Letter processing and font information during reading: beyond distinctiveness, where vision meets design

Letter identification is a critical front end of the reading process. In general, conceptualizations of the identification process have emphasized arbitrary sets of distinctive features. However, a richer view of letter processing incorporates principles from the field of type design, including an emphasis on uniformities across letters within a font. The importance of uniformities is supported by a small body of research indicating that consistency of font increases letter identification efficiency. We review design concepts and the relevant literature, with the goal of stimulating further thinking about letter processing during reading.

'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' by Oscar Wilde

A new edition of Wilde's poem, with notes and afterword.

What An Collins was reading

An Collins’s 1653 collection of poems, Divine Songs and Meditacions, contain all that we know about the writer. But in these poems she tells us much about the books that she had read, and about her indebtedness to the catechetical works of the Elizabethan puritan theologian William Perkins in particular.

Coping with linguistic challenges in UK higher education: the use of strategies by Chinese research students

The present study sets out to examine the strategies used by Chinese learners in a predominantly naturalistic environment and how such learner strategy use relates to their proficiency in the second language. Data were collected from four Chinese research students in the UK using semi-structured interviews. Their proficiency in English was assessed with an oral interview and a listening test. The main findings from this study are that the learners used a wide range of strategies overall, including metacognitive, cognitive, social/affective and compensation strategies. The majority of the commonly reported strategies were metacognitive strategies, suggesting that the learners were self-directed and attempting to manage their own learning in an informal context. They also showed idiosyncrasies in their use of learner strategies. Attempts to explain the learners’ strategy use in relation to their levels of proficiency in English and contextual factors, as well as several other factors, are offered. Implications for target-country institutions in terms of the provision of support to Chinese students are discussed.

Marguerite Duras and colonialist discourse: an intertextual reading of 'L'Empire français' and 'Un barrage contre le Pacifique'

This article examines the intertextual relationship between Marguerite Duras' pro-colonialist, propagandist text, L'Empire français (1943), and her seemingly anti-colonialist novel, Un barrage contre le Pacifique (1950). It explores both the transformative and the emulative uses to which descriptive elements, borrowed from the precursor text, are put in the novel's depictions of colonial Indochina. Going against prevalent critical readings of Barrage, the article highlights the ambivalent and ultimately only partial nature of Duras' apparent ideological volte-face