Monthly Archives: February 2012

words I do not understand, David Brooks edition

Posted on 27 February 2012 by Freddie

In the New York Times: Gail: You may be right that the big issue for America now is class, not race or gender. But in this presidential campaign, gender rules. Really, sex rules. Who’d have thought? David: Class is gender. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

the phonetics-phonology distinction

Posted on 25 February 2012 by Freddie

This awesome Language Log post, which includes some audio examples and waveform data, reminds me of how I often used to get confused about the phonetics-phonology distinction. These are both among the major branches of linguistics, along with syntax, semantics, … Continue reading →

Posted in Language and Linguistics | Leave a comment

reading and the eye

Posted on 24 February 2012 by Freddie

In recent decades, advances in eye tracking technology have made eye movement studies practical, non-invasive, and precise. Computers outfitted with sophisticated eye tracking equipment can record and analyze the movement of a subject’s eyes with great precision, giving us a … Continue reading →

Posted in Language and Linguistics | 2 Comments

quote for the day

Posted on 23 February 2012 by Freddie

“A normal educated adult speaker of English has an active vocabulary– i.e., words that he actually uses in everyday speech– of about 30,000 words. A speaker makes the the right choice from among those 30,000 or so alternatives not just … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

data presentation

Posted on 22 February 2012 by Freddie

This is the sort of thing that I should learn to just keep to myself, but here goes. The just-released issue of Research in the Teaching of English (46.3) has a study I really admire, “Placement of Students into First-Year Writing Courses.” (In … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Meta, Style | Leave a comment

most e-textbooks will probably never look like the demonstrations

Posted on 22 February 2012 by Freddie

Which isn’t, I’ll hasten to say, a big problem. Last week, I was invited to a bull session about a new, tablet-based ebook version of a writing textbook. The publisher had asked the authors to get creative with brainstorming; they … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Popular & Digital Writing, Tech Stuff | 5 Comments

note

Posted on 21 February 2012 by Freddie

Astra Taylor has written a response to the piece by Dana Goldstein that I referenced in my last post; Conor Friedersdorf has responded to both Goldstein’s piece and mine. Both essays are worth your time and interest. Update: Goldstein follows … Continue reading →

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homeschooling, unschooling, and selection bias

Posted on 18 February 2012 by Freddie

Dana Goldstein is one of my favorite policy and political writers working today, and this response to the recent  n+1 piece on unschooling is a good example of why. Goldstein is fair, measured, and diligent with her citations, while at … Continue reading →

Posted in Education | 22 Comments

quote for the day

Posted on 16 February 2012 by Freddie

“I do indeed say that writing is artificial, and maybe one of our divergences is due to my not having explained that I do not consider being artificial necessarily bad at all, but rather of itself good. Nothing is more … Continue reading →

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there’s no such (unified) thing as Montessori education

Posted on 15 February 2012 by Freddie

As someone who reads and writes a lot about American education policy, I often hear people assert that Montessori education is the secret weapon we could deploy to solve many of our problems. The people who say this are all … Continue reading →

Posted in Education | 11 Comments

my piece in HuffPo on international students

Posted on 14 February 2012 by Freddie

A piece I wrote about international students at American universities has been published at the Huffington Post. It’s worth saying that I wrote this piece before both this story in the New York Times and the horribly bigoted Pete Hoekstra … Continue reading →

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Valentine to a novel: The Westing Game

Posted on 14 February 2012 by Freddie

My brother, inspired by Kat Asharya, has written a Valentine to the Virginia Woolf novel Jacob’s Room. It is a good idea, and bears repeating. So: how do I love thee, The Westing Game? I suppose I’m guilty of lapsing … Continue reading →

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to be a Google user is to be annoyed forever

Posted on 13 February 2012 by Freddie

At this point, I find it hard to imagine a more incongruous marriage of strength and weakness than the cross-Google combination of power and versatility with perpetual annoyance and technological fussiness. This isn’t an argument about Google’s recent missteps re: … Continue reading →

Posted in Tech Stuff | 7 Comments

lessons from real rhetoric: rip off the Band-Aid

Posted on 13 February 2012 by Freddie

Woodrow Wilson’s speech asking Congress to declare war against imperial Germany and bring the United States into World War One is, in many ways, a remarkable document. I’ve taken several classes of freshman composition students through a rhetorical analysis of … Continue reading →

Posted in Prose Style and Substance, Rhetoric | 3 Comments

unpaired words and cranberry morphemes

Posted on 12 February 2012 by Freddie

I’m sure you’ve had the conversation, at some point in your life, where you’ve discussed the fact that some words have prefixes or suffixes that indicate an antonym, but no antonym exists. For example, we say someone or some act … Continue reading →

Posted in Language and Linguistics | 2 Comments