American English - A Contradiction in Terms, Why American Students Have Trouble With the SAT

 The correct English used in the United States is actually not all that dissimilar from the English used everywhere in the world. The vocabulary that is considered accurate on the American SAT and used in edited papers and publications varies little from country to country, with the exception of a few minor spelling differences and a few terms whose meanings are slightly different.

However, compared to practically any other nation's English-speaking population, Americans appear to deviate more from the written standard in their speech. Although non-native English speakers' speech often contains some unidiomatic expressions and has a wide range of accents, none of these factors appear to be as problematic for English language learners as the sloppy and poorly constructed American speech. None appears to need extra editing to meet the language standards for college papers. The majority of British, Swedish, German, French, and Polish academics appear to speak varieties of English that are far more similar to approved edited language. It does children a grave disservice when American professors use inappropriate language.

As an illustration, several renowned astronomers (who must remain unidentified) provided succinct explanations of astronomical events in a DVD that was included with an Astronomy text. The language of foreign astronomers, particularly those from non-English speaking countries, conformed much better to SAT norms while errors of the kinds frequently treated on the SAT occurred in profusion in the speech of the American scientists. These instances clearly demonstrate that scholars in the US frequently disregard these principles, which is highly alarming given that they operate as intellectual role models for pupils.

Even the best English speakers make mistakes when they talk, although it is typical to hear them correct themselves after (or in the middle of) the mistake. Americans don't appear to understand the harm that grammatical errors can do to the language of English language learners as well as the impression that their speech makes on others.

Redundancy is not acceptable in formal English, for instance. A pleonasm is a term used occasionally to describe this repeating. This is especially irritating:

"...[we are] constructing a model of the universe that is progressively more complex."

These are appropriate:

"A model with ever-rising sophistication"

"A model that keeps getting more advanced"

Any competent editor would look for and remove this kind of mistake in written English because it should never be made.

Here is an example of a misaligned parallelism (in this case, gerund/infinitive mismatch) from the same DVD:

They were more concerned with preserving the emperor's authority than they were with providing answers to the scientific concerns.

The best way to illustrate this issue is to broaden the parallel constructs:

They had an interest in providing scientific answers.

They wanted to help the emperor maintain his authority.

There is no doubt that the second sentence does not follow any collocation rules.

Or, in the worst case scenario, a statement that flatly misrepresents the speaker's intent:

On either side, this celestial body emits two streams of energy.

Naturally, what is intended is:

One on either side, this celestial body emits two streams of energy.

This illustrates yet another essential quality of effective language.  https://www.aels.edu/ Well-crafted language conveys the intended meaning. Sloppy language is, at best, vague and frequently completely deceptive.

All of these are typical SAT mistakes that are addressed on practically every test. However, this type of inaccuracy seems to occur far less frequently in the speech of foreign academics and is rarely to be found in the language of British scholars. Of course, language butchery is even more common in spoken lectures in secondary school classrooms. A more thorough investigation would be intriguing.