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The term "test anxiety" typically conjures up images of a high school or university student obsessing over an upcoming exam.

Certainly, older students have been the focus of more than a half a century of research examining test and assessment anxiety and its impact on grades. Researchers know that such test anxiety generally has a negative impact on academic achievement.

Tests can be powerful instruments of educational policy; thus testing can be seen as a political activity entailing tactics, intrigue and maneuvering within institutions that may not be political, but rather commercial, financial or educational.

No emotion, surely, is as cherished and sought after as love. Yet on occasions such as Valentine’s day, we can often be misled into thinking that it consists solely in the swooning, star-crossed romance of falling deeply “in love”. But on reflection, love is far more complex. Indeed, arguably no word covers a wider range of feelings and experiences than love.

The New York Times crossword editors reveal their process for evaluating and editing a puzzle submission.

Often, you can tell where someone grew up by the way they speak.

For example, if someone in the United States doesn’t pronounce the final “r” at the end of “car,” you might think they are from the Boston area, based on sometimes exaggerated stereotypes about American accents and dialects, such as “Pahk the cahr in Hahvahd Yahd.”

A mark on a page, an online meme, a fleeting sound. How can these seemingly insignificant stimuli lead to acts as momentous as participation in a racist rally or the massacre of innocent worshippers? Psychologists, neuroscientists, linguists and philosophers are developing a new theory of language understanding that’s starting to provide answers.

When we listen to a foreign language, we may hear sounds which do not exist in our mother tongue, and may sound different from anything we have ever heard before. The first time we hear something new, a foreign sound or word – even an unknown word in our own languages – something in it may provoke delight or revulsion.

Often with familiar words, it’s almost impossible to simply look at one and separate it from its meaning. Words like “putrid” or “disgusting” have nasty connotations already built in to our subconscious and therefore meaning will play a key role.