We recently spoke to British researcher Dan Clayton about the new educational project, "Teaching English Grammar in Schools." The project seeks to enliven the teaching of English by using real examples pulled from a corpus of texts. In part two of our interview, we asked Dan how this corpus-based approach allows both teachers and students to investigate the intricacies of the English language.  Continue reading...

Homographs — words that are spelled the same but have different meanings — are a common source of frustration among ESL and native English speakers alike. What many students do not realize is that sometimes identifying a homograph's part of speech can indicate to readers how that word is pronounced.  Continue reading...

Teachers, if you are looking to incorporate writing into your specific content area, check out these helpful writing sites:

Purdue Online Writing Lab

The Writing Site

National Writing Project

After years of fine-tuning individual state standards for education, the tide has turned. No longer will many administrators and teachers turn to their state standards to determine what to teach and when; they will instead look to the Common Core Standards as the new "gold standard" of standards. As of today, the Common Core State Standards Initiative — brainchild of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) — has successfully wooed at least thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia.  Continue reading...

We recently learned of a fascinating new project in the United Kingdom entitled "Teaching English Grammar in Schools," and we were pleased to see that Dan Clayton, a researcher working on the project, had spoken highly of the educational resources of the Visual Thesaurus. We got in touch with Dan to find out how the project, part of the Survey of English Usage, is promoting new approaches to the teaching of grammar based on real usage examples pulled from a corpus of texts.  Continue reading...

Teachers, Halloween is upon us, and your students may be brewing up some spooky stories. Don't let them fall into the trap of clinging to overused intensifiers and boring adjectives!  Continue reading...