The 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee now requires young competitors to know how to use words, such as flibbertbibbet ? a favorite word of student participants ? not just how to spell them.
Scripps National Spelling Bee contestant Vanya Shivashankar of Olathe, Kan., talks about her experience during the first round of the contest in Oxon Hill, Md., on Tuesday. Vanya's Shivashankar's older sister, Kavya, won the Bee in 2009.
Cliff Owen/AP
EnlargeThere?s a $30,000 cash prize at stake and decades of bragging rights for the winner of the 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee, which kicks off Tuesday with the first vocabulary test in the history of the competition.
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Instead of just getting the vowels and consonants right,?281 spellers from all 50 states and eight countries, gathered outside Washington, must also know the meaning of words like flibbertbibbet, weissnichtwo, and gobbledegook.
?When I first heard about it, I was thinking, ?It?s going to be a lot harder now,? ??competitor Alicia?Gonzales from Winchester, Va., told The Washington Times. ?Instead of just spelling the word, we have to know what it means.?
The computer-based vocabulary test counts for half of the speller?s overall score, with onstage tests, beginning Wednesday, to determine the other half of the score. Students are given 24 spelling words and 24 vocabulary words during Tuesday's preliminary round.?
The E.W. Scripps Company, which has sponsored the bee for 70 years, introduced the new vocabulary test last month. Bee director Paige Kimble told CNN the announcement was made after the regional spelling bees concluded.
?The timing of our announcement ... is absolutely fair," she said. "April is the first opportunity to engage all of the participants who have qualified for the national finals."
The new vocabulary component aims to help students "learn concepts and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives," she said, in an April 9 announcement of the rule change.
Richard Morga, a Bee participant from Wood Dale, Ill., told the Chicago Tribune that he thinks the vocabulary test evens the playing field: ?The repeat (competitors) don?t really matter anymore,? he said.
Linda Tarrant, president of Hexco Academic, a company in Hunt, Texas, that provides personal coaching for elite spellers, told The Washington Times that the vocabulary change ?threw us all out of kilter.?
?I think they did it for all the right reasons, but I think it?s a terrible mistake to do it six weeks before the spelling bee,??Ms. Tarrant?said. ?You have kids who have been studying hard, two-to-four hours a day, since last year?s national bee. They have learned several thousand words, but have they learned the meaning of them all? My guess is no.?
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