Spellbound

[Golem]

Do you think the kids who enter the Spelling Bee competitions, as seen in the recent Spellbound documentary, are more eloquent in their everyday speech or are their efforts at learning to spell hundreds of words just an intellectual exercise?

[jno]

I shouldn't think knowing spelling adds much to your eloquence - I suspect they're too busy to pay too much attention to the meaning of words. But in general I've always found American kids more articulate and better spoken than British ones, so it may all form part of a wider encouragement of self-expression.

[Altosruleok]

Well, I send in the Times crosswords every week, having thumbed through dictionaries to find out about the words I don't know and have sometimes never heard before. But does this make me more eloquent? Does it heck!! I have to look them up again the next time they appear.

[gary baldy]

They may have a large vocabulary but they are socially illiterate. Some of the strategies employed by some of the parents is bordering on abuse in my opinion. What happened to letting kids just be kids?

[theo_wyvern]

depends on the person, some will have a large vocabulary without knowing what 50% of the words they know mean.

there again someone like stephen fry for example seems to know everything and is very eloquent.

[xrayspecs]

Any idiot can learn to spell parrot fashion. It's rather like reeling off facts in an exam. If you have no understanding of the word, it's use etc.it becomes just another useless fact.I echo gary baldy's sentiment.