KARACHI: Even if you can clearly hear a word, you may not be able to spell it correctly if you are not familiar with it. To familiarise yourself with words, you need to read a lot.

This was one thing that became rather obvious during the regional championship of the 14th Dawn in Education National Spelling Bee, called ‘A Spectacular Spelling Face-off’ this year, held in three age categories — nine to 11, 12 to 14 and 15 to 17 — at the Arts Council of Pakistan here on Thursday.

Thus ‘OFFICIATE’ was spelt as ‘afficiate’, ‘CORONATION’ became ‘corination’ and the many teachers holding the latest editions of the Dawn in Education Spelling Bee dictionary close to their chests felt ‘ANGINA’ pain as that too was spelt wrong.

There were more problems in store for the spellers when words such as BALLISTIC, MASSACRE and VIGILANTE also could not be spelt correctly and Momin Zafar, the able pronouncer, came to words with silent letters such as ‘FLANEUR’, ‘TRANCHE, ‘MOUE’, ‘MANQUE’, ‘METIER’, etc. ‘A’, ‘E’ and ‘U’ were all mixed up by the young spellers, except for a few, of course, who then finished as the winner, first runners up and second runners up.

In the case of the nine to 11 age group, the youngest participants in the competition, those positions were taken by Raaed Mujtaba Ashar, Shehzeen Sohail Farooqui and Murtaza Munir Farooqui, respectively. Of course, it wasn’t any easier for the others in the 12 to 14 and 15 to 17 age categories, too. But the youngest need to be lauded for keeping their nerves in check throughout.

The deputy head of mission at the British Deputy High Commission, Karachi, Mark Rakestraw, the chief guest on the occasion, observed that many would struggle with the spellings of science words specially in the age of blogging, social media and spellcheck. He also said that he was glad to see 850 schools taking part in the Spelling Bee in its 14th year.

Finally, Dawn Media Group’s director of circulation Niloufer Patel thanked the children, parents and teachers of

all the educational institutions that partnered with Dawn during the competition. She particularly thanked Ameena Saiyid, chairperson of the Oxford University Press, for having supported the Spelling Bee since its inception.

Championship results

Nine to 11 age group: Raaed Mujtaba Ashar of St Michaels Convent School (winner), Shehzeen Sohail Farooqui of Mama Parsi Girls Secondary School (first runner up) and Murtaza Munir Farooqui of BVS Parsi High School (second runner up).

Twelve to 14 age group: Hiba Fatima of Convent of Jesus & Mary — senior section (winner), Syed Imad Ali of BVS Parsi High School (first runner up) and Kiran Khan of Convent of Jesus & Mary — senior section (second runner up).

Fifteen to 17 age group: Lina Nauman of Reflections — Girls (winner), Mohammad Zulfiqar Ali of Happy Home School — O-Levels (first runner up) and Mariam Shahabi of Mama

Parsi Girls Secondary School (second runner up).

Published in Dawn, October 12th, 2018