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The Guardian's series on the great Romantic poets with poems, excerpts from their letters, discussions, and podcasts.

" dyslexic in one language but not another. It shows that readers of Chinese use a different part of their brains to readers of English. eported prevalence of dyslexia is much higher in English (about 5-6%) than Chinese. I surveyed 8,000 schoolchildren in the Beijing region, with Yin Wengang of the Chinese Academy of Science, and found that about 1.5% were dyslexic. English, French and Italian dyslexics all showed the same abnormal activity involving the brain system underlying phonemic analysis. In Alan, this theory predicts accurately that the affected language will be English, since Japanese does not require analysis into phonemes.a key peak in brain activity in Chinese readers fell outside the network typically used by European readers. The second surprise was that dyslexics showed lower activation in several key reading areas compared with normal Chinese readers, but this was in a very different brain area from Frith's European dyslexics. Chinese dyslexia may be caused by a different genetic anomaly than English dyslexia."

My students have even told me that they cannot read in school because it is "too distracting" with friends and activities, etc!!! The phones are vibrating, the latest drama unfolds minute by minute--I have decided that half my job it is train them to recognize the proper environment for the proper activity. It is slow going!

I noticed this myself in my second year of college; the way I was reading (especially literature, etc) was changing rapidly as I became more inundated with short-message communication (Facebook, email, texting, etc.). I would even argue that our composition models are changing. I can fire off short bursts of information very quickly (like right now). However, I am finding more often that I may have to actually plan to find a place to read (frightening...?).

ADICHIE review of TKAM

doctorow's take on why we need not just twitter and facebook and diigo but also older methods of socialmedia--blogging

this is the best analysis on why we need the varied forms of social media in the classroom--and in life

hmmmmm...I have had students tell me that YoungAdult ficiton is mostly "kid books" interesting review. Anyone read this book?

Reading Shakespeare makes you smarter!