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Articles about Vocabulary
Words can be thought of as historical artifacts; they carry with them a stamp of time and place, and sometimes it's important to take the long view and think about words outside their immediate context and use a broader perspective.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
If Your Dog Can Learn New Words, Then You Can Too
Tips on word learning from Chaser, the brilliant border collie
We couldn't resist checking out the story of Chaser, the three-year-old border collie who has learned 1000 words and we're glad we didn't. Because, as it turns out, even we human vocabulary learners can find inspiration in her story.
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Topics:
Vocabulary
One of the most persistent myths about word acquisition is that students don't need to be taught words; they just need to read more and their vocabularies will magically expand. This theory — which I like to call "learning words by osmosis" — doesn't hold much promise for your average or struggling reader. While it may hold true for a select group of students who are strong, avid readers possessing a curiosity about words, most students don't learn words by simply encountering them in reading.
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As Americans celebrate Columbus Day, it's worth reflecting on the complicated cultural and linguistic legacy that Christopher Columbus left behind. There's a single word that aptly illustrates this legacy and all of its contradictions: Indians, the mistaken name that Columbus gave to the native peoples of the Americas.
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Vocabulary Shout-Out
Is "Lugubrious" Good or Bad? Use Context Clues to Find Out!
A sentence tailor-made for the new SAT
When New York Times television critic Alessandra Stanley used lugubrious to describe AMC's "Breaking Bad," she embedded a context clue that makes her sentence an SAT question writer's dream.
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Topics:
Vocabulary
Word CountWriters Talk About Writing
Stormy Weather: A Tempest of Meteorological Terms
From tornado to cyclone and even haboob.
Given how much our day-to-day lives are influenced by weather — and especially by storms — perhaps it's not surprising that we have a rich vocabulary for these natural phenomena.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
"Septaper" and "Octaper": Fed-Watchers Remake the Calendar
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke foiled the predictions of many analysts that September would usher in tapering, or the gradual slowdown of the bond-buying policy that the Fed instituted to keep long-term interest rates low. Those analysts even had renamed the month Septaper, but now they're looking ahead to a possible Octaper. After that, it gets a bit harder to come up with clever month-blends.
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