A student who penned a nasty letter to their teacher at the end of semester learned this lesson the hard way when the teacher decided to correct the letter’s spelling, grammar, syntax and construction — and then posted it where everybody could see it. The letter clearly insulted the teacher — but only… Read more…
Archive for: juin, 2014
Humans are unique in their ability to acquire language. But how? A new study published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences shows that we are in fact born with the basic fundamental knowledge of language, thus shedding light on the age-old linguistic “nature vs. nurture” debate. While languages differ from each other…
The American educational system has a difficult time understanding dyslexia and an even harder time identifying children with dyslexia in order to provide the correct intervention for students who are native English speakers. When a school has the added challenge of identifying struggling English language learners (ELLs), the task becomes an even more complicated process,…
Do you ever feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day? You’re overwhelmed easily? Or that you’re working 24/7 with no time left for yourself? The reality is running a freelance translation business can feel like a juggling act. If you drop one ball everything can come tumbling down. Attaining a work-life balance may…
If you find it frustrating that the default Microsoft Office Word dictionary doesn’t recognize the medical terms you use every day, there’s a simple way to make the spelling checker work for your specific needs. Just customize your Word dictionary so that the default dictionary points to Stedman’s Medical Dictionary or another medical terms list that you…
Your website is the front line of your content marketing strategy, so don’t cut corners with the copy. Visitors tend to leave websites within ten to 20 seconds and only read about 20 percent of the content on each page. Your copy therefore has to be something special to grab their attention, inspire action and drive up your website…
Non-native speakers exposed to English before moving to America are more likely to use the language in their daily lives in the United States, according to a report led by Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Such early exposure – through newspapers, books, TV and classes as well as traveling –…
Two new studies appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveal what appear to be innate language preferences. In one study, Jacques Mehler of the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in Trieste, Italy and his colleagues discovered that newborns distinguish syllables commonly found in different languages from rare syllables. A study by Jennifer…
Jargon wherever it appears is the death of good prose and common sense. Where does jargon come from? After all, no one is taught to express themselves like this in school—so where does the rot set in? A few years ago, I was standing in a queue behind two men and eavesdropping on their conversation.…
Duolingo’s push to “translate the web” is not as straightforward as it seems. Luis von Ahn, creator of the reCAPTCHA verification system that helps digitalize books, has set out to “translate the web into every major language.” In this TED talk, he reminds us the Internet is fragmented into multiple languages and that the biggest portion is…
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