Our local Scripps National Spelling Bee co-winner has some advice.
Vanya Shivashankar said the key to winning was not memorization.
She co-won the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Vanya follows her older sister, Kavya, who won it several years earlier.
Vanya said the key to being a good speller is to focus on the meaning of the word, and not to just memorize the way it is spelled.
"I would study various ways of techniques. I would make excel sheets with different types of lists of difficulty, language patterns. I would also study by flash cards with vocabulary," Vanya said. "But all this came after I finished my other homework."
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For the Shivashankar family, spelling was not the most important thing, according to Vanya’s father, Mirle Shivashankar.
"We just enjoy it. We do things together that we feel are enjoyable. And that’s what makes it enjoyable," Mirle Shivashankar said. "Spelling, if it were to be just memorization, we would have never survived the last 13 years. It’s not easy."
Vanya is at this year’s competition not to compete but to serve as a mentor to the children that are competing.
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Richard Sharp can be reached at richard.sharp@kshb.com.
