8th grader wins Idaho spelling bee with correct call on ‘Taiwan’ – Focus Taiwan

San Francisco, Feb. 18 (CNA) American eighth grader Kayla Tenney Villalobos, who took the queen bee title at a nail-biting spelling competitors in Idaho on Feb. 11, gained the profitable edge when she accurately spelled the phrase “Taiwan.”

Along with hoisting the championship trophy on the twentieth North Idaho Spelling Bee, Villalobos additionally gained a money prize of US$1,000 (NT$30,388), a one-year subscription to america’ on-line variations of Encyclopedia Britannica and Webster’s Dictionary, and a ticket to Washington to compete within the Scripps Nationwide Spelling Bee later this 12 months.

“I am sort of in shock,” Villalobos mentioned to the press after she scored the win together with her appropriate spelling of “Taiwan.”

“I did not count on to win, she mentioned. “I used to be like, ‘Possibly I will get prime 10.’”

Among the many 20 different opponents from the Idaho Panhandle, Villalobos’s strongest rival was sixth grader Erik Brunner, who was neck and neck together with her in Spherical 16 amid a sequence of misspellings and completed in second place.

Beneath the competitors guidelines, bees are entitled to a shot at redemption within the subsequent spherical if all of the energetic contributors misspell phrases.

Within the 18th spherical, Brunner missed one other phrase, which put Villalobos by means of to Spherical 19. When she was requested to spell “Taiwan,” she made the precise name and thus took the queen bee title.

She is a pupil on the Coeur d’Alene Constitution Academy, which has produced three different winners in earlier editions of the competitors.

The twentieth North Idaho Spelling Bee was sponsored by the American state’s Idaho Character Basis, whose founder Dan Pinkerton informed CNA mentioned that “Taiwan” just isn’t thought-about a really troublesome phrase to spell.

In a telephone interview, he mentioned all of the phrases are randomly chosen, and people who challenged the opponents most included “parlay” and “tawdry.”