An hour of homework or an hour of World of Warcraft? It’s not hard to guess what many ten-year-old boys would rather be doing when they get home from school. But now research shows that in non-English…
Articles on English language
Displaying 121 - 138 of 138 articles
A new report from the think-tank Demos is calling for a new national strategy for the way we teach English to migrants in the UK. Its researchers point to 850,000 people in the most recent census who said…
Listicle: an article made up of lists. This may be regarded as [Bare](http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/bare#bare21) lazy as it obviates the need for coherent paragraphs, or as Douchebaggery…
It’s not often that grammar makes the news, but there’s currently a good natured spat going on between Melvyn Bragg and John Humphrys. Bragg hosts a long running BBC Radio discussion show called In Our…
Sticklers beware. The British Library is hosting it’s English Grammar Day, a day to finely split hairs over split infinitives, apostrophe’s (sic, sic, sic), and Oxford commas (sick!). Yes, in the case…
You have to look long and hard to find a joke with “grammar” in the punchline. But recently, a very funny grammar joke turned up on Twitter, thanks to the American Nazi Party, which feels bound to maintain…
In a recent enquiry into alleged sexual abuses by priests, Cardinal George Pell said: Mistakes were made by me and by others in the church that resulted in driving Mr Ellis and the archdiocese apart rather…
Thankfully, nobody speaks academic English as a first language. The English of the university is a very particular form that has specific features and conventions. Sometimes, this is just referred to as…
Children who compete in spelling bees often dazzle with their ability to spell complex words. In this year’s televised Scripps National Spelling Bee, two American teenagers were so good they were crowned…
Collins, publisher of one of the world’s most well-known dictionaries, is running a competition to encourage members of the public to vote on the new words that should be included in its next edition…
Atrocities in English are committed every day. Here are three of the worst. You may be surprised, but hopefully you won’t literally explode with anger. When we talk of words, even if we don’t know it…
The exam board OCR recently announced a new English Language and Literature A Level that they intend to offer from 2015. The proposed syllabus boasts that “the range of texts to be studied is to be the…
Universities and schools across the globe are offering an increasing number of courses taught in English. Parents and politicians alike are pushing for this change as English is considered a worldwide…
Twenty years ago, I wrote a book called Writing Skills. Despite selling well, it proved spectacularly unsuccessful in actually lifting standards of English in Australia. Given the current federal government…
Revelations of fraudulent practices allowing bogus students to obtain visas to study in the UK have been received with shock and disbelief by English language teachers. An investigation by BBC’s Panorama…
Languages evolve and transform. If that weren’t the case, the only word in the previous sentence that would be considered English is and (which in any case used to mean if). The English we speak would…
It doesn’t matter whether or not you think it’s fair: if you’re an academic, your publishing record will have a crucial impact on your career. It can profoundly affect your prospects for employment, for…
The British have long been notorious for their lack of ability in foreign languages but there are signs that, far from becoming more cosmopolitan as paid-up members of the European Union, they are getting…
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Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Oxford
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Adjunct Lecturer, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University
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Professor of Linguistics, Monash University
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Honorary Associate Professor in Writing, The University of Queensland
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Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, Monash University
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Professor of ESOL, University of South Wales
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Associate professor, Flinders University
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Professor of Sociolinguistics, Manchester Metropolitan University
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Director of Slang and New Language Archive, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, King's College London
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Associate Professor in Linguistics, Macquarie University
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Associate Professor in Sociolinguistics, University of Cambridge
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Associate Professor in Language, Literacy and TESL, University of Canberra
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Associate Professor in English Language and Linguistics, University of Portsmouth
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Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics, Macquarie University
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Lecturer of English Language Teaching, The Open University