KARACHI: So the buzz is that the country’s best spellers aged 9 to 17 years are all assembling at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi for the Dawn in Education National Spelling Bee these days.

On Saturday, schoolchildren from Sindh and Quetta competed among each other to pick out the best in the region, who can then face the best from the other regions in the national final to come up later in the month. Therefore, it was a war of nerves and a race against time as the contestants braced themselves for the challenges coming their way.

And cheering them all along, besides their teachers, schoolmates and parents who had to be warned on several occasions to refrain from helping them from their seats, was the Dawn in Education mascots from the Alpha Squad, including Fizza the Wind Warrior, Aatish the Fire Bolt, Arza the Guardian of the Earth and Daryab the Ocean Rider, who keep reminding the contestants that they are not yet done and that they better not give up and think of the cup.

There was hesitation sometimes coupled with confusion. There were also a lot of questions asked by the contestants about the word they were asked to spell out, which was okay as they were encouraged to ask the pronouncers to repeat a word, ask the part of speech it belonged to, ask its meaning or request for it to be used in a sentence for more clear understanding before actually attempting to spell it.

“Haste makes waste”, it is true. ‘Scald’ sounded like ‘scold’ at first but asking its meaning helped. ‘Solely’ also sounded like ‘silly’ until a constant asked its meaning as further asked for it to be used in a sentence.

As per rules, each contestant was given 40 seconds from which he or she could ask the questions in the first 20 seconds and attempt spellings in the remaining 20. The problem arose when they took too long to think and discuss among themselves while failing to even spell the word after the passing of the allowed time like one female contestant. When she did finally give the spelling, it was not accepted by the judges despite her answer being correct.

Another student, Ammar Zayan of St Michael’s Convent, in the 9 to 11 age category, started asking a funny question. When asked to spell any word, his first question would be if there was an alternative pronunciation for it. Meanwhile, Muhammad Adyan Ali of the American Foundation Cambridge School requested the pronouncer to speak loudly as Eshal Shahnawaz of Avicenna School wanted her to go slow. The pronouncer, of course, had no issue with any of these requests though some were thought to be rather funny by the audience.

While spelling ‘consideration’, one contestant soun­ded as if she had said ‘t’ instead of ‘d’ when giving the spelling. The judges played the word again just to be sure and told her that her spelling was incorrect. Later, after receiving an appeal from her school that she had said ‘d’, it was not accepted as ‘t’ was very clear in the replay. The jud­ges at this point reminded all contestants to pronounce their alphabets clearly.

Published in Dawn, November 10th, 2019