Daijiworld Media Network
Dubai, Feb 13: Fifteen-year-old Shaun Fernandes is UAE’s Kellogg's Coco Pops Spelling Bee Champion. A grade X student of Cambridge International School, Dubai, the teenager spelt every word right in a gruelling eight-hour contest to clinch the title and is also taking home a prize money of Dh 25,000.
The Kellogg's Coco Pops Spelling Bee Championship was held on February 10 at Motiongate at Dubai Parks and Resorts and had 12 rounds, participated by 90 finalists from different zones across the UAE.
Shaun who was the zonal champion had to spell complicated words such as ‘schefflera’, 'malacology' and others during different rounds. He clinched the title spelling 'xenolith', a word of Greek origin which means "a rock trapped inside another rock".
Speaking to Daijiworld, Shaun says that he first participated in spelling bee contest two years ago but lost by misspelling the word 'vesicant’ which means a chemical agent that causes burns and destruction of skin tissue. However, he took up the defeat as a challenge and started preparations for the Kellogg’s contest in September 2017. “I watched a lot of videos on YouTube to understand the contest. In Spelling Bee, it is not just about the spelling. Phonetics, the origin of the word plays a major role. For example, a Latin word is pronounced differently and spelt differently,” he says.
Shaun says he is inspired by the movie ‘Akila the Bee’. By learning the words by Language of Origin, checking whether the word is a noun/adjective and understanding the meaning of the word has helped him a lot.
Shaun says he did not expect to become a champion but had earnestly prepared for the competition. “Even when I was on a holiday in Lonavala during New Year’s Eve, I was learning new words. My mom has been my biggest support, as she used to revise with me,” he says.
Apart from being a spelling enthusiast, Shaun plays the keyboard and has also passed his Grade 3 exams for Trinity College of London. He is the winner of Big Idea Instrumental Music competition in the UAE in 2015 and also the finalist for Kidzstars Dubai Festival City twice in 2015 and 2014. In 2015, he played the keyboard blindfolded.
Shaun has Mangalorean as well as Goan roots. Shaun’s father Vincent Fernandes works as a Cyber Security Expert and hails from Bantwal and mother Sarah Fernandes hails from Mumbai. Shaun has a younger sister Simonne, who too may follow her brother’s footsteps by participating in the spelling bee in the future.
“Shaun is a hardworking boy. If he sets his mind onto something, he achieves it. The competition was a nail-biting one. We were nervous and in that excitement, my husband forgot to press the record button for the winning video,” laughs Sarah.
Shaun won Dh 2,500 as the grade 10 topper, Dh7,500 when he won the zonal championship and Dh 25,000 when he became the winner for the Championship.
“I aspire to be a neurosurgeon and have set aside the prize money for my future education,” he says.
Currently preparing for his term 2 assessments at school, he has also been gifted a fully paid trip to the US to witness the Scripps Spelling Bee contest in Washington DC.