Tear in eye your dress you’ll tear. So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer, Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it? Just compare heart, beard and heard, Dies and diet, lord and ...

There are about a million words in the English language, but do you know the longest word in English? You may think it’s antidisestablishmentarianism, at 28 letters ...

Spelling lists. Spelling tests. Spelling bees. Adults of a certain age who remember anything about elementary school likely recall spelling as central to their literacy instruction. That’s not ...

And should you blame not your study skills, but the language itself? The news release was ludicrous: A group called The Spelling Society wanted us to know it was hanging out outside the Scripps ...

English is a bit of a pickpocket. According to some estimates, nearly 80 percent of it consists of foreign loanwords — terms that have been borrowed from other languages. This hodgepodge of influences ...

Could spelling reform help English literacy rates? Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Frankieleon/Flickr. Listen to Episode 235 of Slate’s The Gist: Subscribe in iTunes ∙ RSS feed ∙ Download ∙ Play ...

Natalie Smith, a fifth-grade teacher at Southern Heights Elementary School in Hobbs, and student Ivanna Nevarez work together on a classroom reading assignment. Ivanna, 11, who spoke more Spanish than ...

Do you know if your kindergartner or first grader is developing as expected as a reader, writer, and speller? You may want to check these K-1 literacy milestones. Here are a few key facts. 1. Learning ...