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Mouctika Paluri, a 12-year-old who attends Creek Valley Middle School in Carrollton, made the national finals two years ago as a representative of Michigan, she finished second in Dallas County last year, and, three years ago, she finished sixth in the nation in a contest for spellers of Indian background.
In fact, when she came to the U.S. from Singapore at age 5 and was tested for academic placement at school, Mouctika even challenged her teachers to increase the difficulty of the spelling test.
"The teacher asked her to spell words like duck and cat ," said Ram Paluri, Mouctika’s father. "She told the teacher she would rather spell interesting words."
Mouctika, who is sponsored by The Dallas Morning News in the national contest that starts today in Washington, says she was inspired to try for the national spelling title when she saw televised coverage of the championship in 2004.
"I thought it would be really cool if I could win, so I started studying," she said.
But in 2006, her performance on the written, multiple-choice portion of the testing meant Mouctika was eliminated before the second round. However, she did get to stand on the stage and spell one word in front of the audience, and she got it right.
"There were so many lights and people, it was kind of nerve-racking," she said. "It’s fun up there."
This time around, she’s better prepared, said Mr. Paluri, noting that his daughter had to go through five rounds of competition to make the national bee. And Mouctika’s enthusiasm for spelling has rubbed off so much that her 3-year-old brother, trained by their mother, is getting interested, too.
Mouctika’s ambitions are fairly modest this year – she hopes to at least make it to the nationally televised final round Friday.

dallasnews.com