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President Bush:Childrens do learn.
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Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: "Childrens do learn."
Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centrepiece of his education policy.
The event drew New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plus teachers and about 20 fourth and fifth graders.
During his first presidential campaign, Bush -- who promised to be the "education president" -- once asked: "Is our children learning?"
On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with the same kind of grammatical twist.
"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said.
Bush is no stranger to verbal gaffes. He often acknowledges he was no more than an average student in school and jokes about his habit of mangling the English language.
Just this week, the White Houseinadvertently showed how it tries to prevent Bush from making even more slips of the tongue than he already does.
As Bush addressed the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, a marked-up draft of his speech popped up on the UN Web site, complete with a phonetic pronunciation guide to get him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.
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(Agencies)
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本周三，布什總統對紐約一所學校的小學生們說“Childrens do learn.（應為children；孩子們確實學到東西了。）”，總統先生的這堂“語法課”恐怕會令任何一位英語老師“汗顏”。
當天，布什總統在一個活動錄制現場發表講話時犯了這一語法錯誤。其間，他敦促國會重新批準他的《“一個都不能落”》教育法案，這一法案是布什總統教育政策的核心內容。
參與活動錄制的還包括紐約市市長邁克爾?布盧姆博格、教育部長斯瑪格麗特?斯佩林斯、教師以及20名四五年級的小學生。
布什曾在他首次總統競選時承諾要做一位“教育總統”，他還提出這樣一個問題：“Is our children learning?（應為Are our children learning?；孩子們都在學習嗎？）”
而本周三，布什似乎來了個自問自答，還犯了個類似的語法錯誤。
他說：“從昨天的成績單可以看出，在學習標準提高和學習成果得到檢驗的情況下，孩子‘們們’（childrens）確實學到東西了。”
布什總統愛犯口誤已不是什么新鮮事了。他也經常坦言自己在學校時學習成績平平，還經常拿自己愛說錯話的毛病開玩笑。
就在本周，白宮不小心泄漏了他們防止布什總統少犯口誤的“方法”。
本周二，布什在聯合國聯大上發言時，一份帶有很多標記的發言草稿突然出現在聯合國的官方網站上，發言稿的很多地方都注明了發音，以防止布什讀錯一些拗口的國家名和國家元首的名字。
（英語點津姍姍編輯）
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