Untitled Document
 Are
you good at spelling? For many people,
including native English speakers, spelling is a tricky subject. However,
for eighth grader Arvind Mahankali, spelling is a b-r-e-e-z-e. On
May 30, the 13-year-old from New York won the 86th Scripps National
Spelling Bee스크립스 철자 맞추기 대회 by correctly spelling “knaidel,” a Yiddish
word of German origin that means “dumpling.” Arvind beat 11 other finalists during
the two and a half-hour long final round, which was televised nationally in the United
States.
Arvind, who previously finished third in both 2011 and 2012, is the
sixth consecutive Indian-American
winner and the 11th in the past 15 years. According to Arvind’s father,
Srinivas Mahankali, who is from Hyderabad in southern India, language
is something the family values. “At home, my dad used to chant poems from forward
to backward and backward to forward,” Mr. Mahankali said. “We love
languages. [We] love English.”
 Arvind
took home $30,000, a $2,500 savings bond, and a huge cup-shaped trophy.
When reporters asked about his summer plans, Arvind said that he will
spend more time studying physics. Arvind admires Albert
Einstein and hopes to be a physicist. Thirteen-year-old
Pranav Sivakumar from Illinois finished second. He was eliminated
on the word “cyanophycean,” a blue-green alga. Sriram Hathwar,
who is also 13 and from New York, finished third, and Amber Born,
14, of Massachusetts, finished fourth.
 For the
first time this year, the spelling bee included a vocabulary test.
Some of the spellers said they liked it, some said they didn’t, and
others were in-between. Paige Kimball, the director of the National
Spelling Bee, said the change was natural. “It represents a deepening of
the Bee’s commitment to its purpose:
to help students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies,
and develop correct English usage that will help them
all their lives,” she said.
If you want to improve your spelling skills, here are some tips: read
a lot of books, learn some common spelling rules, write often, and
practice, practice, practice. |
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