AstudybyOxfordUniversityPress（OUP）intoBritishchildren'swritingshowsthatthefutureofwrittenEnglishwilllearnmorefromHollywoodfilmsthanDickensorShakespeare．Researcherswholookedattheanalysisof74，000shortstoriesi

　　A study by Oxford University Press （OUP） into British children's writing shows that the future of written English will learn more from Hollywood films than Dickens or Shakespeare．

　　Researchers who looked at the analysis of 74，000short stories in a national competition found the children were increasingly using American words such as garbage，trash can，sidewalk，candy，and flashlight．The stories，written by pupils aged 7to 13，show how fairy cakes are referred to as cupcakes and a dinner jacket has become a tuxedo（晚礼服．"Smart"is now often used as"clever"．

　　Chris Evans，whose radio show runs the competition，said the results were"interesting"，adding，"Who'd have thought that the popular American musician Simon Cowell and Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi would be among the famous names that come up in children's work repeatedly？"

　　But according to the study，pupils are let down by some basic knowledge of English．Children are not familiar with simple spellings such as"does"and"clothes"and struggle to use the past tense correctly．

　　Researchers also found that punctuation（标点）was underused，especially semi-colons and speech marks．Some did not know how to use capital letters．However，exclamation（感叹）marks were overused．Researchers found 35，171examples in total，with some young writers using five at a time．

　　Popular US fiction such as the Twilight vampire novels and films is thought to be fuelling the increasing use of American vocabulary and spelling．Modern technology is also influential．Out of almost 300references to"blackberry"，nearly half refer to mobile phones．Characters frequently"google"for information or use"apps"．But the researchers found a wealth of imaginative and inventive ideas．

　　Fears that texting was corrupting children's written work were unfound，they said，with youngsters only using text-expressions when they were referring to a