2012 Spelling Bee

[paulw]

Saw this the other nite on ESPN (strange for a sporting channel to show it) Some really brite kids there. There's hope for the US education system yet..

[Jammrock]

The spelling bee has become a popular TV program. ABC, who owns ESPN, has shown it here on occasion. When they don't ESPN does. ESPN shows strange stuff from time to time. I missed this years.

The US educational system really depends on where you live. Most other first world countries have consistency in their education programs. They are also not afraid to cut kids from higher education in favor of vocational education. The US...not so much.

I live in South Carolina which, as a whole, is ranked something like 46th in the nation as far as schooling quality. Yet in certain areas they have some of excellent schools and school districts. Mostly around the larger cities where most of the parents have college degrees and are active in their kids education. Move away from the cities, or into the ghettos, and things start to go downhill.

[Brian Ellis]

I don't know whether they still do it, but a guy called Bernard Pivot, a literature guru, ran dictation competitions (as part of the spelling championships) on the France 3 channel for many years. This was infinitely more difficult than in English because of gender (nouns in French are only masculine or feminine) and verbs in different moods and tenses sound similar, so, e.g., you had to know when to use the infinitive, indicative or subjunctive from the context etc. This was extremely popular amongst the more intelligent viewers because the dictated text was full of traps, exceptions and spelling irregularities. I tried it on a couple of occasions or so, at home, of course. My results were always honourable for a non-native speaker with a below-average number of mistakes and I was quite proud on one occasion to have made only one error. Although my French was atrocious, my vocabulary was exceptionally good (better than most native speakers) and I knew most of the rules of grammar, such as when a past participle changed gender. I have always had a feeling for words, their orthography and etymology. no matter the language.

I certainly would not do as well now because I have forgotten more French than I ever knew, through disuse since I came out here, even though I still watch some French-language TV, notably Swiss.

For reference, 3 million consenting viewers and 500,000 candidates eagerly endure the annual “Dictée de Bernard Pivot“, a kind of international spelling bee on steroids, where French native speakers of all ages are reminded how badly they suck at their own language. It has been a staple on French television for the past twenty years. The guy behind this national act of contrition (let’s call him Bernard Pivot) makes a fortune out of reminding you how inadequate you are. You get the idea.

http://frenchbook.wordpress.com/tag/dictee-de-bernard-pivot/