"Is Spelling Important?"

In light of our recent spelling test, which surprisingly stumped me repeatedly, I thought I'd post this piece. Oh yeah, and I'd get more A's in spelling if the only requirement was to put the letters provided in the correct order.

Here is an [unsigned] article which is making the e-mail circuit. It tries to prove that all of us read with a whole word approach.

"Can you raed tihs?

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid; aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

If you can raed tihs forwrad it."

Read more about this at http://www.learningbooks.net/wholeword.html

Gatekeeping

A friend sent me this link, saying, "By the way, if anyone in your class is interested in nibbling linguistics, I thought this article, 'Correct American Gatekeeping,' from the PBS show Do You Speak American? was easy to get into. It's another perspective on an already complicated issue." Click on the title of this post to be taken to the article.

Living Organisms

This is a response I received from my good friend Kazuyo Karan; I'd invited her to read Takashi's post on skies and all the comments it received. Here is what she said:

Thank you for sharing the discussion. Very interesting. I enjoyed reading it.

I remember that taking linguistics classes was eye-opening for me, especially the ones in historical, anthropological, and psychological contexts. I couldn't remember a thing, but the History of the English Language class was very interesting. Your students might be interested in looking up the etymologies of the articles "a" and "the." I did a paper on "weirdo." So much to discover in one little word.

After all is said and done, we may realize that languages are living organisms. We can smother, kill, conquer, or cultivate them. And we may also learn that the standards, rules, and regulations are contrived for the purpose of gatekeeping and maintaining the status quo, just like other authoritative schemes.

Thank you for sharing interesting thoughts.