January 30, 2008

U.S. elections: how Americans vote

Americans are getting ready to elect a new president and this year the race to the White House started earlier than usual, with Democrat and Republican candidates fighting to be nominated to officially represent their political parties in November. The dispute seems to be between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on one side and John McCain and Mitt Romney on the Republicans' side. On February 5th, at least twenty-two states will take part in “Super-Duper Tuesday” primaries, including some of the biggest states like California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York.

But how do Americans choose their president? Compared to many other countries where people vote directly on the candidate they prefer, the American system seems to be far more complicated. Click here to read about how it works in general, and here to find out more about this year's elections. Then learn some of the most important words related to elections trying a crossword puzzle and a wordsearch. If you need help, you can use this glossary!

Try also:

Quiz: Elections

1 comment:

Paul Beaufait said...

Having found your blog (probably through Learning with Computers), it has been such a pleasure to read your posts that I've added it to a blogroll that I maintain for students that I teach.

However, since you've tagged this post with both "us" and "vocabulary", I wonder what you mean when you refer to "how Americans vote." Like I ask my students, "Are you referring to North, Central, or South Americans?"

Though I realise that there are sufficient contextual clues in your post to answer my question, I also feel that, for vocabulary presentation and acquisition purposes, you should be more precise in your terminology when referring to U.S. citizens, rather than to residents of the Americas (plural).

Cheers, Paul