The Importance of Grammar
By Keith Wright, The Manila Bulletin

Knowing why a word or word group is being used in a grammatically correct way can be just as important on one’s journey to becoming a superior speaker and writer of English as knowing how to use words correctly.

This task is made more difficult because some grammarians have different definitions for various grammatical terms, e.g. the phrase.

Others argue whether adverbs can modify nouns, pronouns or prepositions and whether gerunds, articles, particles and determiners should be included as parts of speech.

Despite these difficulties, the ultimate objective of 4S-AEP is to encourage learners to focus on the function, purpose and effect of words and constructions they use in speech and writing to achieve a high level of personal proficiency in terms of grammatical correctness.

It needs to be reiterated that every word and every word group in a sentence has a specific purpose otherwise it should not be used.

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Improve teaching of English
Alla Aaksh Mohd Ayub Khan, TheStar.com.my

The ability of young Malaysian English teachers in teaching the English language as effectively as senior teachers has long been argued and debated. Apparently, there are a number of reasons which are not unknown to us. More than three-quarters of the present English teachers went through primary and secondary education with Bahasa Malaysia as the medium of instruction.

They were not immersed in the English language during their school lives, unlike the seniors, especially those who did it in the 1950s and 60s. The loss of a generation of contact with the English language as a medium of instruction has affected the teaching profession.

The issue is of great concern to us as the senior teachers retire. In fact, the problem can only be overcome if these young teachers are willing to take up the gauntlet. New English teachers who have just started off their career must always think of improving the quality of teaching without becoming complacent. They must take advantage of the knowledge and the expertise at hand; invite experienced teachers to observe the teaching in the classroom and welcome constructive feedback.

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To be or not to be—fat/phat
By Mary Cruse, Times-Standard (Eureka, California)

Most words in the English language maintain their general definition for decades or centuries. The power or inference of some words may change and when they do, it is oftentimes disparate.

Case in point, words like fat, thick and even “healthy.” Hip-hop and rap songs have espoused positive attributes of fat or thick when singing about a woman's anatomy in songs, music videos and movies -- the whole junk in the trunk “compliment.”

Recent surveys show that most women find it offensive, and do not even like to be told they look, “healthy.” Personally, I am aiming for healthy. In the past few years, there is a definite rebellion by women in the fashion and entertainment industry to take a stand against the pressure to be thinner, at any cost.

Musicians like Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Queen Latifah, and others, have been very vocal about telling industry executives or PR experts that their weight is no one else's business.

It seems the trend of having to be super thin to win, is shifting. In a December 2009 poll conducted by The Daily Mail, “Kate Winslet has the body most coveted by women.”

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English as a third language in Israel
BY Charlotte M. Vaillancourt, Spectrum.com (Southern Utah)

In Israel the official languages are Hebrew and Arabic, so for most people English is their third language and for many even a fourth language. Despite some misunderstandings—such as being charged for round-trip bus fares when I only needed a one-way ticket—I am grateful that people here are so willing to help me in English.

I wanted to avoid being an ugly American when it came to language, but Hebrew and Arabic are not easy languages to learn in Southern Utah. I am up to about five words in each language, but I cannot write or read any of them.

Yet sometimes I cannot help to laugh when I see the written English here.

When I was an undergraduate student, my roommate introduced me to the Web site engrish.com. The site is devoted to the not-so-correct usage of the English language on foreign signs, packaging, advertising, etc.

Some of the usage is so bad, it is funny; actually, it is all rather funny.

Despite the prevalence of English speakers in Israel, I see signage everyday that would fit in well on the engrish.com site; however, this is something most travelers have encountered at some point.

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You can master English at home
By Han Sang-hee, staff reporter, Korea Times

Few Koreans would deny that Min Byoung-chul is a pioneer in the promotion of English education in Korea.

In a recent interview with The Korea Times, his message was clear: You don't have to study in an English-speaking country to master English. You can do it in Korea.

The professor at Konkuk University in Seoul said, "English education in Korea has had its fair share of struggles and they are likely to continue this year as well."

