Read(ing week) all about it! Plus Reading Journal: Spring Term, Week 6 (Reading Week)

Cake in Vanbrugh (mine's blatantly on the right)

Ah, reading week. So often a misnomer, but surprisingly accurate in the case of last week (mostly). The weekdays were spent reading in Harry Fairhurst, eating cake and getting very much distracted. I could feel the pressure of the dreaded D-word building, even though it's only a draft proposal due on the 27th and we're not expected to have the entire thing fully planned out. This latter is my stumbling point. However, the reading I did was definitely useful, and now I'm going to try to relax about it a little bit, write a decent proposal for next Monday and then think about the more pressing matters of two summative assignments for the two modules I am actually taking this term. There will be time during Easter to really get down to work on dissertation planning, but for now, CHILDES and minimalism must come first.



Rocking the Bachelor of Medicine hood
with red tights outside Senate House.
Picture courtesy of the boy.

So that was the week. The weekend (which started on Thursday, of course) was a whirl of superb French plays, lots of good food with good company, Audrey's attic, cake with librarians, cocktails with lindy hoppers, pomp, pride, ceremony and church Latin at Queens' College's MA graduation, good ol' night out Revs-style with the Cambridge City Hockey Club and a lovely afternoon spent wandering along the banks of the Cam in the sunshine.

Unrivalled bliss and happiness which I hope will see me through to the end of the Spring Term (or at least until my birthday at the end of week 9).

Dissertation reading

• Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in development: language, literacy and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mueller, N. (1998). Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1(3), 151-171.
• De Houwer, A. (1998). Comparing error frequencies in monolingual and bilingual acquisition.  Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 1(3), 173-174.
• Meisel, J.M. (1989). Early differentiation of languages in bilingual children. In: K. Hyltenstam and L.K. Obler, eds. Bilingualism across the lifespan: aspects of acquisition, maturity and loss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch. 2.