Word: grammars
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...North Korea's test will alter the tenses and grammar of the international community's demands, from insisting that North Korea refrain from developing and testing nuclear weapons to insisting that it reverse course and agree to denuclearize under international supervision. Those demands will likely now be backed by tougher sanctions, although the extent of likely sanctions is uncertain because the factors restraining neighbors from choking North Korea's food and energy lifeblood remain in place. And North Korea clearly sees its nuclear test not as ending the discussion, but rather as a way of strengthening its negotiating position...
...short-term solutions to their problems, they all go to a sex cabaret called Shortbus. (Explanation of the title: back in grammar school the "normal" kids got to ride the regular-length schoolbus, while "the gifted and challenged" rode the short bus.) Among the denizens are a courtly older gent, who bears a passing resemblance to a former bachelor mayor of New York, and the cabaret's host, real-life male diva Justin Bond (aka Kiki of the Broadway duo Kiki & Herb). "It's just like the '60s," he says of the entanglement of bodies in the orgy room, "only...
...locations out of a total of 715--an extraordinarily small change that may nevertheless explain the emergence of all aspects of human speech, from a baby's first words to a Robin Williams monologue. And indeed, humans with a defective FOXP2 gene have trouble articulating words and understanding grammar...
...standard error of measurement of about 30 points per section. In other words, if you got a 500 on the math section, your "true" score was anywhere between 470 and 530. But the new writing section, which includes not only a multiple-choice grammar segment but also the subjective essay, has a standard error of measurement of 40 points. That means a kid who gets a 760 in writing may actually be a perfect 800--or a clever-but-no-genius 720. In short, the College Board sacrificed some reliability in order to include writing...
...formulaic, colorless writing over sharp young voices. The average essay score for kids who wrote in the first person was 6.9, compared with 7.2 for those who didn't. (A 1-to-12 scale is used to grade essays. That score is then combined with the score on the grammar questions and translated into the familiar 200 to 800 points.) As my editors know well, first-person writing can flop. But the College Board is now distributing a guide called "20 Outstanding SAT Essays"--all of them perfect scores--and many are unbearably mechanical and clichéd ("smooth sailing always...