Americans are worse at spelling than Britons, with more than half unable to spell "embarrassed", "liaison" and "millennium"。

　　美国人在拼写单词方面不如英国人，超过一半的美国人不会拼“embarrassed”、“liaison”和“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。

　　尽管拼字比赛在美国学校十分流行，但一项比较大西洋两岸说英语人群的调查显示，在拼写容易拼错的单词方面，美国成年人表现得相当糟糕。

　　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。

　　调查显示，62%的美国人将“embarrassed”拼错，而去年的一项调查显示，英国有54%的人不会拼写该词。

        调查结果反映出美国中学“可怕”的辍学率

　　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)。

　　从十个词的测试结果来看，美国人在大多数词语上的表现不如英国人，其中包括millennium(拼错率：美国52%；英国43%)、liason(美国61%、英国54%)和accommodation(美国42%、英国36%)。

　　Only "definitely" and "friend" were spelt correctly by more Americans。

　　仅definitely和friend两个词，美国人拼对的比率较高。

　　Professor Edward Baranowski of California State University said that the results reflected the "horrific" drop-out rates of US high schools。

　　加利福尼亚州立大学的爱德华·巴拉诺维斯基教授说，调查结果反映出美国中学“可怕”的辍学率。


仅有四分之一的成年人觉得自己在单词拼写方面有问题
　　"This certainly puts an eventual strain upon the universities, which must devote lots of resources to remedial education," he said。

　　他说：“这最终给大学施加了压力，学校必须在补救教育上投入大量资源。”

　　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。

[1] [2] 下一页