Professor Kate Nation was interviewed by Chris Evans on his Radio 2 Breakfast show as part of the celebration of 500 Words, a writing competition organised by the BBC in collaboration with Oxford University Press. Over 118,000 children submitted a story in 500 words or less. The winners will be announced by Chris from his live broadcast at The Hay Literary Festival on Friday. Kate talked about the children’s stories, focussing on what they can tell us about the development of reading and writing.
The Children's words have now entered the Oxford Children’s Corpus, a large database of nearly 2 million words compiled by the Children’s Dictionaries Department, collated from material written for children or by children. Kate and her colleagues are analysing the corpus, with the support of a grant from Oxford University's John Fell Fund.
Listen to her being interview here, starting at 1hr53mins. And follow the links to find out more about 500 words and to read the shortlisted stories.