I haven't done it for a while, but in the last American Culture class I made the students participate in a little spelling bee, so they could see what they're like. I introduced the concept of the difficulty of spelling English (compared to other languages), and of the history of the spelling bee (introduced not so long after the USA became the USA), and of the typical spelling be in an English class compared to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC, and showed them the trailer of Spellbound (the documentary about one of the National Spelling Bees, focusing on the various finalists from various backgrounds etc.), and showed them a set three funny Peanuts comic strips where Charlie Brown forgets the "i before e except after c" rule and gets over confident and then misses the spelling of "maze."
And then I did the spelling bee. Because there are about 70 students in the class, I couldn't take time to have everybody participate, so I chose by random chance 11 students, and then had them spell words like phonology, lyrics, illustration, etc. I was impressed by the young lady who won, by virtue of being the only one of the 11 to get both her words correct, the second word being loneliness... I remembered (but didn't tell about) my only experience with spelling bees as a participant, back in 4th grade i think, where I missed the very first word I was given, almost intentionally, because I hated standing out so I wanted to be able to sit down as soon as possible and stay there... ANYWAY, it was an amusing diversion, I'm pretty sure, and did show how hard English spelling is, because only three students got their first words right, and then only that one student got the second one right... And one of the students is basically a native speaker of English, having been born (I think) in California and grown up there and come to university here just a year or so ago. She missed spaghetti, after getting the tricky h right, but then saying i instead of e... Oh, we're doing American English in that class right now, which is why I did a spelling bee, etc. Now for the weekend rest!
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Jefferson Peters (JP)
Can you find me in the picture above? Archives
December 2023
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