Champion speller Chaicharn reigns supreme at NJ Spelling Bee 2016

She won the final of the prestigious English spelling event at Rangsit University in Pathum Thani on Saturday.
Chaicharn will receive the trophy from HRH Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. She will also receive a scholarship to study English in the United States along with her adviser.
Contestants who placed second to fourth also received a trophy.
Chaicharn said she was very proud to be champion.
“I felt so happy and excited because at that moment I kept thinking to myself that I have to always try my best, and then when it worked out I felt really proud for myself, for my parents, for my teacher and of course my adviser, Thep, who brought me here,” she said.
The NJ Spelling Bee 2016 started in August with more than 20,000 students participating the online round across the country. After that was concluded, 500 students competed in the regional round before the final on Saturday.
The final had four rounds, starting with “multiple mind benders”, which involved 100 regional representatives having to choose the correct word by answering “a” or “b” after listening to the word and the sample sentence spoken by the emcees.
When both words were spelt correctly, contestants had to select the correct word with the same meaning as in the sample sentence.
The 50 competitors with the highest scores went through to the second round.
In the second round, competitors wrote the words spoken by the emcees. No sample sentence was provided. Competitors were knocked out of the competition if they spelt a word incorrectly. The competition continued until just 10 competitors remained. In the third round, the 10 competitors teamed up in pairs and had to guess words based on clues given. For each pair, five words had to be guessed with three clues each.
The emcees read the clues one by one and those who answered correctly got one point. The top scorers from each pair passed through to the final round. In the final round, the competitors listen to words spoken by the emcees and spelt them out orally. The list of words was the same for each of the five competitors. Within 60 seconds, the competitor who spelt the most words correctly was the national winner.

Increasing number of participants
The NJ Spelling Bee has been going almost two decades. The popularity of the competition can be seen in the increasing number of participants each year.
The compeition was born from a collaboration between Nation Multimedia Group and NJ Digital, which saw the importance of the English language to young people in Thailand, especially with the introduction of the Asian Economic Community.
The NJ Spelling Bee aims to stimulate Thailand’s youth to learn English.
“We also look forward to receiving the cooperation from educational institutions, government agencies, and private sector as always,” a spokesperson for the event said.