this is a blog

Okay I’ve actually processed that I submitted it now so lets talk about it!

(yes i submitted it with the border leave me be)

Topic:

I have a background (and interest) in childcare and teaching, and since the pandemic have noticed certain behavioural changes in children returning into KS2, along with marked language and literacy difficulties. I wanted to compile a comprehensive list on all the different ways COVID19-related factors may have effected language and literacy development then side-eye the UK Department of Education for not taking proper action to help these kids improve before the attainment gaps get out of control. This topic was pretty personal to me which really motivated my research: these kids really need some help!

Some ways in which COVID19 has affected child language:

- Face Masks acting as low-pass frequency filters and obscuring articulators, therefore making building phoneme/grapheme correspondences very difficult

- Isolation meant no socialisation with other children; pragmatic talk and self expression abilities took a huge hit

- Reading comprehension absolutely plummeted outside of school by 66% !!

- Distance learning means children ‘tunnel in’ on their devices which makes their brain block out any stimuli occurring around them, such as speech

Findings:

tdlr: COVID19 has messed up attainment in KS2 literacy pretty badly, UK Government needs to pull their finger out and reform intervention methods in schools (using the suggestions I made ;) )

We already know the UK school system is a hot mess, but when it comes to intervention methods they fund nothing that will cover the novel language issues associated with the pandemic and 3 years on show no signs of doing anything of their own accord. These kids need to be put back on track quickly else they’ll suffer some serious language issues down the line. After evaluating the interventions on offer for their applicability to the “COVID cohort” (I love alliteration) I suggested some reforms/additions to certain schemes that will theoretically fill in the numerous gaps left by the current standard system.

Since I’m a native German who’s currently learning Swedish, I noticed that Swedish shares some of our weird German words.

Today’s example is the word glove

The German word for this is ‘Handschuh’, the Swedish word is ‘handske’. 

Both of these literally mean ‘hand shoe’

Hi! My name is Gabe, and I’m a linguistics student. In my graduate course, I am doing a research project on the way people use pronouns to construct/reinforce language and gender ideologies, looking specifically at the way people with multiple sets of pronouns are referred to by others.

If you use more than one set of pronouns (i.e. she/they, he/it/ae, etc), please consider filling this survey out! it takes about 15-20 minutes depending on your level of detail, though as much detail as possible is encouraged!