There will be a record number of students competing at this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee.
More than 230 students qualified through the new program called RSVBee.
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One of those students is Ritvik Teegavarapu, a student at Eagles Landing Middle School in western Boca Raton.
Ritvik started competitive spelling in January all in a way to earn extra credit. He says in order to prepare for the competition, he is studying root words.
"There are 450,000 words in the dictionary, and no person goes and actually memorizes them all. So, I go by prefixes, suffixes. That way when I go on stage I dissect the word. So, (if it's) a German word, I know that it is five consonants, symbols and I know now how to break up the word and it becomes much, much easier for me to spell," said Teegavarapu.
The Scripps National Spelling Bee takes place May 27 to June 1 near Washington, D.C.