Listening exercise:
National Public Radio: All Things Considered:
Spelling Bee
May 28, 1998
RealPlayer audio file

Vocabulary:
Washington
conclusion
distinctly
contest
spelling bee
over two days
to tackle
obscure
linguist
Naomi Baron
hard-to-spell
to appropriate...from
readily
an accident of history
dialectal variation
to code and keep
spelling
pronunciation
to borrow...into
German
to be loathe to = to be reluctant to
bureaucrat
camouflage
psychology
spelling
French
Greek
whereas
to tend to
to mold...to
indigenous system
American University
as if
to prove a point
to undo
second-place
finisher
loanword
Italian
Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee
final round
artist
arrangement
treatment
pictorial
work of art
Dr. Cameron
deftly
to convey
part of speech
noun
by any chance
final

Listening comprehension questions:
1. What is a spelling bee? Is there a contest in Taiwan that is somewhat equivalent to this?
2. According to linguist Naomi Baron, what are some of the reasons why English spelling is often different from English pronunciation?
3. What does "to undo" mean in the context of this report?
4. Where was the winning contestant in the 1998 Scripps-Howard National Spelling Bee from? How old was she?
5. List the questions the winning contestant asked about her final word before she spelled it out loud. Which question apparently went unanswered?
6. What do you notice about the vowels [eɪ] and [oʊ] as pronounced by the winning contestant?

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