It was difficult to tell who was more nervous, the teams or their teachers, at yesterday’s final.

“I was holding my breath every time they spelt a word,” said Vicky Booton , who trained the team from Fairwater High School in Gwent.

English teachers have been drilling the team members for months — catching them unawares in the corridors and quizzing them on conundrums such as rhododendron and connoisseur.

“It’s created a real buzz around the school,” said Roberta Granville, head of English at Brighton College Prep. But pupils have also made sure their teachers’ spelling is spot on. “Team members come up and challenge me: ‘Do you know how to spell haemorrhage?’. Luckily I got it right — otherwise it would have been a bit humiliating.”

Ms Booton, said her own spelling has benefited because of the Spelling Bee. “Training the children has made me read more and improve my own spelling.”

The Times Spelling Bee website allows players to test their spelling and record their personal best scores. “The team has been practising on the website in their free time, at home and in school,” Ms Granville said.

Other pupils have also caught the spelling bug and helped to test team members. Ms Booton said: “We have been using the form groups to help them train and their classmates have been learning to spell new words as well. They text a lot and in their books there is a lot of text speak but it’s clear now that they are thinking about it before they write it down.”

Most children now spend so much time texting and on MSN instant messenger that they forget to spell properly, Ms Granville said. “It’s like having two different languages. But the competition has heightened everybody’s awareness of how spelling can be fun and everyone has developed an interest in spelling. They are realising that the formal English is a lot of fun to do properly.”

The Brighton team have a “lucky dictionary” that has accompanied them to every round of the competition. “It’s huge. We randomly open it up and pick one of the words and ask the team to spell it,” Ms Granville said. “A wide vocabulary is key to success.”

The bee has “stirred up a lot of excitement and it’s nice because it’s often sport that has all the competitions so just for a change it’s something academic”, the Brighton teacher added.

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