Posted by Jack Hanlon, CBO & EvangelistI reported earlier about the Great American Word Challenge, a nationwide online contest that pit cities against one another to
measure their greatness, not by the height of their skyscrapers, but by
the depth of their vocabularies. Fresno received the highest cumulative
average score and took the title and the prize: a Ubisoft donation of My
Word Coach video games and Nintendo DS™
systems to a local family literacy center selected by the National
Center for Family Literacy (NCFL). The beneficiary organization is the
Fresno County Library Literacy Services Center, which provides free
reading, writing, spelling, and math tutoring to Fresno County adults
that cannot read or write English.
“The city of Fresno is always proud to support
family literacy,” said Deputy Mayor Jeff
Eben. “We are excited to have won the 'Great
American Word Challenge' and thank all Fresno's residents who
participated so successfully in this fun and creative Challenge.”
With thousands of contestants putting their vocabulary skills to the
test since November 1, 2007, the “Great
American Word Challenge” proved which
American cities could walk the walk AND talk the talk:
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-- In addition to Fresno, the following cities rounded out the top
four positions:
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-- Salisbury, Maryland (2nd place)
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-- Mankato, Minnesota (3rd place)
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-- Albuquerque, New Mexico (4th place)
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-- Oakland, California (5th place)
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-- Overall, the U.S. received a B- average grade on their vocabulary
with a national average score of 167 out of 205 (81%)
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-- And here's how long-time city rivals stacked up:
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-- Oakland is the smartest Bay Area city, beating out San Francisco,
Berkeley, and San Jose!
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-- Despite preliminary results showing Brooklyn in the lead, at
final count Manhattan is the highest-scoring New York City borough.
The Bronx is the lowest-scoring borough. Here's how the boroughs
stacked up against each other:
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1. Manhattan
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2. Queens
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3. Brooklyn
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4. Staten Island
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5. The Bronx
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-- Twin Cities? Not exactly. Minneapolis established itself as the
more literate of the two, scoring 168 compared to St. Paul's 140.
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-- Good (and smart) things come in small packages: Pasadena might be
just an eighth the size of its sprawling neighbor, Los Angeles, but
it's 16% smarter! Pasadena scored 178 compared to Los Angeles, which
scored a mere 154.
Article from Business Wire
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