Anu Garg, the creator of the popular Word.A.Day email we interview in this week's "Behind the Dictionary" feature, recommends these books on words and language:

Word Origins by Anatoly Liberman

Limits of Language by Mikael Parkvall

The Oxford Guide to World English by Tom McArthur

The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots by Calvert Watkins

Keen to read the "most fresshe and newe postes?" These sites celebrate the English of yore!

Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog (Yes, folks, a blog written entirely in Middle English!)

Lectio Anglorum

Anglo-Saxon Aloud

Old English in New York

Unlocked Wordhoard

As every high school senior -- and parent of said senior -- knows all too well, now is crunch time for college applications. In her latest column, teacher Shannon Reed wrote an excellent guide to choosing the right college. Now we want to zero in on the big, hairy challenge to getting into that school: The personal essay. What should you write about? What should you not write about? To get the inside scoop, we called Richard Ries, AP English teacher and College Counseling Office essay advisor at Ben Lipson Hillel Community High School in North Miami Beach, FL. Here's our conversation:  Continue reading...

Shannon Reed is an award-winning playwright who teaches high school English to a large pack of bright young women at a private school on the beach in Queens, New York. She graciously contributed this column:

If you're a teacher, you've no doubt already have made the following observation: the two emotions that truly motivate a student are genuine interest... and fear. Many of us no doubt experienced this phenomenon ourselves when we were in school. I remember being motivated to do good work in three classes in high school: English and History, which I genuinely loved, and Earth Science, where the fearsome Mr. Colsun looked ever-ready to explode into a hellish ball of flame that would singe my eyebrows and ruin my complexion if I mislabeled the periodical table one more time. Mr. Colsun, I wish you ill, but to this day, I still know were mercury goes.

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"Our mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education," says this charitable program. How? By putting as many laptops in the hands of as many kids as possible. How can you help? Check out their website to learn more.

Words like "spacesuit," "blast off" and "robot" weren't born in science -- but in science fiction. To learn more, we called Jeff Prucher, the editor of Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction, a rich and fascinating compendium of words invented and popularized by the genre. We spoke to him about science fiction's impact on English:  Continue reading...

Jeff Prucher, the science fiction dictionary editor we interview in this week's "Behind the Dictionary" feature, recommends these books on the intersection of language and science fiction:

Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy by Gary K. Wolfe

Science Fiction Quotations by Gary Westfahl

Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon by Michael Adams ("A landmark in the study of the language of the fantastic.")