Here are some sample words during this year’s competition have caused contestants to exit the event:

• fustanella
• dysautonomia
• phytoplankter

It is amazing how children are required to  spell these challenging words by only using their ears.  The first step in mastering spelling – and possibly mastering The National Spelling Bee is to understand and be aware how written English is constructed.

By our count, there are 59 sounds (including diphthongs) in English, and these sounds must be made by a combination of only 26 letters in the alphabet.  What makes English even more challenging is the fact that some of these sounds have many different spellings – hence why the National Spelling Bee is so entertaining.

The first challenge a participant has to face is the need to break down the word he or she hears into its sounds and spellings.  How many beats and how many sounds do the words fustanella, dysautonomia and phytoplankter have?  By breaking the words into sounds, the participants can then start to mentally rebuild the word based on the various spellings. This requires years of practice to master – however, it can be done simply as I will show you in a minute.

One of the common ways to confuse the participants is the use of the schwa.  The schwa is a low energy vowel sound used in words such as father, mother, chicken, ever, chorus and restaurant.

The following image shows the words fustanella, dysautonomia and phytoplankter with our universal color code.  Our universal color code attaches one unique color to every sound (including the diphthongs which are given two colors).  The schwa is in bright yellow.  As you can see from these words, the schwa is represented by the letter a, o and e.

Another major benefit to our universal color code is that it makes words easy to deconstruct.  If we ask the questions how many sounds does a word have, the color code makes it easy.

• fustanella  - 9 Sounds
• dysautonomia – 11 Sounds
• phytoplankter – 12 Sounds

As mentioned before, the participants would then have to reconstruct the sounds based on the appropriate spellings.  Herein lies the challenge, the schwa sound for example has 23 different spellings – this requires the participant to know which one to use.

Our Words in Color program is designed specifically to help students to master reading, writing and spelling.  You can take a look at all the spellings in American English organized by sound and color on our Fidel Phonic Code – can you find the schwa?.  (Note: once you are on the page, simply click on the image to view a larger size.)

We will be posting some of the winning words in an upcoming blog post.

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