Emma James

emma
Research Associate
Experimental Psychology

I was a Research Associate at ReadOxford until 2022. I’ve loved reading for as long as I can remember, and some of my fondest childhood memories are the late nights I spent reading by torchlight under the duvet cover (shh, don’t tell my mum!). I continued my love of literature into my school years, taking A Levels in both English Language and English Literature, but my scientific curiosity led me to study for a degree in Experimental Psychology at Oxford. During this time, I realised the subjects weren’t so incompatible, and became fascinated with the study of literacy and language from a developmental perspective: how do we manage to learn so many words, and how can we help children who find language and reading challenging? I went on to spend a year working on a reading comprehension project at Lancaster University, before completing my PhD on vocabulary learning at the University of York. I returned to Oxford to join the ReadOxford group in 2020, where I am studying the nature and consequences of reading comprehension difficulties. 

You can find my academic page here.

Emma is now based at the University of York.
 

My favourite word

I recently learnt the word mondegreen, which is the term for when you mishear lyrics in a way that leads to a different meaning. It’s particularly cool because the term comes from a mondegreen itself: it was initially coined after Sylvia Wright wrote about how she had misheard the lyric “layd him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen”. I’m always singing weird versions of song lyrics, so I find this term very comforting!

My favourite childhood book

An impossible task to choose a favourite, but The Lottie Project by Jacqueline Wilson stands out as a special book to me. I bought it on a trip to a bookshop with a holiday club, and it’s the first time that I can remember choosing a book to buy all by myself. I hadn’t come across Jacqueline Wilson before that day, but one of the other children recommended her books to me. Well, that purchase marked the start of a very large collection and many happy years of reading! Jacqueline Wilson is known for tackling some challenging themes, and I still like to choose books that teach me about lives very different to my own.