Oman Speling bee: Indian School Al Ghubra wins

Winners of Spelling Bee competition

Muscat: Kriti Rajda of Indian School Al Ghubra (ISG) won the inter-school spelling bee competition. Aishwarya Gayathri of Indian School Darsait and Veylenta Desouza of Indian School Muscat bagged the second and third positions, respectively. 

Angelina Theodora D'couto of Indian School Al Seeb and Ishani Sen of Indian School Al Ghubra received consolation prizes. Indian School Al Ghubra also won the over-all championship trophy for the second time in a row.

Earlier, Senior School Assistant Vice-Principal Geeta Chauhan accompanied by Madhumathi B, Head of the Department, English inaugurated the event by lighting the lamp.

The contestants tried extremely hard to get to this stage of competition, clearing various rounds of elimination held in their respective schools. Fourteen students from seven schools of the Sultanate seasoned their expertise in the incredible Spelling Bee Competition that wrapped the devotion of the vivacious spectators. Students from Indian schools, The Sultan’s School, American British Academy, Pakistani School, Bangladeshi School and the Sri Lankan School participated in the event which was overseen by a three-member India Spell Bee team from Bangalore.

Speaking about the competition, R Shankar Narayan, the chief executive officer of India Spell Bee said, “It is a very prestigious event and we are happy to come to the sultanate. Students from all classes have taken part in the event and till date, this is the largest number of participants the event has seen. Earlier we used to have only 300-400 students.”

He attributed the huge participation of the people to the popularity of the event. This year witnessed the participation in three groups - the junior (classes V to VIII), middle (classes IX and X) and senior (classes XI and XII).

The contest was coordinated by Narayan, Shishir Ramamurthy and Vikram Nayak. Ramamurthy holds a Guinness world record for fastest backwards spelling.

Narayan added, “It is normally believed that students from the Gulf are not as bright as students in India. However, this is not true, and after the competition and witnessing the massive response and intelligence of the students here, I differ from that opinion.” 

Kailash C Naithani, Assistant Vice-Principal, Examinations, accompanied by Geeta Chauhan, AVP Senior Section, did the honours.Department of English, ISM, senior section steered this competition with outstanding accuracy. The coordinator and Bee Master Augustine Joseph did an admirable job. As many as 1,200 students from different schools of the sultanate took part in the 2012 edition of the Spell Bee competition held at Al Falaj Hotel on Friday.

Jointly organised by the Malayalam wing of the Indian Social Club and the English Deaprtment of Indian School Muscat, the Spelling bee contest began at about 9am, continued till 6pm.

Story of Spelling bee

A spelling bee is a competition in which contestants are asked to spell a broad selection of words, usually with a varying degree of difficulty.

The idea of having spelling contests or “bees” originated in USA schools back in the early 1800s.  The first National Spelling Bee was sponsored in 1925 by the Louisville Courier-Journal and held in Washington, D.C. The winner at that first event was eleven-year-old Frank Neuhauser.

Since then spelling bees have been organized in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Pacific Islands.The concept is thought to have originated in the United States, and spelling bee events, along with variants, are now also held in some other countries around the world which use imperfect writing systems.

During very first Spelling Bee competition, Noah Webster’s spelling books was the basic resource.Later it was replaced by Webster's spelling books which were an essential part of the curriculum of all elementary school children in the United States for five generations. Now the key reference for the contests is the Merriam-Webster unabridged dictionary. In the United States, spelling bees are annually held from local levels up to the level of the Scripps National Spelling Bee which awards a cash prize to the winner.