NASSAU, Bahamas — When four-time Bahamas National Spelling Bee Champion Roy Seligman returns to the 94th Scripps National Spelling Bee for another run at the prestigious title, he will find that Scripps is carrying forward two competition elements from 2021 – word meaning round and the spell-off option, The Nassau Guardian reported.
“We know from speller feedback that both the word meaning component and the spell-off option were exciting additions to the competition in 2021, so we’re bringing them back and letting these spellers flex skills, such as understanding word meanings and rapid-fire spelling, that they practice all year long,” said Dr. J. Michael Durnil, executive director of the bee.
Introduced in 2021 to challenge spellers in a new way and enhance the competition’s focus on literacy, word meaning is an oral vocabulary component that will again appear in the second round of each level of the competition – the preliminaries, quarterfinals, semifinals and finals. The speller will be required to orally select the correct multiple-choice answer to a word meaning question read by the pronouncer. The speller will have 30 seconds to view the question and the three answer choices. The speller must choose the best answer within the time limit to move on to the next round of competition. All other rounds of the competition will consist of traditional oral spelling.
Roy’s coach Katina Seymour said the word meaning round remains one of the most interesting and challenging parts of the bee.
“These rounds erase the notion that the bee is only about memorization or learning how to rote to spell,” Seymour said.
Noting that she had the vocabulary words in previous years, Seymour added, “It was used as the qualifier for the semifinals. What is new is that the word meaning round is now used in many stages of the bee – preliminaries, quarterfinals and semifinals.” See complete article in The Nassau Guardian at https://thenassauguardian.com/scripps-national-spelling-bee-to-bring-back-spell-off-and-word-meaning-elements-for-competition/
