The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

I recently read about a study that was done on National Spelling Bee contestants. The study compared intelligence and hours spent studying words and language.

The interesting fact that was revealed by the research was that intelligence was not the major determiner of success at the national level of competitive spelling. Rather, a more reliable measure to figure out who would advance further in competition was the number of hours a week the student spent studying language and spelling.

Students who put in more hours tended to do better. To be fair, intelligence played a part as well, but willi...