MaRRS International Spelling Bee (MISB) is a

spelling bee A spelling bee is a competition in which contestants are asked to spell a broad selection of words, usually with a varying degree of difficulty. To compete, contestants must memorize the spellings of words as written in dictionaries, and recite ...

competition held in Asia for school children. It is conducted by MaRRS Intellectual Services Pvt. Ltd. The assessment and learning materials for the MISB is created in association with expert staff from the English and Foreign Language University, Hyderabad. The objective of the competition is to enhance the spelling and literary skills of children by encouraging them to explore the English language, expand their vocabulary and improve their communication and comprehension skills. Unlike a normal spelling bee, the MISB has been designed as a motivational learning programme with training modules built in. The eleven rounds of the competition go beyond just spellings and tests almost all the elements of the English Language.

Competition

The competition was started in 2003 and now close to a million students participate in the competition annually. The First International Championship was conducted in

Mumbai Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial capital and the most populous city proper of India with an estimated population of 12 ...

on 17 April 2007. Arjun B. Nair from Infant Jesus School,

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

, was the first overall champion. The Second International Championship was conducted on 8 November 2009 at two venues,

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, but spread chiefly to the west, or beyond its Bank (geography ...

and

Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...

. 20 students from the Dubai centre and 60 students from the Indian centre qualified for the final round. Swetha Reddi of Ramakrishna public school, Visakhapatnam won the International championship for Category IV. Shivani Nirgudkar of Thakur Public School, Mumbai, was adjudged the best performer of the competition. The Third International Championship was held at Nexus International School in Malaysia. Aditi D. Joshi of Manovikas School, Goa (India), was the best performer of the year. The Fourth International Championship was held at Al Nahda Girls' School in Al Mushrif,

Abu Dhabi Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates. The city is the seat of the Abu Dhabi Central Capital District, the capital city of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and the UAE's List of cities in the United Arab Emirates, second-most popu ...

. Juzer Malbari of Christ Church School in Mumbai was the best performer. The Fifth International Championship was held at GCC International School, Thane, Maharasthra, Mumbai. Sidharth Ramchandra of the Brigade School in Karnataka was the best performer and Abhinand-P of Palghat Lions School, Kerala, was the Star speller.

Rounds and levels

The competition begins from the school level and moves on to the first national assessment, state, national and finally to the international Level. Students are divided into six categories based on their grades at school. They face written and oral rounds. The written rounds are rounds such as dictation, jumbled letters, word application,

crossword A crossword (or crossword puzzle) is a word game consisting of a grid of black and white squares, into which solvers enter words or phrases ("entries") crossing each other horizontally ("across") and vertically ("down") according to a set of cl ...

idioms An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a figurative or non-literal meaning, rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic language, an idiomatic expression's meaning is different from the lit ...

, and

phrasal verbs In the traditional grammar of Modern English, a phrasal verb typically constitutes a single semantic unit consisting of a verb followed by a particle (e.g., ''turn down'', ''run into,'' or ''sit up''), sometimes collocated with a preposition (e. ...

. The oral rounds involve Spell It (students spell the words until they make a mistake),

pronunciation Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. To This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or all language in a specific dialect—"correct" or "standard" pronunciation—or si ...

and finally an

antonyms In lexical semantics, opposites are words lying in an inherently incompatible binary relationship. For example, something that is ''even'' entails that it is not ''odd''. It is referred to as a 'binary' relationship because there are two members i ...

and

synonyms A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...

round. In 2012, two new rounds were added from the state oral and national written rounds onwards. The word origin round (oral) deals with

etymology Etymology ( ) is the study of the origin and evolution of words—including their constituent units of sound and meaning—across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. ...

, while the supra-segmentals round (written) is divided into two – one with the marking of stress and

syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

s and the other with the identification of the underlined letter's pronunciation in

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation ** International Phonetic Association, the organization behind the alphabet * India pale ale, a style of beer * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA ...

References

{{Reflist

External links

MaRRS Spelling Bee official website

MaRRS International Spelling Bee competition to be organised
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpo76qZvHwc * https://internationalspellingbee.com Spelling competitions Education in Asia