Non-studying helps student win national word challenge

West Windsor sixth-grader takes home college scholarship.

By: Emily Craighead
   WEST WINDSOR — Sixth-grader Ming-Ming Tran’s favorite literary heroine is cursed (by a well-intentioned fairy) with obedience, but she finds ingenious and unexpected ways to get around obeying orders.
   In a way, Ella — of "Ella Enchanted," by Gail Carson Levine —inspired the strategy that made Ming-Ming champion of this year’s Reader’s Digest National Word Power Challenge.
   The Grover Middle School student said she loves words, but she doesn’t like studying, so she found a way to make the task easier.
   "I tried reading the dictionary, but it took too long," she said.
   Instead, she said, "I figured out a way to get around the words," culling them from SAT vocabulary lists and splitting the words into their prefixes, suffixes and roots.
   Ming-Ming won a $25,000 scholarship in the Word Power Challenge held April 19 at Disney-MGM Studios in Florida. The contest reportedly attracts 1.4 million students in grades 4-8 nationwide.
   To reach the national competition, Ming-Ming went through a series of school-administered and state contests.
   She earned the national championship after several tie-breakers, when she identified the word "contrite" among three selections to describe the rabbit in the sentence: "When the white rabbit said, ‘Oh the duchess, won’t she be savage if I’ve kept her waiting!’"
   Words have been a part of Ming-Ming’s life since she was 2½ years old, her mother Angela said.
   "I found out she could recognize letters, so I started her with ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ (by Dr. Seuss)," Ms. Tran said.
   It was only a couple of years before she moved on to the King James version of the Bible.
   Today, she likes to read fantasy books, especially stories about dragons.
   Ming-Ming said she knows words will take her far — after all, you need them to read, to know what you’re buying in the store, and for so much more.
   Language arts is one of her favorite subjects, but she also excels at math and science. Her goal is to become a doctor — to help people like her grandfather, who died of lung cancer, and her ailing godmother.
   "The reason I asked her to consider this is because I think that is one way she can serve people more and, for us, it’s one way she can practice the Gospel," Ms. Tran said.
   Ming-Ming said she has learned more lessons than simply the meaning of "chronological" and "juxtapose" over the past several months.
   "I learned you have to try to be optimistic, because I was feeling very pessimistic (at first)," she said.