Dubai student wins Dh25,000, US trip in spelling bee

Dubai - Some of the final words were 'lacerate', 'cataplexy', 'saxicolous', 'capriole', 'secession'.

Do you know how to spell 'scagliola', 'sevillana', and 'skeuomorph'? By spelling words like these and the winning one, 'precentor', in under a minute, 15-year-old Nirmal Sneha beat 14 others to win the fourth edition of the annual National Spelling Bee Championship.
After an elimination process that lasted four months, 15 students battled it out in a nerve-wracking final round of the championship.
With an overwhelming participation of over 2,000 students from 33 schools in the UAE, 69 students qualified for the final round of the Danube Spelling Bee Championship, which took place in Dubai on Saturday.
After several hours of fierce competition, Sneha from Delhi Private School, Dubai, bagged the overall championship trophy, and Dh25,000 and an all expense paid trip to Washington, US.
Chevieve Hari (15) from GEMS Modern Academy, Dubai, came in close second, and Erick Rajamani (14), also from GEMS Modern Academy, Dubai, was crowned third.
Hari won Dh15,000, and Rajamani was awarded Dh10,000. The zone champions walked away with a prize money of Dh7,500.
Sneha said: "I'm speechless. I received the word list two weeks ago and I've been preparing since." This is Sneha's first spelling championship and she advises future participants to thoroughly research before entering the competition.
Some of the final words were 'lacerate', 'cataplexy', 'saxicolous', 'capriole', 'secession', 'lalopathy', 'typhonic', 'exculpatory', 'ruffianly', and 'hummock'.
Over the years, the championship has become hugely popular among school students in the UAE. Conceptualised and organised by the Raging Tiger Events Company, the event has garnered a lot of interest from school-going students in the last four years. The event is patterned after the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee Championship held in Washington DC since 1925.
Kavya Shivashankar, 19-year-old Scripps champion of 2009, has been the official pronouncer for the Dubai event since 2011. Kavya and her sister Vanya (14), the 2015 Scripps champion, along with their father Mirle Shivashankar, who are from Texas, United States, have been regular pronouncers and judges at the Dubai event.
Kavya, a pre-med student at Columbia University New York, stated that the standard of students who have been participating at the event have increased drastically since its inception in 2011. Speaking to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the event, Kavya said: "Students have become more comfortable with the concept. They are going beyond just memorising the words. Students are researching into the root word and learning the language of origin of all the words."
Her sister Vanya said: "You need to be really passionate about spelling, language and phonetics to become a successful spelling bee champion." The sisters said that participants need to be passionate and set goals that they would like to achieve in spelling.
Mirle Shivashankar, the girls' father and IT professional from the United States, said: "The children here are doing very well despite the fact that the exposure for the competition is still very little.. However, in the United States, the spelling bee is the longest standing competition." Shivashankar stated that there is a lot of opportunity for the spelling bee culture to grow in the UAE.
Renu Singh, the director of Raging Tiger, said: "Participation for the event has tripled ever since we started out four years ago. We had 2,000 student entries in October and we bought it down to 69 finalists who battled it out for the winning title on Saturday."
dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai