A GOOD SPELL
THE DEPARTMENT of Basic Education’s spelling bee showed that words aren’t as easy as they seem.
Twenty-seven intermediate phase pupils from all the provinces battled it out on Saturday to be crowned the best speller in the country, and the competition was tough.
In the first round, one speller cried when she spelt a word wrong and was then eliminated.
She had to be escorted out of the room.
The speller was asked to spell “licence” and she spelt it “license”.
An audience member raised an objection and said both spellings were allowed.
The adjudicators ruled the pupil’s spelling was allowed and she was brought back into the competition.
But another speller wasn’t so lucky. She spelt “paleontology” and the judges ruled that was wrong. When an objection was raised by the audience, the adjudicator said they were using the Oxford dictionary spellings and the correct spelling was “palaeontology”.
Most of the pupils spelt their words correctly until the elimination round, when they were asked to spell “statistician”. Most of them spelt the word “statistition” and were eliminated from the competition.
Only three spellers got the right spelling.
Erin Sloane from Greenfield Girls’ Primary School in the Western Cape won first place and Sumaiya Shaikh took second place. Both pupils are in Grade 6.
Grade 5 Dikolobe Primary School pupil Mapheto Malaika took third place.
All three said that in preparing for the spelling bee, they had read a lot and practised the more than 1 500 words they were supposed to master.
Erin won an undergraduate scholarship from Monash University, R2 000 in cash and a R500 gift voucher. Sumaiya received R1 500 and Mapheto R1 000.
They also both received the R500 gift vouchers.
We all read a lot and practised the words