Teen with stutter takes out spelling competition
The key to being a good speller is not memorising words, it’s reading lots of books.
That’s the advice from Wellington’s newly crowned champion of TVNZ game show Spellbound, which wound up with last night’s grand final at the Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland.
Finn Lewis, 14, a student at Newlands College, said he had never been that interested in being a gun speller until the game show came round.
’’I really like reading, but I don’t necessarily want to win a whole lot of spelling competitions. It’s mainly just I’m quite good at spelling.’’
"But another factor which may have helped was, a couple of times when I've been bored, I've started to read the dictionary." Spellbound winner Finn Lewis
Finn has developed a stutter in recent years, making his achievement in front of the television cameras even more impressive.
But he said the stutter did not seem to affect him when spelling.
‘‘You don’t stutter when you sing, because it’s in a different voice, and you’re using your vocal cords in a different way.
‘‘It’s the same thing with spelling a word, because you’re not saying the words, you are saying the letters.’’
History books had given him the depth of knowledge to acquire the words needed to win a competition such as this, he said.
‘‘But another factor which may have helped was, a couple of times when I’ve been bored, I’ve started to read the dictionary.’’
Lewis had to get through his heat earlier this month to reach the grand final, and estimated he spelled about 30 words to claim the title, not dropping a single one.
He was nearly stumped on one occasion, but that was when his historical knowledge came through.
‘‘The language of origin [of the word] can help quite a bit. The difference between a Greek word and a French word, for example, is quite large.’’
Lewis won a trophy, $5000 towards his studies and $1500 spending money.