"Elite colleges have convinced us that scarcity equals quality, that a lower acceptance rate means a better education. But their own behavior shows that many of their decisions are more about manipulating the market than academic or any other kind of excellence." 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

Stefan Fatsis on the current state of American lexicography www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

*please share widely* My department (Second Language Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) is hiring a corpus linguist who conducts research on second languages. Great place to teach (2/2 load) and do research! See link for more details: go.hawaii.edu/mGc

Just discovered that Susan Hunston's new book "Pattern, Construction, System: A Unified Approach to Grammar and Lexis" is out in OPEN ACCESS! 🤩 www.cambridge.org/core/books/p... #corpuslinguistics #appliedlinguistics #linguistics #patterngrammar

My data privacy on Facebook is apparently worth $38.36. Will donate 100% of this lavish settlement to my department's student association.

In Korea, it's not uncommon to see older folks protesting or otherwise engaging in public political speech. But that demographic skews conservative and they're often waving US flags. I wonder how the Georgia incident will impact Korean domestic politics.

wrote on charlie kirk for the newsletter this weekend

New article on changes to South Korea's National English Curriculum and the growing global influence of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). My co-author, Kitaek Kim (Seoul Nat'l), was directly involved in the revisions, and lead author (and SLS PhD student) Joonhee Kim assisted.

@langtestjournal.bsky.social has made our article "A survey of English language proficiency tests in international student admissions at US research-intensive universities" free to read/download for 1 year! Mahalo!

Expose on an alleged IELTS cheating scandal in Bangladesh. Two arrests related to selling exam content from the paper-based version of the test. www.daily-sun.com/post/825063

New article on English language testing in admissions by @timeshighered.bsky.social. A study I recently published is linked www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/are-st...

The Item Response Warehouse is a new data resource for psychometricians interested in developing methods using bigger and more diverse sets of instruments: itemresponsewarehouse.org New paper out now at BRM: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

I'm getting very worried about GenAI stats help. An article I'm reviewing stated that after removing two cases for low-effort responses (uniform response pattern), they removed 2 more at random so that a t-test would have balanced group sizes and therefore better power. This sounded wild to me. 1/

Straight to the @thelouvreof.bsky.social. What @dieworkwear.bsky.social does is art.

We are about a month away from releasing a complete refresh of the OSF user interface. The team has been working on this for a very long time, and we are very excited to be able to share it soon. A preview picture:

Hawaii’s health insurers say they will cover COVID vaccinations for anyone older than six months, despite new FDA guidance that says children and healthy adults don’t need the shots.

One thing that surprises me about academia is just how much time you spend on other people's research. I always knew it was/would be part of the gig, but the volume exceeds expectations - peer review, editorial decisions, student projects, etc.

New Diamond OA journal: Racial Justice in Multilingual Education. Some innovative article types, fascinating inaugural issue. rjme.org

Really glad for Tokyo Disneyland. $60-$70 adult tickets, nearby hotels affiliated with the park (but not Disney branded) ~$200/night. Current exchange rates help, but even for locals it's comparatively much more affordable than the US parks.

unbelievable. one of the very few graduate translation programs in the anglosphere is shut down. america is nothing if not INSULAR

Another day, another lesson in why open data improves peer review... Spent a good few hours attempting to reproduce some new analyses in a revision, which identified some data errors and lack of clarity on model specification -> actionable feedback to authors. (if fixed, will be a nice article!)

These ghouls aren't just maliciously appropriating Open Science principles, they're maliciously appropriating science as a whole.

New guidance from APA regarding use of GenAI for research and publication: www.apa.org/pubs/journal...

Another day, another article with open data and analysis scripts where I can do a reproducibility check and make concrete suggestions for authors to improve their reporting of methodological decisions and results. It's not just about rooting out QRPs/fraud -

"Forum for Linguistic Studies", published by Bilingual Publishing Group, seems to be engaged in false claims/fraud by listing people on their editorial board without consent. I think their emails now get caught by my spam filter. Was getting tons of requests for reviews, etc.

There's no reason not to share data from a systematic literature review, other than cowardice.

"The problem with English tests" a good explainer from the ABC on visa related language requirements

Fantastic piece, and should be required reading (especially for university presidents, ahem). All of this "AI is the future" and "the gap between university and industry AI use and expertise!" always elides the fact that the tech is "mid" at best (@tressiemcphd.bsky.social) and more often just slop.

The US president. What has happened to this country

The dog that caught the car.

So NIMBYs in my neighborhood complained about a new housing development... and it just resulted in all affordable housing being removed (all market rate SFH remain in the plan). Kind of highlights a real cause of their opposition - making sure *some* people aren't their neighbors.

The LSAT has been completely suspended (online and in-person) in China until January 2026. www.lsac.org/blog/tempora...

Ian Bogost's piece on AI is sobering and worth a read, though entirely too sympathetic to AI users and too cynical regarding the entire project of universities. To pick a specific nit: Lectures might remain unchanged for decades because the fundamental knowledge students need to know (and be /n

Especially cool to see Hawaiian, Filipino, and Samoan taught in K12 settings. www.khon2.com/local-news/n...

I'm enjoying this new article by Christopher Jenks that highlights some positives of English as a global language. One neat thread Jenks discusses is the role of English in the spread of the Korean Wave. I'd add that Korean-American KOR/ENG bilinguals have played a huge role in K-pop's spread

i will never not be amused by how the conservative world is governed by the kind of “affirmative action” they say happens in mainstream institutions. totally unqualified dipshits are handed the keys to institutions because they say the right thing and have the right look.

New study with Maggie McGehee (recent SLS MA grad) on English proficiency test scores (Duolingo, IELTS, TOEFL) and int'l student academic outcomes at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. We considered first-year GPA and adverse academic outcomes (probation, drop-out) among grad and undergrads.

Having statisticians vet analytical techniques is great in principle. But we might have a chicken and egg problem here. Are they going to spend time getting techniques no one uses? Are formally trained statisticians working on techniques for (forensic) meta-science? (If yes, share links please!)

SK is relatively big on AI, but good to see this pushback. Maybe AI can be used in some supplemental tools/study aids, but baking it into something as fundamental as textbooks seems like a bad idea at this point. m.koreaherald.com/article/1054...

The US could see a 30-40% decline in new international student enrollment, resulting in nearly $7 billion in lost revenue and more than 60,000 fewer American jobs. https://www.nafsa.org/fall-2025-international-student-enrollment-outlook-and-economic-impact

God hope this doesnt hit hard abcnews.go.com/US/tsunami-w...

It looks like Korean tech firm Naver will be taking over the development and administration of the TOPIK exam, with plans to make the test digital-only and scored by AI.

Japan to regularly accept assistant language teachers from India - The Japan Times

I'm in Korea with a study abroad program, and I have students take pictures of Korea's #linguisticlandscape focused on language mixing and non-Korean languages. I also participate and share things I find. But I don't think I'll share this one with the students...

Ah, discovering that the solution to an R problem is "just update the package" and then closing 15 StackOverflow and Github tabs.

Interesting article on the decline of Chinese language enrollments in the West (along with notes about where there has been growth): ‘Huge shift’: why learning Mandarin is losing its appeal in the West | South China Morning Post share.google/wAwfkufCc8R5...