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FINISHED FILES ARE THE
RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC
STUDY COMBINED WITH THE
EXPERIENCE OF YEARS

 

I have already posted a Factoid this week, but I felt this one was very much worth sharing. It is a great one to try with a class.

As Teachers, we have to be very aware of the different ways pupils learn. In my opinion it is perception that influences learning. Without going into the complex Psychology behind learning, here is a little eye opener for you.

Before reading the rest of this post, read the sentence at the beginning of this post and as you do so, count how many times the letter ‘F’ appears…

 

 

 

 

…Ok, how many did you count? 3,4,5 or 6?

 

If it wasn’t 6, go back and try again before reading on.

 

The reasons

One, the word “of” is so small and so commonly used in English that the brain treats it as one incompressible unit rather than as a composite of smaller elements.

Two, experienced readers automatically translate the visual symbols of language into internal auditory sounds, and it is the sounds of the words (not the visual impression of the words) that the reader uses to consciously access their structural and semantic content. The ‘f’ in “of” is pronounced as a ‘v‘ sound, so if you depend on your primary means of understanding written language in order to analyse that text (as you naturally would tend to do), it will not occur to you that the word actually has an ‘f’ in it.

So think and reflect carefully!

Do you see what I am saying?