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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 gaffes1. He often acknowledges he was no more than an average student in school and jokes about his habit of mangling2 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 phonetic3 pronunciation guide to get him past troublesome names of countries and world leaders.
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本周三，布什总统对纽约一所学校的小学生们说“Childrens do learn.（应为children；孩子们确实学到东西了。）”，总统先生的这堂“语法课”恐怕会令任何一位英语老师“汗颜”。
当天，布什总统在一个活动录制现场发表讲话时犯了这一语法错误。其间，他敦促国会重新批准他的《“一个都不能落”》教育法案，这一法案是布什总统教育政策的核心内容。
参与活动录制的还包括纽约市市长迈克尔•布卢姆博格、教育部长斯玛格丽特•斯佩林斯、教师以及20名四五年级的小学生。
布什曾在他首次总统竞选时承诺要做一位“教育总统”，他还提出这样一个问题：“Is our children learning?（应为Are our children learning?；孩子们都在学习吗？）”
而本周三，布什似乎来了个自问自答，还犯了个类似的语法错误。
他说：“从昨天的成绩单可以看出，在学习标准提高和学习成果得到检验的情况下，孩子‘们们’（childrens）确实学到东西了。”
布什总统爱犯口误已不是什么新鲜事了。他也经常坦言自己在学校时学习成绩平平，还经常拿自己爱说错话的毛病开玩笑。
就在本周，白宫不小心泄漏了他们防止布什总统少犯口误的“方法”。
本周二，布什在联合国联大上发言时，一份带有很多标记的发言草稿突然出现在联合国的官方网站上，发言稿的很多地方都注明了发音，以防止布什读错一些拗口的国家名和国家元首的名字。
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