Spelling Society (18:37)

Stephen Linstead is Chairman and Honorary Treasurer for the English Spelling Society. Some of the most difficult languages to learn include Chinese, Finnish and Arabic. Although English isn’t on the list, it is still no cake-walk to learn. Languages can become difficult to learn for grammatical reasons, because of colloquial terms and accents. Stephen Linstead from The English Spelling Society argues that it is in fact “spelling” that makes English a challenge to learn. 

 

TV’s shifting landscape (1:12:02)

Cynthia Meyers, Ph.D., a professor of communications at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. Today you can’t get away from commercials, whether you are trying to watch a youtube video or you are just surfing Facebook, it is everywhere.  But today’s advertisement is not the same type of advertisement as your parent’s, it is branded content. Cynthia Meyers talks about branded content and how it is changing in reaction to how we are consuming entertainment.

 

Learning and its Difficulties (2:03:40)

Frank John Ninivaggi MD is an associate attending physician at Yale–New Haven Hospital, an assistant clinical professor of child psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine’s Child Study Center and the psychiatric director of the Devereux-Glenholme School in Washington, Connecticut. He is in private practice in New Haven and teaches at Yale. He is a regular contributor to Psychology Today online and his book, Making Sense of Emotion: Innovating Emotional Intelligence has just been published. It’s very difficult to live in today’s world without literacy skills. The developing world is constantly trying to figure out how to spread literacy in reading, writing, and calculating to the rest of the world and how to get students in the U.S. up to speed. But what are some of the underlying problems with the lack of literacy? Is it just political, or could there be a diversity of learning difficulties out there? , is here to teach us a little more about these learning difficulties and how to address them. He says, “Understanding empowers you as an adult and a guide for your child.”