Introduction to the genre-based literacy research.It focuses on the concept of genre, its place within the model of language and context developed as systemic functional linguistics, and the implementation of this concept in learning to read and write.
When text is rendered by a computer, sometimes characters are displayed as “tofu”. They are little boxes to indicate your device doesn’t have a font to display the text.
Google has been developing a font family called Noto, which aims to support all languages with a harmonious look and feel. Noto is Google’s answer to tofu. The name noto is to convey the idea that Google’s goal is to see “no more tofu”. Noto has multiple styles and weights, and freely available to all.
This experiment brings together the power of Google Translate and the collective knowledge of Wikipedia to put into context the relationship between language and geographical space.
Wyatt-Smith, C. and Kimber, K. (2009) ‘Working multimodally: challenges for assessment’, English Teaching: Practice and Critique, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 70–90.
Provides access to the Sanskrit lexicons prepared by the Institute of Indology and Tamil Studies, Cologne University. In particular the Monier-Williams dictionary.
Linguee est un outil de traduction qui combine un dictionnaire rédactionnel et un moteur de recherche qui vous permettent de chercher la traduction d'un mot ou d'une expression parmi plusieurs centaines de millions de textes bilingues. Linguee possède mille fois plus de matériel traduit qu'un dictionnaire en ligne traditionnel, et ce sous la forme de phrases complètes et de leur traduction.
Jewitt, C. (2002) ‘The move from page to screen: the multimodal reshaping of school English’, Visual Communication, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 171–95.
In this reading Jewitt comments on the use of image and writing in a CD-ROM version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. She also discusses the inherent tension in schools as they promote new technology but test students through traditional technology.
Jewitt, C. (2008) ‘Multimodality and Literacy in school classrooms’, AERA Review of Research in Education, vol. 32, pp. 241–67.
In this article, Jewitt reviews research into multimodality and literacy in the classroom, and asks what these changes mean for being literate in contemporary society, where digital media are embedded in everyday literacy practices. Jewitt argues that the time for associating learning primarily with language and print literacy is over.
Multimodal analysis of hypertext
If you are particularly interested in further exploring the multimodal analysis of hypertext, then you might find the following reading helpful:
Lemke, J. (2005) ‘Multimedia genres and traversals’, Folia Linguistica, vol. 39, no. 1–2, pp. 45–56.
This research looks at not only the problems that science teachers have with engaging students in science and bringing theory and practice together, but it also takes into account the linguistics. In school I was less than engaged in science classes but if teachers could make the language more accessible to students then they could possibly make science more accessible too.
Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) is a text analysis software program designed by James W. Pennebaker, Roger J. Booth, and Martha E. Francis. LIWC calculates the degree to which people use different categories of words across a wide array of texts, including emails, speeches, poems, or transcribed daily speech. With a click of a button, you can determine the degree any text uses positive or negative emotions, self-references, causal words, and 70 other language dimensions.
Questions and Answers in Linguistics (QAL) is a free online peer-reviewed journal published by Center for General and Comparative Linguistics at the University of Wrocław. QAL presents papers focused on especially problematic areas of linguistic research, based on data from diverse languages. As far as theoretical analyses are concerned, we are primarily interested in works within the generative paradigm, although papers using different theoretical approaches can also be considered. We express an interest in interdisciplinary research employing methods from typology, historical studies, corpus studies and experimental psycho– or neurolinguistics providing an empirical background to purely theoretical research. We assume that an exhaustive understanding of a phenomenon as complex as natural language can only come about from bringing together pieces of evidence from many different sources.
QAL is an open access online journal, which means that articles we publish are freely available on the internet immediately after publication for any individual or institution to download, copy, read and quote free of charge, provided that the authors are properly credited and the integrity of the texts is maintained.
English obscure words and etymology resources: online dictionary of weird and unusual words, word lists, technical vocabulary aids, lipograms, and word related essays