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Delightful Lexicography

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I think a lot of people have already seen this video from last year, but if you haven’t, it’s well worth it! Erin McKean is a lexicographer who gives an entertaining and surprisingly funny overview of the descriptivist (as opposed to prescriptivist) approach to dictionaries and lexicography. It’s made for non-linguists, so it’s a good one to show to your non-TESOL friends and family who may be still stuck on the notion that “it’s not a word if it’s not in the dictionary.”

Free Online Journals

Ah, free journals. I love them so very much. Even if you join a professional organization, you sometimes still have to pay extra to get their peer-reviewed publications. Never fear: there are various online publications that are free, and yes, some of them are even refereed/peer-reviewed. Best of all, you don’t have to pay premium postage to get these delivered to your desk in Mongolia or wherever you happen to be teaching at the moment.

Here are a few I’ve bookmarked. Please let me know your favorites that I’ve missed. (Don’t forget–these are great places to try to get published, too!)

In addition, the American Educational Research Association’s Communication of Research Special Interest Group has created a page called “Open Access Journals in the Field of Education”, featuring a huge, multi-national list of scholarly, peer-reviewed, free journals.