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