h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, as an EFL teacher yourself, I'm sure you'll agree with the maxim of 'write for your reader/s' and the idea that one text, while appropriate in one context, isn't right for another genre/readership. Something you wrote for a community of architects would be unintelligible to me, who knows very little about the subject. Something you wrote for a satirical magazine like Private Eye, wouldn't work in a textbook on the subject. Even paragraphing is different on the guide: the strain of reading off a computer screen tends to mean that I for one attempt to keep paragraphs shorter than normal.

Actually, I think you misunderstood my point about punctuation, which is that its function now is entirely different from its original function. I largely think it's there to help the eye now: quite apart from the fact that reading aloud just doesn't happen, most people don't (and shouldn't) read by sounding out the words/ sentences in their head. I mean, I think punctuation is important in and of itself, but it's doubly interesting in an articule on how writing has changed.

It suddenly occurred to me that the reformation and the King James' Bible must have had a huge impact on written English, at least in terms of popularising it. I have a colleague who claims that Welsh was pretty much saved from extiction by the fact that the bible there was done in Welsh at around the same time, and essentially that was the basis on which most literacy teaching rested. Or, in other words, most Welsh people were taught to read so that they could read the bible, and therefore learned to read Welsh (rather than English).

I still think the article is skewed away from a discussion of the written word because most of the points you do make about the written word are tucked away at the end of a long section on something else, which detracts from the focus of the argument. The coment about Latin as the written language is a case in point: it's burried at the end of a (longer and more lovingly constructed )section on how Latin didn't impact much.

I assume that the 'integration of the four skills' means you teach all of them, by the way, not that they are all the same...

How's this coming along?

Hello?

Hello!

It looks like James has just about left the building. My preference would be to see this move back to the entry, and not to the Flea Market. What do other people think?

Couldn't agree more, Mikey!

There seems to be no text here.

Thirded.

??

4thed

Can some scout get this non-entry removed from Peer Review, please?

looks like we are waiting for a scout with a lst, I can't since I'm only online for a few mins

Added to my list

greets news with yeayness

Added to my third list

Still not gone - I'll add a note about it on my list.

I sent the email to Paully a while ago and nought has happened...

(see the email Sent: 10 November 2005 16:16 Subject: [h2g2Scouts] Peer Review Moves)

Oooo! It's gone!

The list for this has turned into a list itself Where can we send the list of the list?

and finally !!!