Fixing education through language
By Ricardo Ma. Duran Nolasco, Philippine Daily Inquirer

In school, speaking one’s native tongue (e.g., Cebuano, Ilocano, Bicol or Waray) is still considered by many an obstacle to learning, instead of an educational resource. Monetary, academic and even corporal penalties have been imposed in the false belief that, these will dissuade students from speaking the “dialect” in school.

The times, they are a-changing, as the song goes.

President Aquino has committed to fix 10 things in basic education and one of these would be done by rationalizing the medium of instruction. Four others—extending basic education from 10 to 12 years, universal pre-schooling for all, a strong Science and Math curriculum starting at Grade 1, and “every child a reader” by Grade 1—all depend on the use of the right language(s) for their success.

The idea is, from pre-school to Grade 3, the child’s first language (L1) will be used as the medium of instruction; Filipino and English will be taught as second language (L2) subjects. From Grades 4-6 (7), L1 will still be used, but English will increasingly become the medium of instruction for Science and Math. For Social Studies, it will be Filipino. In high school, English and Filipino will become the primary mediums of instruction in those subjects, with L1 being used as an auxiliary language.

President Aquino expressed the view that we have to learn all these languages well: English to connect ourselves to the world, Filipino to connect ourselves to our country, and our mother tongue to connect ourselves to our heritage.

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Local dialects key to global success
By Philip Tubeza, Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA—To be globally competitive, Filipinos must learn first in their local dialect.

City dwellers may cringe upon hearing the accent of people from the provinces, but experts say that one of the keys to a good education is teaching students early on in their mother tongue, or dialect, instead of in English or in Filipino.

Dina S. Ocampo, an education professor at the University of the Philippines, said that numerous international studies had shown that using Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE)—or teaching young students in their dialect—actually improved their ability to learn English, Filipino, and other subjects later on.

“They learn best when the language used for learning is something they used. The analogy here is like a pyramid. You need a strong foundation to learn new things. It’s like you use your old strengths to learn subsequent things,” Ocampo said in an interview.

“To be globally competitive, you must go local. They say that in business. Why can’t we do it in learning? We must start from local.”

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Salute to the premier English Department
By Elmer A. Ordoñez, The Manila Times

The Department of English and Comparative Literature (DECL) of the University of the Philppines is a century old. Yesterday [June 18, 2010] the program of festivities was presented by DECL chair Adelaida F. Lucero for a year-long celebration of 100 years of excellence in teaching, creative writing, research, publication, extension service.

The department was founded in 1910 within the University of the Philippines (then in Padre Faura) which celebrated its centenary two years ago. The first professors were Americans and a few Australians.

Promising students were sent as pensionados to the US like Carlos P. Romulo, first editor of Varsity News (forerunner of the Philippine Collegian), who finished his M.A. in English at Columbia University, with his thesis on the fiction of O. Henry. Romulo’s career spanned from professor of English, to publisher, soldier, diplomat, UP president, and world statesman.

The first Filipino to head the department was Dr. Antonio Viterbo, with a Ph.D. also from Columbia, before the war. In 1928 assistant professors Vicente Hilario and Eliseo Quirino put out the landmark Thinking for Ourselves as an alternative textbook for students steeped in the Victorian English curriculum at the time.

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“Teacher lang”
By Raul Pangalangan, Philippine Daily Inquirer

Once, after the oath-taking of successful bar examinees, I joined a group of law professors from various schools all over the country for the traditional merienda with the Supreme Court justices. One professor recounted that he had just come back from a trip to Japan, and that to his amazement, he got more respect when he was introduced as a law professor rather than as an attorney. It drew oohs and aaahs around the table, with everyone delighted and surprised that the Japanese would bow lower to a sensei rather than to a bengoshi.

Compared to other Asian countries, Filipinos will actually be alone and isolated in their surprise. In Confucian societies especially, the scholar and teacher has a revered place at the top of the societal food chain, right below royalty and certainly high above merchants.

Yet if you’re joining the ranks of Filipino teachers in school year 2010, I tell you now: Brace yourself to hear the words “Teacher lang.” Someone said it to me on my way home after I finished my doctorate at Harvard, someone well-educated and who said it with genuine empathy and concern.

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Sarah Palin, the English Language, and Georgia’s Primary
By Ken Rudin, NPR.org

As everyone must know, there is only one Sarah Palin, but people have widely different reactions to her.

Her supporters love her and see her as the next president.  Her detractors loathe her and mock her mercilessly.  Neither side can ignore her.

Here are two reactions to all things Sarah Palin.

Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity” program last week, Palin was asked about the resolution recently passed by the NAACP decrying racist elements in the Tea Party.  Palin would have nothing of it:

It’s a false accusation, very unfortunate, and again, very very unnecessary.  And the president and his wife, you know, the first lady spoke at NAACP so recently, they have power in their words, they could refudiate [emphasis mine] what it is that this group is saying and they could set the record straight.

In the interview, Palin—who constantly decries what she calls the "lamestream" media— came up with a word that very few people on Earth have ever heard of: “refudiate.”

Then, yesterday, in a Twitter post (at SarahPalinUSA)—which has since been deleted — she again used the, um, word.  She said that “peaceful Muslims” should “refudiate” the idea of building a mosque near Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center once stood in lower Manhattan.

That tweet was replaced by another one, in which she advised people to just get over it, and in doing so, compared herself to the Bard of Avon himself:

“Refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee’d up.” English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!

Palin did her best to make light of the situation. And so did those who enjoy mocking her.

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Palindromes
The Hindustan Times

I say, old chap. Did you hear that awfully silly woman, Sarah Palin, sending the English language to the cleaners? No, Chatterjee-saab. What was it about? On her micro-weblog site that goes by the name Twitter, Ms Palin told people to ‘refudiate’ a proposal to build a mosque at the World Trade

Um, so? She has a right to have an opinion.

Oh, Mr Bhosle! There is no such word as “refudiate”! She mixed the words “refute” and “repudiate” to come up with a totally nonsense word!

Well, I’m sure people understood what she meant — oppose. That’s all that matters.

By Jove! Don’t tell me you didn’t howl when George W. Bush used that horrible malapropism, “misunderestimate”?

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More on language / ethnicity mismatch
By James Fallows, The Atlantic

In previous entries, here and here, I noted the charm of unexpected combinations of ethnicity and spoken language. A man from Hyderabad who spoke with a German accent, young women of African background who had been raised in Sweden. [Note to pedants: I said “charm” rather than problem, abnormality, outrage, etc. Also, yes I do realize that accent is an acquired rather than an inborn trait, so strictly speaking there’s no reason why someone from India shouldn’t sound like an extra from Hogan’s Heroes. I’m just talking about a little interesting gracenote from today’s mobile world.]

Updates on the theme, starting off with a reader’s memory from Africa:

Over 50 years ago, as a young child in Nigeria, I accompanied my Dad to deliver some examination papers to the mission at the end of the road, beyond the reach of radio or telephone. Our expedition included a utility vehicle with driver, and a cook for the Government Rest Houses along the way. We forded streams and crossed rivers on cable-stayed rafts, and we were the tourist sight, as whites were rarely sighted that far out in the bush. Up and up we went, the thick tropical jungle thinning out, till at last we reached the isolated community where the elderly Scottish couple had devoted their lives to saving native souls, and had brought with them civilization, the concepts of sin and one God, and the English language. Everything seemed normal until the Africans, whose only “English” they had learned from this couple, greeted us—and sounded as if they had stepped straight out of the highlands of Scotland!

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The web is at war with itself
By Linton Weeks, NPR.org

The Internet is hacking into our language. More and more, we hear onlinese words and phrases in day-to-day conversation — “epic fail,” “full of win,” “newbs.”

We are “friending” and “de-friending” each other. We are concerned about “sexting.” We speak of “spamming” and “linking” and “blog blog blog.” Meanwhile, we are “tweeting” away like a tiding of magpies.

Internet memes and e-lingo are pumping new vitality into popular English parlance. But is it possible the Internet could also be stifling creativity in language? More on that in a moment.

For now, webwords are everywhere. On television, Cedric the Entertainer jokes with talk show host Jimmy Kimmel that he is developing "hood apps," such as an iPhone application that tells users where they can buy weed.

On a radio ad, an older woman is incensed that her granddaughter says McDonald’s iced tea is just as good as hers. “I am not LOLing,” the older woman says to the younger one. “But you are still my BFF.”

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“Bug” words creep through English language
By Barry Wood, GateHouse News Service

I don’t care much for bugs, but I’m a big fan of Bugs.

The latter would be cartoon superstar Bugs Bunny, whose name was inspired by that of Ben “Bugs” Hardaway, a member of the Warner Bros. animation squad. The story is that a sketch sheet for the unnamed character was labeled “Bugs’ bunny,” and voila, a star’s moniker was born.

But that still leaves me wondering why any person would want the nickname Bugs. “Bug” is generally associated with negative things.

For example, those lowercase bugs mentioned above are members of the order Hemiptera, the so-called “true bugs,” which include aphids, cicadas and bedbugs. More generally, “bug” can refer to “any small arthropod, especially if regarded as a pest, as a louse, cockroach, or centipede.”

