This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular.
Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include, or just add a comment to the post, with the link(s) you’d like to share.
Language change and slang
What’s Interesting About ‘Disinterested’
Fussbudgets like me bristle whenever we hear disinterested used when we think the appropriate term is uninterested. (As with the tendency to use less rather than fewer, the reverse seems never to hold true.)
Time Magazine’s silly proposal to ban the word “feminist”
Time Magazine has made a tradition of asking readers which word they feel they would be well-rid of. And on the list this time is the word “feminist.”
Global English
Get your gas mask on – toot sweet!
ICYMI – Michael Rundell’s post on World War I and its impact on English across the globe.
Language teaching and resources
Why you should consider team teaching
In order to alleviate the inherent loneliness of our job, you could consider the merits of team teaching.
Education technology and global issues
IATEFL’s Global Issues and Learning Technologies Special Interest Groups are running an online event investigating various aspects of educational technology, under the title Edtechconcerns. You can find more details about the event at the link above and the first podcast Distrusting Educational Technology? here.
Books, dictionaries, words and language
There was a war, a great war, and now it is over
Shortly after the armistice was signed, 26-year-old Lewis Plush—a lieutenant with the American Expeditionary Forces—wrote home to his parents and spoke with great eloquence of his experience.
Lichfield father and son re-write dictionary to help dyslexic children
Two dyslexia experts from Dr Johnson’s home town are compiling a dictionary that aims to help people with the learning difficulty.
A Typeface Designed to Help Dyslexics Read
Dutch designer Christian Boer created a dyslexic-friendly font to make reading easier for people with dyslexia, like himself.
Popular misquotes – the things they never said
Many phrases and sayings have entered the language as quotations by known authors. Some of these are accepted into the language with scant evidence linking the phrase and the person, and some are just plain misquotations.
Video
Mum vs David Dimbleby
One woman’s fight to get British broadcaster David Dimbleby to pronounce the name of her ex-partner’s home country correctly.
Podcast
Talk the Talk: The End of Cursive
How’s your handwriting? How cursive script is dying out, and whether it matters. (28 minutes. The discussion starts about 6 minutes 20 seconds in.)
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