Tags:

School topics

Any Questions?

School articles

Burnside student has 'knack' for spelling

Abbas NazariMarch was a busy month for Abbas Nazari. The 13-year-old Year 9 Burnside High School student was second-runner up at the New Zealand Vegemite Spelling Bee - not bad for a young man who has only been speaking English for about six years.

“It was a hard-out final,” he says. “Everyone just sat in their seats and went in line. Nobody knew what their word was going to be.”

“The first couple of rounds were easy – espionage and paroxysm and stuff – words from the New Zealand Spelling Bee word list. Then it got harder. It wasn’t common words; it was unfamiliar words, words we hadn’t seen before.”

He admits he didn’t know the meaning of some of the words, but said that didn’t hold him back.
“You get to show how good you are. I think you just develop a knack for it.”

Abbas’ first language is Farsi – he has only been speaking English for about six years.
“For the first year I listened – I didn’t speak. The second year I started speaking myself and the third year I was probably the same level as other students in my class.”

Bookworm

Abbas attributes his success to reading English when he was young and the visual way that he deals with choices for spelling.

“I was a bookworm when I was young so words have been placed in my head. When I see a word I see the letters not the word itself – and the order that it is. That’s how I’m good at spelling.”

“If I’m asked a word that I’ve never heard of then I rearrange all the letters to see all the outcomes and then choose one of the outcomes. It’s like I’ve got invisible fingers moving the letters around in my head.” 

Silhouetted was the word that tripped Abbas up in the final – he missed the last e – and he was bitterly disappointed because he knew the word.

“I was real, real angry with myself. I knew how to spell it. One small mistake eliminates you just like that. The dreaded sound the bell rings and you’re out.”

Competing 'stressful'

Although he is used to being on stage and giving speeches as the captain of his soccer team, competing was stressful, he says.

“The spelling bee is different – you don’t know what you’re going to be hit with. That’s the hard part; you can’t prepare yourself for that – it was tough, real tough.”

His third placing earned him appearances on TV and in newspapers and made Abbas a celebrity at his school.
“I got heaps of coverage. English is my second language and it gives (the spelling bee) a real boost to its fame – some guy coming out of nowhere in the spelling bee – unexpected things.”

“When I came to New Zealand I didn’t know the alphabet. I couldn’t speak a word of English except for ‘hello’ and ‘okay’ and ‘Coca Cola’.”

A regular library user, Abbas hopes to write a book and is a keen footballer.
He is currently reading the Alex Rider series and he also enjoys magazines and graphic novels, especially manga.

Hamilton’s Thomas North won the spelling bee and Hugo Carnell of Auckland placed second.