The 17-year-old, homeschooled girl's passion for reading may pay off today when she will compete against 49 other high school students from around the country in the National Vocabulary Championship. Along with the title that goes with first place, the winner will receive $40,000 in scholarship money to be deposited in a 529 Higher Education Savings Plan.

The National Vocabulary Championship, which will be conducted in a game show format, will be held at the New York Public Library in New York City. It will be broadcast April 15 on the Game Show Network at 8 p.m.

“I was looking for college scholarships online,” Million said. “I found a little blurb about it on Fastweb (Fastweb.com) and there was an online qualifying exam that reminded me of the SAT.

The next step was to qualify regionally, so Million traveled to a test center in Tallahassee in December. There were several test sites throughout the state and one other Florida student, Saba Rahman, of Palm Beach, also qualified.

Million said she has intensified her reading and is trying to learn new words from the dictionary. The competition will test the students' knowledge of definitions, roots, antonyms and synonyms, said Deb McBride of GSN.

“I'm an independent learner,” Million said of her home-schooling routine. “My parents are always there to support me but I can teach myself in a lot of ways.

“I read all sorts of things — classics, English grammar books, comparative literature books,” she said. “In fact, I write my own books on girls in the Victorian age. Words have been an important part of my life for as long as I can remember.

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