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'You can memorize 1000s of words, but what do you do if you get a word that you don't know?'
Scott Remer trained the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in 2010 when he was only 16.
A speller and a contestant himself in 2007 and 2008, he graduated from Yale and has made a successful career as an experienced Spelling Bee coach.
He spoke about training Dev Shah, the 2023 Spelling Bee Champion, and explained the reason why Indian origin kids do exceptionally well in the competition.
"Becoming a coach was not something I really had in mind when I was spelling myself. I remember thinking that there weren't really that many resources available for people to study" Scott Remer tells Rediff.com US Contributor Abhijit J Masih.
The first of a two-part interview:
What strategies do you recommend for memorizing and retaining complex or unfamiliar spellings?
Spelling is basically about three things.
First, is knowledge of the Latin and Greek stems. I work a lot with my students making sure that they have the fundamental Latin and Greek stems really well memorized.
One of the things that makes a word like psammophile, the word that Dev won on, very easy, if you know your stems is that it really just it's just a combination of two words.
It's a combination of the Greek word psamm meaning sand and philias, meaning lover.
The second piece of the puzzle is the language rules. Each language has its own conventions for how you spell each of the sounds.
For instance, the schwa sound in French would be CH or CHE, in German, that would be SCH, in English it would be SH.
Basically, it's the same sound, but the way that you interpret what you're hearing and the way that you translate it into letters, is going to be different depending on which language the word is from.
The third thing is rote memorization. Rote memorization is a part of being a good speller but it is not the total of being a good speller.
You can memorize 1000s of words, but what do you do if you get a word that you don't know?
You have to have some way of figuring it out. That's what we focus on.
How do you help participants develop confidence and composure during spelling bee competitions?
Some of it is purely a function of age. The kids who are younger generally tend to be a little bit more nervous.
That's kind of natural; it's a very stressful situation, being on stage in front of millions of people, regardless of how old you are.
The preparation that we do -- drilling the kids for hundreds of hours.
I try to sound like the pronouncers at Scripps and model the way the pronouncers would respond to their questions.
So by the time they get to the National Bee, they've had lots and lots of practice with that scenario.
And there are other spelling bees besides Scripps. I run one in December every year. I tell my students to participate in as many of them as possible because this is like a sport. You have to train and get as much experience as you can.
I also teach my kids a simple breathing exercise, basically inhale for two, and then you exhale for four.
When you get up to the microphone, just do that because it does help you to sort of steady yourself a little bit.
Including Dev Shah, you had six other spellers in the top 10 last year. How did you manage that act of prestidigitation?
I think part of it is that the kids are great and very smart.
Part of it is a testament to the fact that my strategy and philosophy of spelling works.
I've been doing this a long time so I think I have a decent sense of the kinds of words that would come up both for spelling and for vocabulary.
My kids primarily use Words of Wisdom, which is my textbook for spelling, Sesquipedalia, which is my vocab book and Regional Bee Ready, which is a book for the lower levels of the competition.
But it certainly is a combination of different factors, some of which also is luck.
This year was a particularly good year, there are years where it doesn't look like a good year because of the luck factor.
It also is experience on my part, whenever you do a particular job for an extended period of time, you attain certain mastery, and that allows you to be good at it.
How do kids sign up with you? Do they have to meet a qualifying standard for Scott's special attention?
They reach out to me through my Web site, which is www.spellingbeebook.com.
There's sort of an initial session of 90 minutes where I would do some quizzing, for spelling and for vocabulary to make sure that the kid is of the right caliber.
The rest of the session is to make sure that we all understand the study method and have a system for approaching the studying and the revising.
I teach different levels of students. I do have group classes that are for beginners, intermediate and advanced.
Generally, the one-on-one classes I reserve for the advanced kids who have the potential to win.
How many sessions did you have with Dev Shah?
I worked with Dev for three years, actually.
The first year, we just did an hour a week and for at least two of those years, we were doing two hours a week.
Most of the kids only do an hour a week, which is kind of the standard frequency. But Dev and his parents were very dedicated and committed. We must have worked together for hundreds of hours.
You been doing it for 13 years, did you have a hunch that Dev would win?
You do develop a sense for these things. There were a couple of kids this year, who I would not have been surprised if they won. It was nice that Dev won because it was his last year of eligibility.
One thing that happened with Dev was that he didn't make it to Scripps last year. He actually got out at his regional Bee in Florida and it was very devastating for him and his family. I was disappointed too.
A lot of kids in that position might have said, I'm done with spelling, I'm giving up this is too hard. But Dev didn't.
Deval, his father, and his whole family doubled down and decided we're gonna study twice as hard. I encouraged him in that, but it took a little while.
I think that this victory is a testament to his dedication and his hard work and his commitment to not giving up.
When did you decide to make this into a career and how did your parents react to this unusual career choice?
Initially, in 2007, when I started doing spelling, my father was kind of skeptical. Both my parents are doctors. My mother was much more supportive.
Despite not really having a background in literature and English, she became my coach. My dad eventually came around, because one of the years I got the word pyelonephritis, which is like an inflammation of the pelvis, and I got it right.
Becoming a coach was not something I really had in mind when I was spelling myself. I remember thinking that there weren't really that many resources available for people to study.
After my last Bee in 2008, I started writing what would become Words of Wisdom, my first textbook.
After I was no longer eligible to compete, the girl who won the local Bee in Cleveland, which is where I'm from, approached us for advice.
I shared the draft of my book and started working with Anamika Veeramani ad hoc. We worked together in 2009 and she did a really good job.
Then in 2010, which is her last year of eligibility, we worked more seriously together and she won the Spelling Bee in 2010. That was when I said to myself, I could be an actual coach and turn it into something a little bit more formal.
There's a lot of chatter about how Spelling Bee has lost its cachet in America and become a little predictable. If the organizers asked you for a solution, what would that be to bring it back to its former glory?
I should just preface this by saying that there's only so much I'd be to be able to say. I would repeat one of the things that I said in 2019 when they had the octo-champs. I had two of the eight champions that year.
The caliber of the kids and their preparedness has gone up; you need to ask harder words.
In 2019, the kinds of words that they were asking in the finals were not difficult enough to get a finalist out. Since then, Scripps has taken a lot of measures to make sure that they never have co-champions.
One of those is adding vocabulary and making it sudden death and then the other is the spell off.
I think that those will be successful in preventing co-champions from now on.
One of the reasons that a lot of these changes have taken place has to do with TV and TV budgets.
When I was in the Bee in 2008, it was on ABC primetime which the most watched thing in the United States. It has shifted away from ABC and then away from ESPN, which is a shame.
Being on ESPN symbolized a certain cultural acceptance, that this was as important as tennis.
I also understand why they've had to do that. It really is more economic than anything else.
That being said, I think they have tried to adapt to the new circumstances.
My personal philosophy is that the Spelling Bee has a chance to showcase a lot of linguistic diversity.
English has words from pretty much any language in the world.
If I were in charge, I would like to restore some of the linguistic diversity. But I think it is hard to be a word panelist and there are a lot of things they have to consider.
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com