Anders K. Ericsson · Graeme Paton · Richard Alleyne · Texting · writing by hand

‘Txtin iz messin, mi headn’me englis…’*

There were two stories which caught my eye yesterday in the Telegraph. The first, by Graeme Paton, looks into some research by academics at Coventry University suggesting that texting can improve children’s literacy. This comes as no surprise to me! In order to be able to text successfully, you have to be able to segment… Continue reading ‘Txtin iz messin, mi headn’me englis…’*

'Time-limited' teaching of phonics · Alexandre Borovik · i.t.a. · Susan Godsland

Borovik backs phonics

In his ‘Personal take on synthetic phonics’, Alexandre V. Borovik sheds some interesting light on how, as a child, he learned to read in Russian, which is written in Cyrillic script, an alphabet writing system. What most interested me about the article was how one day, as a young boy, Borovik, while ‘sitting in a… Continue reading Borovik backs phonics

'Return to the Lost World' · Chris Middleton · Steve Barlow · Steve Skidmore

Exploration Return to the Lost World

The moment I saw the terrifying picture of Tyrranosaurus Rex and Chris Middleton’s headline in today’s Telegraph, ‘Make Reading into an Adventure’, I thought ‘The Lost World’. That would be the The Lost World of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which I read for the first time as an eleven-year-old. This and my father’s copy of… Continue reading Exploration Return to the Lost World

'Word of the year' · Mr Verb · Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

From ‘Bushlips’ to ‘static kill’. OK?

On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that linguists from all over the world will be descending on Pittsburgh later this week to discuss, amongst other things, (naturally) Pittsburghese, endangered languages, and linguistic map-making. They’ll also be deciding on the word of the year.Previous favourites have been: ‘google’, the word of the decade last year; ‘plutoed’,… Continue reading From ‘Bushlips’ to ‘static kill’. OK?