Showing results for "Language Evolution" in Education & Learning

Born into a digital wonderland, our children are practically mini hackers right from the crib! Most of them were handed a device before they could walk, they clicked before they took their first bite and scrolled before they said their first words. But living online is a giant uncontrolled...

As language evolves faster than ever before, what is the future of 'correct' style? With wry cleverness and an uncanny intuition for the possibilities of Internet-age expressiveness, Favilla argues that rather than try to preserve the sanctity of the written language as laid out by Strunk and White, we should be concerned with the larger issues of clarity, flexibility, playfulness and political awareness. Her approach to the new rules - as practical as they are fun - will fascinate and delight believers and naysayers alike.

Grumps the goat gets angry with everyone and everything all the time. The other animals try to reason with him but when something goes wrong, he just can't help himself. One day, something convinces Grumps that it's really not nice to be so angry. What brings about this change? Listen to find...

In this ambitious book, Jieun Kiaer explores the lives of English words in the twenty-first century, when the creation and use of language has become an increasingly dynamic, interactive, and diverse process in which ordinary people have taken leading roles—offering such coinages as "flexitarian," "MeToo," "glow up," and "s--tizen" to "No sabo kids" and beyond. As English language grows ever more diverse, Kiaer believes, we need a paradigm shift.

In its long history, the English language has had many lawmakers - those who have tried to regulate or otherwise organize the way we speak. The Lexicographer's Dilemma poses a pair of questions: What does proper English mean? And who gets to say what's right? Our ideas of correct or proper English have a history, and today's debates over the state of the language - whether about Ebonics in schools, the unique use of language in a South Park episode, or split infinitives in the Times - make sense only in historical context.

In the 1970s, the behavioral psychologist Herbert S. Terrace led a remarkable experiment to see if a chimpanzee could be taught to use language. A young ape, named “Nim Chimpsky” in a nod to the linguist whose theories Terrace challenged, was raised by a family in New York and instructed in American Sign Language. Initially, Terrace thought that Nim could create sentences but later discovered that Nim’s teachers inadvertently cued his signing. Terrace concluded that Project Nim failed - not because Nim couldn’t create sentences but because he couldn’t even learn words.

Zee the zebra is always moping around. One day, all the animals in Foggy Forest decide to show Zeezee how being sad is a downer for everyone. What do they do and how does Zeezee react? Listen to find out...

Prickles the porcupine is painfully shy. She can't bear to talk to anyone. But one day, her best friend, Woops the worm, decides to help her stop being so shy. What does Woops do? Listen to find out...