MaRRS International Spelling Bee is one of the Spelling Bee competition held in Asia for school children. It is conducted by MaRRS Intellectual Services Pvt. Ltd. The assessment and learning materials for the M.I.S.B is created in association with expert faculty from the English and Foreign Language University,Hyderabad. The objective of the competition is to enhance the spelling and literary skills of children by encouraging them to explore the English language, expand their vocabulary and improve their communication and comprehension skills. Unlike a normal Spelling Bee, the M.I.S.B has been designed as a motivational learning programme with training modules built in. The eleven rounds of the competition goes beyond just spellings and tests almost all the elements of the English Language.
Competition
The competition was started in 2003, and now close to a million students participate in the competition annually.
The Second International Championship was conducted on 8 November 2009 at two venues, Delhi and Dubai. Twenty students from the Dubai Center and sixty students from the Indian Center qualified for the final round. Shivani Nirgudkar of Thakur Public School, Mumbai was adjudged the best performer of the competition.
The Fifth International Championship was held at GCC international School, Thane, Maharasthra, Mumbai. Sidharth Ramchandra of the Brigade School, Karnataka was the best performer and Abhinand-P of Palghat Lions School, Kerala was the Star speller.
Rounds and levels
The competition begins from the school level and moves on to the First National Assessment, State, National and finally to the International Level. The students are divided into six categories based on their grades at school. They face written and oral rounds. The written rounds are rounds such as Dictation, Jumbled Letters, Word Application, Crossword, Idioms, and Phrasal Verbs. The oral rounds involve Spell It, pronunciation, and finally Antonyms and Synonyms round. In 2012, two new rounds were added from the State Oral and National Written rounds onwards. The Word Origin round deals with etymology, while the Supra segmentals round is divided into two — one with the marking of stress and syllables and the other with the identification of the underlined letter's pronunciation.
