Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! I’ve been thinking a lot about the event – or rather, non-event – of the last week of May this year. No Scripps National Spelling Bee. For the first time since World War II, on April 21st, Scripps cancelled the bee outright, along with the fun events that would have comprised Bee Week. Some spellers created petitions, pleading to allow the eighth graders who might have participated this year to get one last chance, either next year or in a separate bee. But in the official statement in which Scripps cancelled the bee, they definit ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! In 2011, Amy Chua, a law professor at Yale University and a mother of two daughters, published a memoir entitled Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. It quickly became a sensation – and a lightning rod for controversy. To some, it seemed to advocate a philosophy of raising children common among Chinese parents that was overly harsh. (Strict disciplinarian mothers, particularly those of East Asian descent, are sometimes termed “tiger mothers,” in large part because of this book’s influence.) Others argued that children would actually b ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! Before discussing this noun suffix conundrum, I want to make a quick tangent. Nowadays, there is a lot of frustration with blogs that “bury the lede.” For example, posts with recipes often begin with protracted stories about Grandma’s favorite pastimes, or summers we spent in the cabin and…oh, the memories! Five minutes later, you FINALLY get to the recipe that Grandma made at the cabin all those summers ago, which was what you wanted to read in the first place! I’ll try not to do this with my posts going forward. For rules, I’ll ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! Spelling bees involve more than just studying words. It’s easy to think of spelling like this: A student gets a list of words on Monday, studies it over the course of the week, then has a written test on Friday. Lather, rinse, repeat until the school year is over. That was the scene during the bucolic days of the little red schoolhouse on the prairie. But nearly two centuries later, life isn’t so simple…and neither is spelling. You have to prepare psychologically to be the best. Simply learning words (and roots and language pattern ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! The sound \f\ is, simply put, a sound with a very reliable spelling in Greek-derived words. Spell it with ph, and you’ll most probably be set. This is because the single letter f did not exist in ancient Greece. However, the Greek letter phi did. (It originally sounded a bit like the sound \p\ in ancient Greek, but began to sound more like \f\ after the fourth century AD.) This rule is extremely – though not 100% – reliable. In fact, if you do a search for words that contain the letter f in the Greek section of Spell It (the word l ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! One of the most basic lessons in phonics is that two consonants in the English alphabet each can make two distinct sounds. If you were lucky enough to learn phonics as a young child, you may find this particular blog post a bit easy. But if not, this will still be a simple lesson to learn. Let’s go! The hard and soft sounds of C The letter c can make two distinct sounds: a hard sound \k\, as in can; or it can make a soft sound \s\, as in city. Obviously, this double identity can complicate spelling words with the letter c. But ther ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! Spelling bees are notorious for their stress, rattling the nerves of spellers and audience members alike. Interspersed in the grueling pressure of bees are the occasional hilarious and spontaneous events that break the tension. One of the funniest and most memorable moments in bee history occurred in 2008, when eventual Scripps champion Sameer Mishra received the word numnah in round 8. Watch the video to see what happened. Pretty amusing, right? I know everyone in the auditorium appreciated the humor, and eventually Sameer d ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! As bee season ramps up, and spellers begin to be tested on their linguistic prowess, it is good to dwell on the most important responsibility of a speller. Many spellers would half-jokingly say that the most important responsibility of a speller would be to spell the word right. That’s certainly a great responsibility…after all, this is what spelling bees are all about, right? Learn about words, ideally be able to use them in conversation or writing, and most importantly, be able to spell them when your turn at the microphone comes ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! Okay. So you’re an expert speller. You’ve already handled the four blog posts about basic vowel sounds, and the post on consonant sounds was a snap, right? Ready to tackle some foreign sounds that aren’t native to American English? This may take some practice. And let’s be honest…this will also take some willingness on your part to sound or even look a bit foolish. Keep in mind that millions of people around the world make these sounds every day with the utmost of seriousness. After all, these sounds are just a natural part of the ..read more

Audio blog post by Dr. Isaacs. Click to listen and read along! On April 9, 2013, Scripps announced an unprecedented change to the format of the National Spelling Bee. For the first time in history, vocabulary would be part of the written test. And lo, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The 281 national competitors and their parents, teachers, and coaches all felt as if the rug had been pulled out from beneath them. I was among them. I mean, we all had prepared purely for a spelling bee for the past year. And with two months to go, now we have to alter course and study vocabulary as ..read more