6.find与find out的区别
多数情况下，find与find out意义不同，互换的可能性有限。学生们普遍认为find强调过程，而find out重在结果，这不是正确的解释。在许多本该用find的场合，学生使用find out，原因是不清楚两者的区别。find接的从句为肯定句，本身的意义为“发现”，而find out的确切意义为“查明”“搞明白”或“弄清楚”，后面的从句绝大多数都是疑问词引导的从句。如：
1.If you will only do this,you may find out why people are dissatisfied and.…
2.They are trying to find out whether there is something about the way we teach language to children which in fact prevents children from learning sooner.
3.When still a young man,he was appointed to a committee to find out whether the South Branch of the James River was deep enough to be used by large ships.
4.Scientists haven’t been able to find out why humans age faster than the tortoise.
5.To find out if the skulls and skeleton belong to Rames’sons,we’ll need to run DNA analysis.
6.Go to the building a day or two before,if necessary,to find out how long the journey takes.
7.Dr.Carl Rogers spent many years trying to find out why people succeed.
8.Would you become involved in a scientific experiment to find out if Lewis is a fraud?
find out还有“了解”之意，可接about something。如：
1.Rontgen went on to find out more about these strange rays.（更多了解）
2.I decided to meet this man and find out a little about him.
3.The more scientists find out,the more questions they are unable to answer.For instance,chemists have found that over 100,000 chemical reactions take place in the brain every second.（了解越多，疑问越多。化学家发现……）
4.Can you help my family find out about an accident that took my best friend in the world away?（了解事故真相）
5.Anything that you find out about the prospective employer can be used to your advantage during the interview.（不论你了解到什么）
6.So we made an appointment,then got online to see what we could find out about these strange symptoms I was having.
find out偶尔接陈述句或名词，意义为“了解到”：
1.When she was arrested,the detective found out that the shop assistant was her daughter.
2.Imagine you found out that ideas invented by a computer were rated higher by independent experts than ideas created by a group of humans asked to perform the same task.
3…prone to making jokes about Indonesians until they found out that she was married to one….（Obama）
4.You can see that a way was needed to find out the age of bones.
5.From the amount of C14 in the bones,he found out that they were about 10,000 years old.
案例分析：
▲下面这个句子摘自某考研辅导书范文：
He didn’t invent the electric lamp until finding out the substance for making lamps through a thousand and one tests.且不说until finding…是否正确，应使用find或discover the substance，而不是find out。
▲北京某报纸曾刊登一篇英文文章，其中一句是finding out about these 50 schools has now become amazingly easy for anyone with Internet access。提供的译文是“如今，通过Internet找到这50所大学，对于任何人来说已变得极其容易了”。译者可能不了解find out的确切含义。更好的译文是：能上网的人都能轻而易举地了解到这50所大学的情况。
▲国内某英文杂志（1999.02）有“Another rule when considering a new job or industry is to clear up misconceptions and find out what’s really so.For instance,health care is not service-driven any more.Now the driving forces are marketing and cost.That is a completely different orientation than just five years ago.”提供的译文是“……就是澄清错误概念并找到正确概念。”根据下文，更好的译法是“了解事实”。