Category: Language
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What is (un)natural about learning to read and write?
What is (un)natural about learning to read and write? In a series of posts, we’ll examine three seminal papers investigating the nature of literacy development and its relation to language learning.
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The Science of Reading Across Languages
Digging into “Is the Science of Reading Just the Science of Reading English?” by David L. Share
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The Sound and the Fury of Phonemes and Reading
Here is my Yule time gift to my fellow reading nerds: I am honored that a version of my blog post about my shift in thinking on phonemic awareness has been published in the latest Nomanis. Do check out this newer version for the research goods. And a big thank you to Tiffany Peltier for…
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Irregularity Enhances Learning (Maybe)
In this paper, the author makes an argument that the contrasting forces of “discriminability” and “regularity” both serve to make language something we pick up pretty much naturally, even if we don’t know all the words in the language.
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Language Within and Beyond the Brain
As I was preparing for a session I was facilitating recently, I went down a rabbit hole on language use and cognition. I know saying “went down the rabbit hole” typically bears a negative connotation, but I gotta say, I love me some getting lost in meandering exploratory nerdy byalleyways. While rabbit holes may oft…
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The Science of Reading and Cancer
I have somewhat eclectic book reading habits, and I take pleasure in reading haphazardly (i.e. whatever I happen to come across). After growing bored with Moby Dick recently, I happened across a copy of Siddhartha Mukerjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. The book is compellingly written, narrating an expansive overview of…
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Language and Friendship
I know Twitter gets a lot of flack as a cesspool of polarization and facile debate, but I have to say that if you are a nerd like me and follow lots of other nerds, it’s a veritable goldmine for nerdy indulgence. Case in point, I recently came across this fascinating paper shared on Twitter:…
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Language and Cognition
There was a fascinating summary thread I came across recently that I want to dig into, as there’s some really interesting and rich areas of tension to unpack. Here’s the thread: The final plenary of @ICCG_11 #icc1 is by the brilliant @ev_fedorenko: "The language system in the human mind and brain" pic.twitter.com/oqg6O0Cixf — Michael Pleyer…
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Universals of Language
In my last post, we looked at a wonderful paper, “Universals in Learning to Read Across Languages and Writing Systems“, that outlines operating principles of reading and writing across languages, as well as some key variations. Continuing on this theme, I wanted to highlight another recent paper, “The universal language network: A cross-linguistic investigation spanning…
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Operating Principles Across Written Languages
In the course of skimming research articles, every now and then something surfaces that is comprehensive, clarifying, and just flat out fun to read because it brings illumination to something I’ve been grappling with. One I want to make sure to bring to your attention, just in case you haven’t yet read it, is this…
Language & Literacy 