Experts on Deaf Culture Help Times Explain Name Signing
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.How does a person get a name sign — the series of unique gestures used to identify someone in American Sign Language? For a team of Times journalists, the process of answering that question underscored the…
Learn 60 New Vocabulary Words With These Imaginative Student Videos
Over the past eight years of our Vocabulary Video Contest, students have produced thousands of lively, original videos in which they define a Word of the Day in under 15 seconds.Sixty of the winning videos, organized into three compilations by part of speech, are rounded up in this post. We hope that this repository of…
Lesson of the Day: ‘How Language Classes Are Moving Past the Gender Binary’
Lesson OverviewFeatured Article: “How Language Classes Are Moving Past the Gender Binary” by Molly LipsonMany languages, including Hebrew, French, Spanish, Italian and Arabic, use binary pronouns, such as he/she and male/female, which means that other gender identities are not formally acknowledged in those languages.In this lesson, you will learn about teachers who are finding ways…
R. Allen Gardner, 91, Dies; Taught Sign Language to a Chimp Named Washoe
Washoe was 10 months old when her foster parents began teaching her to talk, and five months later they were already trumpeting her success. Not only had she learned words; she could also string them together, creating expressions like “water birds” when she saw a pair of swans and “open flower” to gain admittance to…
Our 9th Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge
3. Work alone, with a partner or in a group.4. Only one submission per student.If you submit as part of a group, you cannot enter separately as an individual.5. Your video should be no more than 15 seconds, but it can be shorter.Please double check the video length after you upload the video to YouTube.6.…
Expectations of ‘Perfect’ English Are Elitist and Unrealistic
This essay, by Megan Luong, age 17, from Notre Dame High School in San Jose, Calif., is one of the Top 11 winners of The Learning Network’s 10th Annual Student Editorial Contest, for which we received 12,592 entries.We are publishing the work of all the winners and runners-up over the next week, and you can…
February Vocabulary Challenge: Invent a Word
“Of all the factors that transform how we communicate, none are so powerful as young people, who have always steered language,” writes book critic Parul Sehgal.Our February Vocabulary Challenge invites middle and high school students to suggest a new word of their own. In the comments, tell us what your word means and why you…
