Malvern Middle Schooler Heads to National Spelling Bee

A Malvern sixth grader takes the stage Wednesday to start competing in the 88th Scripps National Spelling Bee today in National Harbor, Maryland.

Aakash Narayan, 12, and the 284 other spellers took a 26-question multiple-choice spelling and vocabulary test at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. The test is considered the first round of the bee.

The spellers will take to the convention center’s stage Wednesday to spell words aloud. Contestants spelling the first word correctly will advance to the third round.

According to his biography posted on Bee’s website, Aakash, a student at Great Valley Middle School in Malvern, wants to become an investment banker, inspired by entrepreneurs such as Warren Buffet and Elon Musk.

“Mount Everest tops the list of places he’d most like to visit because of its ultimate serenity, but he finds a bit of tranquility in daily life by listening to Beethoven’s classical compositions,” says his biography.

Aakash is also a member of the United State Chess Federation and enjoys a good game of cricket.

Spellers correctly spelling their third-round word can be among the maximum of 50 spellers advancing to Thursday’s semifinals if their test score was high enough.

A misspelling in either the second or third round means the contestant is eliminated.

Aakaash is sponsored by the Chester County Intermediate Unit after he qualified for the national bee by winning the county’s competition in February, by spelling “novanglian.” The word is an adjective referring to a characteristic of New England.

Seven winners of the Scripps National Spelling Bee have come from Pennsylvania, the most recent in 2011, when Sukanya Roy of Wilkes-Barre correctly spelled cymotrichous.

The bee is intended “to inspire children to improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives,” according to Paige Kimble, the bee’s executive director and 1981 champion.

The bee is limited to students in eighth grade or below, with contestants ranging in age from 9 to 15 years old.

The field consists of students who won locally sponsored bees in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, along with American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Department of Defense schools in Europe.

Seven foreign nations are also represented -- the Bahamas, Canada, China, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan and South Korea.

The second and third rounds will be shown by the broadband network ESPN3 from 5-8:45 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.-2:45 p.m. (Pacific Daylight Time) Wednesday. The semifinalists will be announced at the conclusion of the third round.

The semifinals will be shown on ESPN2 from 7-10 a.m. Thursday and the finals from 5-7 p.m. Thursday on ESPN.

All of the coverage can also be seen on the WatchESPN app.

Throughout the competition, ESPN3 and WatchESPN will have a multiple- choice “Play-Along” version, where viewers will have a one-in-three chance to pick the correct spelling.

Informational boxes highlighting the word’s etymology, definition, pronunciation and part of speech, along with live tweets and the speller’s biography have been added to the “Play-Along” version.

The winner will receive $30,000 from Scripps, which owns television stations, cable networks and newspapers; $5,000 from the makers of the multi- player word game Words With Friends; a $2,500 U.S. savings bond and complete reference library from the dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster; and $1,100 in reference works from Encyclopaedia Britannica, and a three-year membership to Britannica Online Premium.

(Photo: Mark Bowen/Scripps National Spelling Bee)