In competition that's getting hotter with every passing month, Corkscrew Middle School demolished the monthly record on the Vocabulary.com school leaderboard, earning more than 50 million points for their second leaderboard win. The Fort Myers, FL News-Press reported on the story, and teachers say they can see improvements in students reading, writing, and excitement about learning. Continue reading...
March 4th is National Grammar Day, so let's celebrate grammatically! As part of the festivities, the American Copy Editors Society has sponsored a grammar-themed haiku contest on Twitter. The entries have been submitted — enjoy them below. Continue reading...
Thinking of teaching Twelve Years a Slave after Sunday's Oscar win? Here we link to teaching materials and new vocabulary lists to help you bring the story to life. Continue reading...
Recently, an SAT tutor using Vocabulary.com told us that the greatest challenge most of us face when learning vocabulary is being fuzzy on words, "thinking we know what a word means, but when push comes to shove, discovering that we do not." Has this ever happened to you? Continue reading...
National Grammar Day, celebrated every year on March 4th, is just around the corner. This year, the American Copy Editors Society is sponsoring a Tweeted Haiku Contest. Just tweet your grammar-related haiku using the #GrammarDay hashtag and you'll be entered in the competition! The deadline is noon EST, Monday, March 3rd. You can read more details here, and check out last year's winners here. Continue reading...
Unpacking arboreal, canine, and monitory reveal wit and fun(!)in a David Gates review of Lorrie Moore's latest collection of short stories, "Bark." Continue reading...
A "bear market" is one where stock prices fall, and a "bull market" is one where prices rise. But why do financial folks talk about "bears" and "bulls"? The public radio show Marketplace looked into various origin stories and called on our own Ben Zimmer to explain the history. Continue reading...
As Black History Month comes to a close, we are proud to feature a fantastic new reference book: Bartlett's Familiar Black Quotations. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. states in the foreword, it is an "impressively researched and documented collection of the finest thought produced by writers throughout the African diaspora." Here we present an excerpt from the preface by the book's editor, Retha Powers. Continue reading...
A Mexican drug lord's arrest, Ukraine's new reality, skinnier U.S. preschoolers, and a trove of marine fossils in Chile... Follow this week's news coverage from a vocabularian's perspective by learning 10 words from this week's New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post coverage. Continue reading...
Frederick Douglass wrote with fire in his pen, harnessing the specific and powerful language of his day to decry the abomination of slavery in his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Continue reading...