Interesting Links for 01-10-2020

[andrewducker]

Dreading a dark winter lockdown? Think like a Norwegian

(tags:Norway psychology darkness winter pandemic happiness )

"My son can get a COVID test result in 90 minutes. And that's a disgrace."

(tags:pandemic virus testing OhForFucksSake uk )

Scotland's Covid death toll hits highest level since June (7 people)

(tags:death Scotland pandemic )

Switzerland referendum: Voters reject end to free movement with EU

(tags:Switzerland referendum freedom immigration Europe )

Downing Street will not rule out using Scottish Islands for asylum processing plan

(tags:Scotland asylum viaPatrickHadfield wtf )

Covid-19 and the Problem of Collective Action

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1311276277798756352.html
(tags:pandemic economics organisation government viaDanielDWilliam )

Far Right Extremists celebrate after Trump's debate callout

(tags:racism USA politics republicans OhForFucksSake )

The Dying Russians

(tags:Russia death society )

The world is stranger than I can imagine: Australian prison tree edition

(tags:viaDanielDWilliam prison trees Australia weird history )

How Agatha Christie moved with her times

(tags:murder society writing history UK time )

Call for laws to force sale of derelict sites in Scotland

(tags:land housing Scotland )

Coronavirus Is Spreading Most Rapidly Among Young People in The North East and North West of England

(tags:pandemic UK )

Why the UK's "grammar, punctuation, and spelling" test is nasty and dangerous

(tags:language UK teaching OhForFucksSake )

Large scale sequencing of 1,500 SARS-CoV-2 genomes from Norwich shows 32 foreign strains and other interesting details

(tags:pandemic virus UK genetics viaPatrickHadfield )

EU brings Infringement process against the United Kingdom

(tags:UK Europe law )

Investigations launched after Atikamekw woman records Quebec hospital staff uttering slurs before her death

(tags:Canada racism healthcare OhForFucksSake )

Comments

Why the UK's "grammar, punctuation, and spelling" test is nasty and dangerous

[jack]

It feels like you could do something like "choose which of these sentences is most appropriate for a formal/social/written/spoken/etc situation" which would more test that people can use language, not learn rote and probably misleading categorisation of it. But I guess rote learning was what Gove wanted to push :(

Re: Why the UK's "grammar, punctuation, and spelling" test is nasty and dangerous

[naath]

I'm a little taken aback by the idea that a test being hard, such that few test takers will get 100%, is a downside... The POINT of this sort of test is to produce a meaningful ranking of "how good are these children at this task", a test that most children can just do is not going to achieve that aim.

(But this test is testing a stupid, pointless, achievement of 'memorising some stuff that is not even abut how to useEnglish' and need to diaf)

[momentsmusicaux]

Oh cry me a fucking river for the libdem whose kid is at a boarding school.

[andrewducker]

What the fuck?

They say that everyone should have access to tests, not just people like them who can afford to go private

Which bit of that are you disagreeing with?

Grammar

[anef]

I studied languages (though not linguistics) and have never heard of some of these grammar terms. They do not seem helpful for people to understand the structures of language, and how to write and speak meaningfully. Though I do have some sympathy for the view that "were" in the sentence quoted is a subjunctive.

[channelpenguin]

I doubt the tests test anything "real-world" useful. My English grammar and spelling are (can be) near-"perfect" - but I have pretty much zero knowledge of grammar terms beyond "verb", "noun" and "adjective". I taught myself to read at 2.5 and have been an INCREDIBLE bookworm all of my life, so all my learning was by (extensive) example - most often from complex texts meant for adults! I was NEVER taught ANY grammar formally at all. They just did not do that in school in the 70s/80s. This was never a problem until I came to learn German and all the teachers merrily threw around terms like "subject" and "object" (and many more) and I did not have a clue what that even meant in terms of language - I had never analysed it in that way. (I managed to learn German nonetheless)