Across Australia, students are receiving and digesting important exam results. University students began receiving their semester 2 results at the end of November. This week and early next week, Year 12 students are also receiving their final marks. Love them or loathe them, exams have featured prominently in education for centuries. For almost as long, debate has raged about whether […] … learn more→

In my research, I have spent a good deal of time speaking with people from across the world about their relationship with sound and music – how it features in their everyday lives and how it influences their attitudes and behaviour. One of the most consistent findings is that, irrespective of culture or place, we are […] … learn more→

The effect of video games on the social, affective and cognitive development of children and adolescents is of concern since they have become one of the main forms of entertainment at an early age. As an extreme case, the Chinese government limits minors’ access to video games, although with little success . The addiction of young people to video […] … learn more→

The Royal Spanish Academy has just added to the Dictionary, among other terms, the English expression big data , despite the fact that it has a simple and obvious translation into Spanish. What reasons are behind this decision and others like it? As has been happening in recent years every December, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), in collaboration with the Association […] … learn more→

If you, like me, grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, you may have come across the classic refrigerator magnet, “Teenagers, leave home now while you still know everything.” Perhaps you know a teen, or maybe you were a teen, like this: pop-star energy, a little too confident in your opinions, a little too certain […] … learn more→

Attracting research funding is part of the job at most universities. As such, you need to allocate some of your working time to do that job. But how much time is needed for writing applications? In 2009, Karen Mow estimated that Australian academics spent, on average, 30–40 days per year writing research council grant applications (Mow, […] … learn more→

If a student were to walk off the Harvard campus and onto a street in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and argue for the genocide of Jews, the U.S. Constitution would bar prosecuting her for hate speech. If the same student left her perch on the sidewalk and returned to the Harvard campus to continue […] … learn more→

I’m finally writing a paper. It’s one that’s been percolating for about a year. A year, that’s actually not a long time in the making. That’s just the way it is sometimes. As much as you might want it to be otherwise, some ideas just take their own good time to coalesce. I’ve assumed until […] … learn more→

The Australian government is aiming to rein in the growth of international students in its new migration policy, released on Monday. This is in response to record levels of international students entering the country once COVID-related border closures were lifted. Current and former international students living in Australia already number 860,000 and are hurtling towards one […] … learn more→

Who has not had it happen to you, when filling out an official form, that you are not able to choose one of the options because you do not understand which one best suits your situation? Or having to read a paragraph of an administrative statement several times until it becomes impossible? Even experts and linguists […] … learn more→