Two languagey stories in today's Independent, both useable for teaching, I think.

This is about research which claims to show that the numbers of parents reading to kids has more than doubled in the past two years and that now 90% of parents regularly make time to read to their kids. It doesn't say whether that's 90% of parents in England, in the world, in the UK, or in Hampstead, but I must admit that I find that figure hard to believe, so I'm going to try to find out more details about the research.

This one baffles (now there's a word) me a bit. It starts by saying that a return to traditional methods of teaching reading has reversed the trend for girls to do better than boys at school. Then it says the method returned to is phonics, which my kids have been exposed to for the past 5 years. Then it says it's in Scotland and started 5 years ago. Then it says that we've been doing phonics in England since 1998 (i.e. 4 years ago) but it's more gradual down here. I think that what's being reported is a comparison between Scottish kids before and after phonics (not clear which ones were measured how as the 'before' group). But I'd like to know about English kids and what their gradual phonics is doing to them.

Funnily enough, just watched an episode of The Cramp Twins where a researcher decides to do some tests showing that Wayne and Lucien are completely alike, uses unusual methods to try to make sure the results come out OK, and ends up making them swap personality types.

B-)