More than 70 percent of Korean students are living overseas with their mothers while their fathers remain here earning money for the purpose of education. But the English proficiency of Koreans remains close to the bottom among the world's non-English speaking countries, according to Educational Testing Services (ETS), the organizer of the TOEFL exam.

As heavyhearted as the students studying abroad and their parents may be, the reality is that many families believe that overseas study is the best way to learn English.

"We can learn English in Korea. It takes time, effort, determination and the right tools, but we can do it," Min said.

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Education system is our Achilles’ heel now
By James Gonzales, The Star.com.my

Earnest changes are needed in our education system to ensure we can produce the ideal manpower to move Malaysia forward from a middle-income country to a high-income country. These changes must start with our education system.

National schools use Bahasa Malaysia, while vernacular schools use Chinese and Tamil, as their medium of instruction. With the emphasis on these three languages, English has been sidelined for the last 20 years.

In a survey conducted by online recruitment company JobStreet.com in August, 65% of the 1,001 major companies rejected job applicants because of their poor command of English.

Although a company has introduced English Language Assessment, I doubt this will be of much help to job-seekers. Proficiency in any language cannot be acquired overnight.

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The Importance of Grammar
By Keith Wright, The Manila Bulletin

Knowing why a word or word group is being used in a grammatically correct way can be just as important on one’s journey to becoming a superior speaker and writer of English as knowing how to use words correctly.

This task is made more difficult because some grammarians have different definitions for various grammatical terms, e.g. the phrase.

Others argue whether adverbs can modify nouns, pronouns or prepositions and whether gerunds, articles, particles and determiners should be included as parts of speech.

Despite these difficulties, the ultimate objective of 4S-AEP is to encourage learners to focus on the function, purpose and effect of words and constructions they use in speech and writing to achieve a high level of personal proficiency in terms of grammatical correctness.

It needs to be reiterated that every word and every word group in a sentence has a specific purpose otherwise it should not be used.

Full story...

Politicians muddy the language waters

By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr.

Politicians destroy and debase language more effectively than globalisers and imperialists can ever hope to do. This is an issue that linguists in the country have not dared to explore because they feel that it is the political struggle of each linguistic group that has helped to prop the language. It is a lie, which needs to be nailed. If anything, the linguistic fanatics who used language as a political weapon are the very people who debased it. For example, the many Dravidian parties -- DK, DMK, AIADMK et al -- have been a curse and a disaster for Tamil.

Excepting Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhi, who is an acknowledged litterateur in his own right, all the others have tried to choke the language with mindless linguistic antiquarianism. They tried to purge the language of Sanskrit words. It is the kind of a blinkered movement witnessed in the English language, when some poets and writers wanted to write in English which did not have any Latin words and who tried to revive the long-dead Anglo-Saxon words and phrases.

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Do we need to change textbooks often to teach English?
By Asantha U. Attanayake

The evolution of methods for teaching a second language has seen many approaches and methods getting discarded as and when experts in the field advocate. However, as knowledge expands such discourses are inevitable. When teaching methods change, consequently the materials are changed or vice versa.

In the case of the general education in Sri Lanka, we have witnessed textbooks being changed a number of times in terms of their outlook over the past couple of years. Changes are necessary if we want to proceed. Yet, have we ever justified empirically, why complete changes in the textbooks are necessary? What is the proof that such changes are a must?

There are instances where within two-three years after the production of one set of textbooks, changes were carried out to the entire set of books. One might argue that since English language teaching itself has not shown a remarkable improvement, or rather it has shown that it is a failure, that itself would account for the need to have changes in the main resources in teaching, that is textbooks/materials in our contexts.

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Making the Net global
Editorial, Arabnews.com
 
Yesterday's decision by the Internet regulators to allow domain names in characters other than Latin ones is a major shot in the arm for cultural equality. Most people in the world do not speak languages written in the Latin script. Of the 1.6 billion Internet users worldwide (a quarter of the world’s population), more than half use languages written in other scripts. There are billions more as yet without access to a computer and the Internet, who largely live in Africa and Asia who likewise do not speak a language which uses Latin characters. They are potential users. The Internet, as the prime means of communication and information exchange alongside television and telephone, must be fully accessible to them. Enabling users to key in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Cyrillic or whatever scripts they use to access their chosen websites will show that all languages and cultures are regarded as equal in the Internet age. The Internet becomes truly global.

