By Dana Klosner-Wehner
That love has led Klengler to the semifinals in the Long Island Spelling Bee. She is one of only 31 students participating in the finals that will take place on March 19 at Plainview-Old Bethpage Middle School.
The Spelling Bee, sponsored by Long Island Jewish World, in cooperation with the Long Island Power Authority and National Grid, started with thousands of students from 800 schools across Nassau and Suffolk. It was open to grades 4-8. The winners of those bees went on to the district level. The 89 district level winners participated in a written test where they had an hour to go over a list of 50 words, pick out the misspelled words and rewrite them correctly.
Klengler studied for months to prepare for the bees. She used a book called, “Spell It,” that was distributed to all the children from the Scripps Howard News Service, which sponsors the national competition.
“I would look at the words and have someone quiz me,” Klengler said. “Then I would look up the words I got wrong. “
“You learn how to spell different words and find out what they mean and use them in everyday situations,” she said.
One of her favorite words is “sesquipedalian” which is a word that means given to or characterized by the use of long words.
“The English language has a word for everything,” Klengler said.
She also studied the origins of words and the word patterns for each different language.
“If it’s a Greek word they would use ‘ph’ instead of ‘f’,” she said.
“Sometimes I learned how a word made it into the English language,” she said. “I learned about eponyms which are words that come from people’s names.”
The entire Klengler family is into words.
“When I was little my grandparents would quiz me on random words,” Klengler said. “They taught me how to spell Czechoslovakia.”
Her father, Ronald, is an attorney and says he’s always been into words.
“I’ve always been into words and word origins,” Ronald said. “I had to write a paper in eighth grade to get into Stuyvesant High School in New York City. At that time my ambition was to be an English teacher. I always loved grammar and words in general.”
Klengler follows in her father’s footsteps.
“She just loves reading,” said her mother, Sharon, a teaching assistant in the Elmont Union Free School District. “She’s always got a book. I have to pull them out of her hand. Sometimes she’s almost late for school because she’s reading in the bathroom.”
Klengler wants to grow up to be an editor, Sharon said.
“She hasn’t narrowed it down to newspapers, magazine or books yet,” Sharon said. “She just thinks it would be really cool. Then she could read all she wants. She loves grammar, spelling and proofreading.”
“She’s a winner no matter what she does in the finals because she’s gotten this far,” Sharon said.
The winner of the Long Island Bee will go to Washington, D.C. to compete in the national Scripps Howard News Service Spelling Bee held May 26-28.
