4th-Grade Spelling Adventures

Nick Delgado

9/26/05

Spelling Test

1. make

2. take
3. bite
4. trade

5. dive

6. hate
7. shake
8. wake

9. wipe

10. rule
......
25. space
26. scrape

27. plane
28. stole

29. twice

30. surprize [surprise]
31. liqudate [liquidate]
32. sindacate [syndicate]

33. carbohydrate

34. exzagerate [exaggerate]
35. franchize [franchise]
36. critisise [criticize]

37. desisefe [decisive]

38. hitmitise [hypnotize]

39. lownsome [lonesome]
40. siclone [cyclone]


The above is a recent spelling quiz that Nick, one of my little brothers, took in his quest to dominate the fourth grade. It is letter for letter exactly as he took it, with #11 through #24 omitted. Correct answers are in italics, and correct spellings of incorrect words are bracketed.

So far he's experienced sporadic success and mediocre results.

I'll probably get more "going to hell" points for this, but I get a kick out of spelling errors in general, and the academic escapades of my younger siblings in particular. Ah, 4th-grade memories. It's good to see that they still demand that students fold their looseleaf in half, creating the well-known and ubiquitous second column.

Let's do a little play-by-play of this quiz.

- We can note that my little brother started off this quiz on fire, as we see that he is torturing the test with a respectable score of what turned out to be 28 for 29.

-#30 through #40 are a completely different story. After Nick has his way with the first 29 questions, the quiz turns the tables abruptly - as soon as the challenge words enter the fray. My brother obviously didn't study the challenge words, and the quiz fulfills its revenge by terrorizing him for 10 questions. Elementary school curriculum has the last laugh, as Nick erroneously answers 9 out of the last 10 words.

- Gallant attempts are made to spell decisive (#37) and hypnotize (#38). Both attempts fail miserably.

- The highlight of the quiz is undoubtedly #33. Out of nowehere, in the midst of a massacre at the hands of the quiz, Nick manages to spell the word carbohydrate correctly. He comes nowhere close to such spelling fidelity for the remainder of the exercise. It's really quite unexpected. My theory is that Nick has seen the word 'carbohydrate' so many times on the nutrition labels of candy bars, sodas, and energy drinks that it was a no-brainer for him.