By Dana Williams
But West Hempstead resident Gabe Berkowitz says with a lot of practice and a little patience, these words and others can become a cinch to spell.
And Berkowitz, 10, could be considered as a bit of an expert since he recently became a finalist in the Long Island competition of the annual Scripps Howard News Service Spelling Bee.
After taking a timed, written spelling test during the competition's semi-finals at the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County in Plainview on Feb. 10, Berkowitz became one of 31 students who qualified to compete in the finals on March 19.
The competition features students across Long Island who are in fourth through eighth grade and who attend a public, private or religious school, officials said. Along with challenging English words, students are also asked to spell words from other languages including Spanish, German and French, among others.
When he first learned that he qualified for the finals, Berkowitz simply said he was both surprised and happy. "I was very surprised when I found out I made it to the finals because I thought I spelled a lot of the words wrong," Berkowitz said. "But, when I found out, it just put me in a really happy mood."
The fifth grader is a student at the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County in West Hempstead, which serves kindergarten through sixth grade. The school holds spelling bees of its own each year to determine which students will move on to the semi-finals.
"Each class runs its own spelling bee first and the two winners from each class advances to the school-wide spelling bee," explained Barbara Schwartz, a fourth-grade teacher at the school, who has ran the spelling competition for the past 10 years. "We had 16 children participate in the school-wide spelling bee this year ... and the kids who really read different types of genres are usually the better spellers."
Berkowitz came in second in his school's spelling bee last month but the first place winner declined to participate in the next round of the competition, which gave the fifth grader his ticket to the semi-finals.
To prepare for the finals, which is the oral spelling portion of the competition, the student said he practices spelling dozens of words for about a half hour each day.
"Merriam-Webster has this packet with words that the instructors at the semi-finals gave to us, so I have just been reviewing the words in the packet everyday," Berkowitz said. "It's the same as studying for a spelling test because I'm really just going over the words a lot and making sure I spell them right."
And Berkowitz's success as an orthographer comes as no surprise to his parents, who said, he showed signs of enjoying spelling as a toddler.
"Since he started speaking, I always noticed that he was into letters and when he watched shows like 'Sesame Street,' he was always trying to make out the words on the show," his father Seth recalled. "He's a very smart kid and he has really given this spelling bee his best effort, so we're very proud of him."
The finals will be held at Old Bethpage Middle School on Thursday at 5 p.m. The winner will advance to the National Scripps Howard News Service Spelling Bee, which will take place May 26-28 in Washington, D.C.
Comments about this story? DWilliams@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 205.
