In last night's vice-presidential debate, there was one clear winner: the word malarkey. Joe Biden used it not once but twice against Paul Ryan. First, in responding to Ryan's criticism of the Obama administration's handling of last month's attacks in Benghazi, he told Ryan, "With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey." And then later, Biden euphemistically called Ryan's rhetoric "a bunch of stuff" before clarifiying, "We Irish call it malarkey." Continue reading...
Earlier this month on Blog Excerpts we featured Alexandra D'Arcy's OUPblog post, "Ode to a Prescriptivist," which drew a sharp dichotomy between linguistic descriptivism and prescriptivism (personified by D'Arcy and her stern grandmother, respectively). D'Arcy's post inspired Stan Carey, a professional editor from Ireland, to write a typically thoughtful post on his blog, Sentence First. Continue reading...
The new film The Kids Are All Right, directed by Lisa Cholodenko, owes an obvious debt of gratitude to The Who, even though the band's music doesn't appear on the soundtrack. The title is lifted from a classic song from The Who's 1965 debut album, which also served as the title of a 1979 documentary about the band. Discerning readers will notice a small but important difference: the song and the documentary were spelled "The Kids Are Alright." Did Cholodenko "correct" The Who's spelling? Continue reading...
It's always exciting to see new projects teachers design to bring vocab learning to life. Last year we put together a roundup of four great projects we'd come across. Here are four more ideas we've come across recently. Continue reading...
On Vocabulary.com, we've got hundreds of learnable vocabulary lists for all of the books most commonly taught in schools. We're always keeping track of the most popular books that are being assigned to kids, to make sure that teachers will have the resources they need. Continue reading...
Language arts teacher Erin Vanek created a quick, clever vocab-based guessing game to spark her students' curiosity about a book she was about to assign. The result: students who are curious about the story and familiar with some of the key terms they'll see when they read. Continue reading...
Explore our comprehensive selection of science fiction resources and assign engaging, text-based activities to boost your students' comprehension. Continue reading...
Explore our comprehensive selection of graphic text resources and learn how to create engaging activities to boost your students' comprehension. Continue reading...
In memory of Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing, who died this past Sunday, we're featuring a Doris Lessing Vocabulary List as our List of the Week. Continue reading...
In a piece in The Atlantic last month, writer Mark Bowden recounts reading a book of military history filled with so many unusual words he was forced to consult a dictionary at least ten times. The experience made him ponder the balance between prose that's clear and easy to understand, and the enjoyment of using and reading the occasional rare and therefore "spicy" word. Continue reading...