone called a "Meta-Hurricane"...  It's good, vanilla ice-cream with caramel nut crunchies and chocolate sauce.  But the name!