It’s also an informal term for “any microscopic organism, especially one causing disease; germ or virus.” Notice that “bug” is deemed particularly appropriate for the nastier versions of creatures.

In the world of inanimate objects, a “bug” can be “a defect or imperfection, as in a machine or computer program.”

It’s also an informal term for “a tiny microphone hidden to record conversation secretly,” which usually proves unpleasant for the person so recorded.

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Suggestions to improve Korean language education
By Akli Hadid, JoongangDaily.com

It is no secret that a language is “best learned under the pillow.” In Korea’s case, because English is the lingua franca between Koreans and foreigners, most foreigners who come to Korea end up learning English and spending years in Korea without learning Korean.

A number of Korean language academies and institutes offer Korean classes, yet such classes do not fit most foreigners’ ambitions to learn Korean. The Korean they teach is not authentic, and teachers often lack proper training. In addition, most Korean language institutes do not offer classes that fit the average expat’s schedule.

However, the biggest problem among Korean language institutes is that they don’t have a modern curriculum. Modern linguists have established that languages are learned through games and conversation, and not through grammar and memorization.

Most Korean language institutes offer students lists of vocabulary and grammar that they expect them to memorize. While such methods may help students learn a language, they do not help students overcome the “culture barrier”.

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Silence is gold (world-wise)

DUBAI—Angry spouses in France will soon pay a heavy price for letting it out. Swearing at a spouse, shouting, insulting or belittling him or her will earn hot-tempered French spouses a stay in the jail and also cost them hefty fines.

Reports said French regulators are figuring out ways to stop angry or spiteful spouses from inflicting “psychological violence” on their partners with this new law.

Reports said the new law seeks to define psychological violence as “repeated acts that could be constituted by words” and could include words or text messages that “degrade one’s quality of life and cause a change to one’s mental or physical state.”

Calling a spouse fat or ugly and falsely accusing him/her of infidelity can be a serious crime and one that French couples will have to learn to avoid, if they don’t much care for jail time! French couples could do well to remember, when they are angry, that silence is golden…

The Japanese, known for their fierce love for their language over any other, may soon find that not speaking English, the language in which the world does business, might soon cost them their jobs.

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“Wah! Your England so powderful!”
By Leslie Andres, New Straits Times.com.my

Not too long ago, a Malaysian student at a university in Minnesota was speaking to an American student he had just met. The young Caucasian chap knew the other person was a foreigner, but not the country from which he had come.

Midway through the conversation, the American learned the foreign student was from Malaysia and was shocked.

“But you speak such perfect English!”

Sad but true. You might think that the American was ignorant, perhaps, for thinking only his countrymen and Britons speak proper English. But can we blame him when the Malaysians he had met up to that point spoke English haltingly, at best, or hardly at all?

With more than 300 students, Malaysians made up the largest foreign contingent in that particular university which had an enrolment of about 15,000. Only a handful of Malaysians spoke fluent or even passable English.

So, if this American lad had only met Malaysians who spoke broken English, how was he to know that English was this nation’s second official language? When it was explained to him that this was in fact so, he was thunderstruck.

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English, in danger? That’s mad as a box of frogs
By Elizabeth Renzetti, TheGlobeandMail.com

Not long after I moved to London, I found myself in a supermarket aisle engaged in a frustrating one-sided conversation with a shop employee over where to find the clear plastic stuff used to wrap sandwiches. It ended with me barking, “Saran Wrap! Where’s the Saran Wrap?’’ while she looked at me blankly. It was like a two-person play called Helen Keller Meets the Insane Shouty Woman, and the intermission (sorry, that should be “interval’’) came when a kindly English lady whispered to the shop girl, “I think she’s looking for the cling film, dear.’’

The same thing happened when, after cutting a finger, I yelped for a Band-Aid and was confronted by a sea of puzzled stares. Finally someone said, “Oh, you want a plaster.’’ I refrained from saying, “Yes – was the spouting arterial blood your first clue?’’

“How can you hope to tame English? Isn’t it the Ellis Island of languages, absorbing new arrivals without fear or favour? Move over, zeitgeist and schadenfreude; make room for the Bengali newcomer, nang. ”

Of course, plaster is much more refined than Band-Aid. It was a potent reminder that we share a language, but the subtleties of its use divide us as much as unite us, and that those differences are as powerful identifiers as the shibboleths of old. The British are defiantly from the land of Pope and Keats, and we should remember that we’re from the land of indiscriminately capitalized brand names.

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