Whether increasing domain name characters from 30 to over 100,000 makes a great deal of practical difference is another matter. Small local businesses such as restaurants or shops will probably avail themselves of the facility, but most businesses and most websites will probably stick to the present system.

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Start Again
By Stephen Hugh-Jones, Telegraph-India

There must be somebody who regrets the early death of Windows Vista, Microsoft’s short-lived replacement for its reliable Windows XP operating system. Not many people, though, to judge from user reviews, and certainly not me. My knowledge of computing could be written on half a postage stamp. I’ve no notion what a spreadsheet is, and no need to know: all I use my laptop for is the Internet, word-processing and email. I still use olde-worlde dial-up (is it even available in India?), not broadband. I don’t even know the computer geeks’ vocabulary, let alone what it means.

In sum, in these computer-literate days, I’m a dinosaur—no, let’s say an ichthyosaur, their swimming cousins, which must have known there were faster ways of getting around but just didn’t bother to evolve accordingly. And I’m falling further behind every day. Still, for my limited purposes, I’d made sense of dear old XP. It did what I asked it to, and it didn’t crash. Then my laptop was stolen. By then, Vista ruled, and, like a fool, I reckoned that such basic needs as mine could be met by its most basic version, and the next thieves would make that much less profit out of me. My new laptop was duly so equipped, complete with Microsoft Works for word-processing instead of Word.

A fool indeed. The thing offers me 191 different typefaces and 28 different colours, it can probably sing, dance and play baseball on ice. What it certainly does is vary, and what it doesn’t do is what I ask it for. Some days it offers me a connection to my service provider before even being asked. Other days it waits till I’ve asked it for the Net, and even then its response is variable. My wife has to go through a small (and quite different) litany of clicks before she is allowed onto the Net.

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How to teach English and travel the world
By Henry DeVries, SDNN

Why has interest in teaching English abroad recently spiked?

Half the world’s population is expected to be speaking English by 2015.  English is a first language for 400 million people and a fluent second for between 300 and 500 million more, according to the “International Herald Tribune.”

Not military might but cultural and economic reasons have thrust English upon the world stage as the new lingua franca, a de facto language used for communications by people who do not share a mother tongue.

The origin of the term lingua franca (literally Italian for Frankish language) comes from a pidgin dialect that appeared in the Holy Land around the 13th Century. Piracy and naval warfare brought it in the 16th century to the Barbary Coast, where it came to be used as the official records of trade contacts.

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Are you in a puckaterry?
By Victoria King, BBC News

A major dictionary publisher is compiling a list of regional English words that have died out. But local dialects are not entirely extinct—as these words reveal.

Have you ever found yourself in a puckaterry or felt wambly after a drink or two?

If so, you're one of a dwindling breed—a user of an English regional dialect.

Where once your vocabulary would tie you definitively to a particular part of the country, the social upheavals of past few decades have stretched those verbal ties to breaking point.

Now dictionary maker Collins is launching a project—using that most modern form of communication Twitter—to try to identify whether there is any life left in a selection of weird and wonderful words.

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English tests for migrants will fail
By Adrian Blackledge, Guardian.co.uk

The British government proposes to extend legislation that requires applicants for British citizenship and continued residence in the UK to take an English language test. The new proposals introduce additional, advanced language tests for citizenship and settlement applicants, and new language tests for some who have not yet left their home country. Phil Woolas, minister for borders and immigration, argues that the extended legislation will support integration and community cohesion.

The new proposals are based on two assumptions. First, that migrants should learn English because they are more likely to gain access to employment and services, and are therefore more likely to contribute to society. Very few people, including migrants themselves, would argue against this. Most people agree that UK residents and citizens should be able to speak English. The second assumption argues that the best means of ensuring migrants learn English is to make them take a test. This assumption is false. There is little or no evidence that testing English language learners enhances their ability to learn English.

Despite the flawed nature of this assumption, the British government has recently introduced a raft of legislation to test the English language proficiency of applicants for citizenship or permanent settlement in the UK.

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