Not so clearly left- or right-brained
December 13th, 2008
But more recently, brain scan technology has revealed that the hemispheres’ roles are not quite so cut-and-dried as once thought. The two hemispheres are in fact highly complementary. For example, language processing, once believed to be left- hemisphere-only, is now understood to take place in both hemispheres: the left side processes grammar and pronunciation while the right processes intonation. Similarly, experiments have shown that the right hemisphere does not work in isolation with regard to spatial ability: the right hemisphere seems to deal with a general sense of space, while the left hemisphere deals with objects in specific locations.
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If u cn rd this quickly, gd 4 u
December 13th, 2008
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Mobile phone text-message abbreviations and simplifications are not ruining our spelling, but they do take much longer to read and understand than conventional English, a small Australian study has shown.University of Tasmania lecturer Nenagh Kemp asked 55 undergraduate students to compose, and then to read aloud, text messages in English and in “textese.”While students were significantly faster using textese, it took almost half the number of students twice as long to read these messages aloud than messages written in proper English.The students also made more errors reading the textese messages compared to the ones written in English.”It’s quicker to write in textisms, but when you go on to read it, it took people longer. As skilled adult readers, we’re used to reading full words and sentences, so it is harder for us to decipher,” Kemp, a psychology lecturer who specializes in language use, told Reuters.Kemp said her research showed that despite the popular belief that textese is ruining spelling, it actually does not reflect literary skills, at least in adults.She said that an awareness of sound structure and grammar was significantly linked to the ability to decipher some textese.”It’s fine to use textese on a mobile phone, as it saves you time, but you have to make sure your reader understands it,” she added. “And don’t let it creep into your emails, student essays or job applications. Keep the boundaries.”(Writing by Miral Fahmy, editing by Belinda Goldsmith)
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20081210/tc_nm/us_texting_tech
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Hope we’re moving away from this…
December 13th, 2008
What education used to be …
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Free Rice
May 19th, 2008
You can give rice to the needy in the third world and at the same time help your students learn vocabulary by encouraging them to visit the site: Free Rice. There the students will be presented with a multiple choice quiz adjusted to their level of English. Which each right answer, they will be giving 20 grains of rice to UN World Food Program. With each incorrect answer they will be presented with the correct one and re-tested on the same item a few seconds later.
Pluses of Free Rice vocabulary game:
- you learn vocabulary in a competitive drill
- the vocabulary level is adjusted to your knowledge of English
- you actually help people while learning!
Minuses:
- no definitions and examples provided with the words
- at higher levels (30+) the words get quite obscure
Idea for activity: you can challenge your students to see who gets the highest level of difficulty in one round (best done in classrooms where there are computers connected to the Internet)
Tags: vocabulary
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Hello!
March 30th, 2008
Being a teacher, who’s trying to implement digital/online solutions into the classroom, I thought it’d be useful to find a place to record my thoughts and register the links that I find interesting. My current research project is about e-learning, specifically on instructional design for EFL courses. I hope that blogging will help me organise my ideas better and understand the very nature of online participation first-hand.
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