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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(guó)人在拼寫單詞方面不如英國(guó)人，超過(guò)一半的美國(guó)人不會(huì)拼“embarrassed”、“l(fā)iaison”和“millennium”。
盡管拼字比賽在美國(guó)學(xué)校十分流行，但一項(xiàng)比較大西洋兩岸說(shuō)英語(yǔ)人群的調(diào)查顯示，在拼寫容易拼錯(cuò)的單詞方面，美國(guó)成年人表現(xiàn)得相當(dāng)糟糕。
調(diào)查顯示，62%的美國(guó)人將“embarrassed”拼錯(cuò)，而去年的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查顯示，英國(guó)有54%的人不會(huì)拼寫該詞。
從十個(gè)詞的測(cè)試結(jié)果來(lái)看，美國(guó)人在大多數(shù)詞語(yǔ)上的表現(xiàn)不如英國(guó)人，其中包括millennium（拼錯(cuò)率：美國(guó)52%；英國(guó)43%）、liaison（美國(guó)61%、英國(guó)54%）和accommodation（美國(guó)42%、英國(guó)36%）。
僅definitely和friend兩個(gè)詞，美國(guó)人拼對(duì)的比率較高。
加利福尼亞州立大學(xué)的愛德華?巴拉諾維斯基教授說(shuō)，調(diào)查結(jié)果反映出美國(guó)中學(xué)“可怕”的輟學(xué)率。
他說(shuō)：“這最終給大學(xué)施加了壓力，學(xué)校必須在補(bǔ)救教育上投入大量資源。”
委托開展該調(diào)查的“拼寫學(xué)會(huì)”的杰克?邦維爾說(shuō)，英美兩國(guó)在單詞拼寫方面的高出錯(cuò)率表明，必須推動(dòng)英語(yǔ)拼寫系統(tǒng)的現(xiàn)代化，以提高民眾的讀寫能力。
“在調(diào)查過(guò)程中，僅有四分之一的成年人覺(jué)得自己在單詞拼寫方面有問(wèn)題。但測(cè)試結(jié)果則表明情況要嚴(yán)重得多。不規(guī)范的拼寫系統(tǒng)是造成這一問(wèn)題的主要原因。”
這項(xiàng)美國(guó)調(diào)查由益普索?莫里調(diào)查機(jī)構(gòu)于上月在網(wǎng)上開展，共有一千名成年人參加，調(diào)查方法主要依據(jù)去年四月的一項(xiàng)共有一千名英國(guó)人參與的調(diào)查。
（英語(yǔ)點(diǎn)津姍姍編輯） |
