The 7th edition of the SPBCN (Spelling Bee of China) International Finals ended in Tianjin on the last day of July, and Team Bolt from SUIS Qingpu finished their debut competition with an impressive performance, taking the honour of being the runner-up this year!
The Spelling Bee competition originated in the United States in 1925 and is held nationwide in May of each year in the form of an individual competition. In 2015, the SPBCN (Spelling Bee of China) officially introduced this international English event in China for the very first time, where it has been successfully held for seven years. The first team-based Spelling Bee competition, called the ITSO (International Team Spelling Olympiad), took place in 2016. It was in this competition that our students recently participated and achieved success.
The Middle School team competition includes nine types of events: Speed Spell, Letter by Letter, Guess and Spell, Show and Spell, Laser Letter, Super Words, Word Link, Mystery Sentence, and Language Origin. Each member of the team participates in 1 or 2 events. Each event won during the competition earns one point for the team, and the team with the most points in total wins at the end.
The spelling competition was extremely intense. For example, in the Speed Spell event, players had to spell words orally within two minutes, and the team with the most correct words won. The contestants had to listen to the pronunciation of each word very calmly and carefully, then quickly think and spell the word clearly; if just one letter was incorrect, it was considered a misspelling; if they were too slow in spelling the word, it affected their final score. Contestants, their teammates and the audience were all extremely nervous during this event, and the hall was incredibly quiet for fear that any noise would affect the competitors’ concentration.
