National Vocabulary Championship article

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MarleysGh0st · #1 Post by **MarleysGh0st** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:44 am

From the regional playoffs in Nashville:

http://www.fairviewobserver.com/apps/pb ... 321/MTCN06

The competition consisted of three rounds, two of which were timed. In the final round, each student was asked a question about a word in paragraph and had to answer within 10 seconds.

Each student also had two lifelines, one that allowed an extra 10 seconds and one that allowed a pass. Brian Swenson, 16, a junior at Montgomery Bell Academy, won.

"It's similar to the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? environment," said John Jackson, spokesman for the Game Show Network, which conceived the idea with The Princeton Review.

PlacentiaSoccerMom · #2 Post by **PlacentiaSoccerMom** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:45 am

Jeff is trying to get Maddie interested, but her schedule is pretty full.

mrkelley23 · #3 Post by **mrkelley23** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:46 am

My son took the online qualifying test for this.

I found it interesting, since there were absolutely no controls to keep people from cheating. For instance, I was reading over his shoulder for most of it, and I could've supplied him with several answers, but did not. Only the fact that the test is timed kept people from looking up all the answers.

That alone would have turned me off to it.

MarleysGh0st · #4 Post by **MarleysGh0st** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 9:49 am

mrkelley23 wrote:I found it interesting, since there were absolutely no controls to keep people from cheating. For instance, I was reading over his shoulder for most of it, and I could've supplied him with several answers, but did not. Only the fact that the test is timed kept people from looking up all the answers.

That alone would have turned me off to it.

Presumably, the on-site regionals would weed out any who had cheated. Meanwhile, everyone in the country had access to that online test, regardless of their geographic remoteness.

Phone Game, anyone?

earendel · #5 Post by **earendel** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 10:05 am

mrkelley23 wrote:My son took the online qualifying test for this.

I found it interesting, since there were absolutely no controls to keep people from cheating. For instance, I was reading over his shoulder for most of it, and I could've supplied him with several answers, but did not. Only the fact that the test is timed kept people from looking up all the answers.

That alone would have turned me off to it.

The same is true of the J! online test - only the time limit precludes someone from Googling the answers. The second test is supposed to catch people who might have done that.