Last week in the oxforddictionaries blog, professor Simon Horobin posed the question ‘Does spelling matter?’ and, in truth, it’s very hard to answer largely because it is so multidimensional. One of the most immediate and obvious of problems when dealing with correct spelling is the seemingly enormous amount of emotional investment people have in the… Continue reading Does spelling matter?
If you haven’t yet come across David Crystal’s blog, you might want to look at his thoughts on texting acronyms and their effects or rather non effects on the language. And if you’re not interested in rofling, there’s bound to turn up something of interest for anyone curious about language usage. Quirky, precise, always entertaining, and… Continue reading Crystal LOLing at Rofling!
If you live in England and teach literacy, you’ll have heard of 100 high-frequency words! You may also remember Neil MacGregor’s recent and marvellous ‘History of the World in 100 Objects’ series. Well, now David Crystal has turned his attention once more to the subject of language and produced the Story of English in 100… Continue reading Crystal’s ology
David Crystal has posted a couple of noteworthy pieces on his blog just lately. One is ‘On linguistic apps’, in which he points readers in the direction of a grammar app from the Survey of English Usage at University College London. According to David, ‘it’s called iGE, the interactive Grammar of English, and it’s available… Continue reading Crystal clear
Over Easter, I was very excited to get hold of a copy of David Crystal’s Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices, the book to accompany the exhibition of the same name at the British Library. As the blurb says, the book is ‘the first history of the language to be fully illustrated with readable images… Continue reading Crystalography
Here’s a round-up of some of the more interesting items making the news at the moment. But first, a riddle! What is it? ‘The medicine chest of the soul’, ‘the delivery room for the birth of ideas’, ‘the only treasure-house open to all comers ‘, ‘an act of faith’, even the ‘most democratic place in… Continue reading The medicine chest of the soul
Anyone familiar with the work of David Crystal will already know what a prolific author on all questions to do with the English language he is. If a single year doesn’t bring at least two new publications, I begin to wonder if he is at last beginning to slow down. So, it was with particular… Continue reading David Crystal – a diamond geezer!
I have previously written that true literacy tuition is about teaching reading and spelling together because they are inextricably linked. What most children can do when they start their schooling is talk. They are already very accurate at using the grammatical structures of English and have vocabularies running into many thousands of words. David Crystal… Continue reading Support for Spelling (Part 2)