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Sixty-two per cent of Americans got 'embarrassed' wrong, against 54 per cent of Britons who struggled with the word in a survey last year
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Americans are worse at spelling than Britons, with more than half unable to spell "embarrassed", "liaison" and "millennium".
Despite the popularity of school spelling bee competitions, adults in the US fared poorly in a survey comparing how English speakers on both sides of the Atlantic deal with commonly misspelt words.
Sixty-two per cent of Americans got "embarrassed" wrong, against 54 per cent of Britons who struggled with the word in a survey last year.
Adults in the US performed less well on most of the ten words tested, including millennium (52 per cent wrong, against 43 per cent in UK), liaison (61 per cent to 54 per cent) and "accommodation" (42 per cent to 36 per cent).
Only "definitely" and "friend" were spelt correctly by more Americans.
Professor Edward Baranowski of California State University said that the results reflected the "horrific" drop-out rates of US high schools.
"This certainly puts an eventual strain upon the universities, which must devote lots of resources to remedial education," he said.
Jack Bovill of the Spelling Society, which commissioned the research, said the high inaccuracy rates in both countries showed the need for the English spelling system to be modernized to improve literacy.
"When asked, only a quarter of adults thought they had a problem with spelling. The answers in the test prove that this is far from the case," he said. "What is holding the UK and the USA back is the irregular spelling system."
The US survey involving a sample of 1,000 adults was carried out online by Ipsos MORI last month, with the method based on a survey of 1,000 Britons in April last year.
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(Agencies)
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美國人在拼寫單詞方面不如英國人，超過一半的美國人不會拼“embarrassed”、“liaison”和“millennium”。
盡管拼字比賽在美國學校十分流行，但一項比較大西洋兩岸說英語人群的調查顯示，在拼寫容易拼錯的單詞方面，美國成年人表現得相當糟糕。
調查顯示，62%的美國人將“embarrassed”拼錯，而去年的一項調查顯示，英國有54%的人不會拼寫該詞。
從十個詞的測試結果來看，美國人在大多數詞語上的表現不如英國人，其中包括millennium（拼錯率：美國52%；英國43%）、liaison（美國61%、英國54%）和accommodation（美國42%、英國36%）。
僅definitely和friend兩個詞，美國人拼對的比率較高。
加利福尼亞州立大學的愛德華?巴拉諾維斯基教授說，調查結果反映出美國中學“可怕”的輟學率。
他說：“這最終給大學施加了壓力，學校必須在補救教育上投入大量資源。”
委托開展該調查的“拼寫學會”的杰克?邦維爾說，英美兩國在單詞拼寫方面的高出錯率表明，必須推動英語拼寫系統的現代化，以提高民眾的讀寫能力。
“在調查過程中，僅有四分之一的成年人覺得自己在單詞拼寫方面有問題。但測試結果則表明情況要嚴重得多。不規范的拼寫系統是造成這一問題的主要原因。”
這項美國調查由益普索?莫里調查機構于上月在網上開展，共有一千名成年人參加，調查方法主要依據去年四月的一項共有一千名英國人參與的調查。
（英語點津姍姍編輯） |
