Category: Language
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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 […]
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Our Brains Were Not Born to Read…Right?
As I began my great awakening to the relatively extensive body of research on reading, one of the claims of reading research proponents that I’ve picked up on and carried with me is the idea that reading is unnatural and our brains were not born to read. And this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, […]
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I think I was wrong about Phonemic Awareness
When I began this journey into learning more about literacy and language development (not too long ago), one of the first areas where I began sensing a tension in the field was around phonological awareness and the notion of instruction related to different “grain sizes.” We know that phonological awareness develops in a manner that […]
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Phonology: How it Relates to Language and Literacy
I posted something on Twitter the other day (as I am wont to do far more frequently than write anything of deeper substance, alas) worrying that because the Simple View of Reading is a predominant model of reading (and may be therefore the basis from which some educators who are aware of it may primarily […]
Language & Literacy 