Bee a Good Speller

The library blog extends its congratulations to Michael Spors, the son of DACC's Director of Instructional Media, Jon Spors, who just earned a place at the National Spelling Bee in Washington, DC. You can see the news story in the library's America's Newspaper's database here. (If you are off campus, you'll need to provide your DACC user ID and password to access the story.) You can access the original story in the Lafayette Journal & Courier online, but you'll have to pay for the privilege, and you still may not get to see the accompanying photo. But spelling bees aren't simply for kids. Did you know there was a National Adult Spelling Bee? This year the event will be held May 3, 2009.

Spelling, Vocab and Study Aids

So how do people prepare spelling bees? All different ways, but Scripps, the national news organization that sponsors the spelling bee coordinates with Merriam-Webster to provide a prep website called Spell It! On this site users can study words according to language of origin (one of the questions spellers are permitted to ask). The lists include tips about how words originating from particular languages tend to be spelled. The site also includes lists of eponyms, or words based upon people's names. Many of these, like "shrapnel," may surprise you. Another important group is the list of words you need to know. These include those words that are frequently misspelled, commonly confused with other words, and homonyms that are misused. Homonyms are words that sound alike but are spelled differently, like "meat" and "mete".

Looking for some help with spelling but lists aren't quite what you had in mind? Purdue's famous Online Writing Lab (OWL) has a section dedicated to Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling that can help you cope with trouble spots in all three of these famous bugaboo areas. Here is another page that details spelling rules designed for readers struggling with dyslexia. But one of the best ways to develop not only your spelling but your vocabulary in general is to work on developing your understanding of the root words underlying the English language. Vocabulary.com helps users do that by developing their root word knowledge through puzzles and activities that reinforce the learning process. And it's all free! The site also provides lists of words focused on specific subject and theme areas, lists based off of works of literature, and even vocational terminology. Do you find flashcards a useful tool for learning vocabulary or some other form of information? Then take a look at FlashcardExchange, an extensive online library of flashcards in numerous subject areas compiled by users from 1st grade through college. The service lets you create unlimited text cards and use them online for free as often as you'd like. If you want to download them or add images or audio to your flashcards, you will need to spring for a one-time membership fee.

Y U Shld B a Bad Splr

Not a great speller? Maybe even a really bad one? Take heart, the inability to spell is not a reflection on your intelligence, more an indicator of how your brain is wired. In fact, MRIs reveal your brain may have done some amazing rewiring on your behalf, as the infamously poor-spelling Steve Hendrix of the Washington Post found out. But you don't have to be a crackerjack speller to take an interest in the subject. In fact, over the years there have been multiple movements to simplify English spelling. Playwright George Bernard Shaw, Teddy Roosevelt and Melville Dewey (creator of the Dewey Decimal system of library organization used in most public libraries and here at DACC) all advocated simplifying the spelling of the English language. If you can't spell, these folks might argue, it's not you, it's the language. Having more than 1,100 possible letter combinations to form only 44 sounds, as English does, might be viewed as a bit of overkill.

Some see the rise of text messaging and email as exerting a degree of pressure in this direction on the language. And more than one teacher has expressed fears that these practices are destroying students' language skills, fears that linguist David Crystal identified as appearing first in Great Britain where texting has been a social practice for a longer period of time. But this recent article in the Christian Science Monitor reports that new research suggests otherwise. Texting may actually increase certain linguistic skills. Not quite sure what all the fuss is about? Check out this text to plain english translator.

And finally, many of you have probably seen the Spell Checker poem that has circulated around the internet for several years in varying forms (one version can be seen here). Here is the story behind the poem, as well as its original, subtler form.