Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

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By MILA KOUMPILOVA, St. Paul Pioneer Press


      BURNSVILLE, Minn. (AP) — One of the first purchases Jasmine
Lim's dad made when he came to Minnesota from Malaysia was a set of
phonetics tapes for his young daughters. Before long, Jasmine, her
mom and her sister lugged home dozens of books from the public
library.


      In the Twin Cities regional spelling bee, the Burnsville
eighth-grader faced a two-time winner from Edina after six grueling
hours of competition. A veteran contestant herself, Jasmine and her
older sister, Savannah, have won three of the past four
Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district bees, outspelling thousands of
fellow middle schoolers.


      Jasmine traces her curiosity about words back to growing up in
an immigrant family of readers where four languages were spoken.


      "As first-generation immigrants, we are more interested in
language," she said. "We're interested in opening our minds to
cultural things."


      At the March 12 seven-county bee at the Minnesota History
Center, Jasmine looked supremely calm. She sat with her back
straight and her hands resting in her lap as other spellers took
turns at the microphone. The winner would get an all-expenses-paid
trip to compete at the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington,
D.C., in May.


      At the microphone, too, Jasmine was unflappable, spelling
without hesitation: charpoy, alchemy, zephyr, mukhtar, vorlage,
dossier, Baedeker.


      "Oh, my goodness, here's another difficult word," her mom,
Fheelan Hui, would say to herself. "Does she know how to spell
that?"


      Jasmine's family moved to the area from Malaysia in 1998, when
her dad, Vincent Lim, was recruited to work on an expansion of the
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Jasmine was 2 at the
time.


      Her parents spoke Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay and English. Her
father wanted the girls to speak perfect English - hence, the
phonetics tapes. Jasmine was reading and writing by age 4, stunning
parents at her preschool by reading signs out loud.


      Before long, she and her sister read and wrote all the time.
"My mom would hide those library books and only give them back to
us when we finished our homework," Savannah said.


      In fifth grade, Jasmine was the Midwest winner of a national
essay competition sponsored by pen-maker Bic that drew more than
11,000 entries.


      More recently, said language arts teacher Brad Sorensen, "The
work she turns in is closer to the 12th grade or college level than
the eighth grade. Her grasp of the English language is just beyond
anything you could believe."


      Savannah was the first to get hooked on spelling bees, finishing
third at the metro-area regional competition in 2008. Jasmine
followed suit. Her sister taught her to guess the spelling from the
origin of words, one clue spelling bee judges provide for
contestants.


      For Jasmine, spelling bees held instant appeal. She has played
the piano since age 6, recently winning a competition to perform
with a MacPhail Orchestra in Minneapolis in April.


      "I like to perform," she said. "Being on stage for spelling
bees was that same kind of excitement."


      Jasmine won her district competition last year and this
February, when some 3,000 students in grades five to eight took
part. At the regional contest last year, she finished sixth.


      For her second turn at regionals, she said she didn't get around
to going over word lists until the night before, after her piano
lesson. She is a busy girl: jazz band, Mandarin lessons, student
council, a student leadership group and, starting up again this
spring, track and field.


      Still, even as the competition entered nail-biting territory,
she was poised. For three rounds, none of the remaining six
spellers missed a word. Jasmine stumbled upon the first word that
got her to hesitate and pepper the judge with questions:
jackanapes, a mischievous child. When she spelled it correctly, her
mom gasped with relief.


      Then, Jasmine and the other remaining contestant, two-time
winner Anja Beth Swoap, had to wait until four students took a
written test for third place. When Jasmine stepped back up to the
microphone, the word "garniture" tripped her up.


      A part of her was relieved: She had worried it would be tough to
juggle prep for the Washington, D.C., competition with the rest of
her pursuits.


      "I am pretty happy with second place," she said. "I didn't
even expect I'd come this far."

Gallery

Education News

Jasmine Lim, a Burnsville eighth-grader, traces her curiosity about words back to growing up in an immigrant family of readers where four languages were spoken.

Spelling showdown was made for multilingual student

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