National language summit in the works for 2011

Educators and Filipino language advocates said the National Language Summit will be the answer to the deterioration of the mother tongue and other major languages in the country.

In the latest Multilingual Forum at the University of the Philippines Baguio, discussion revealed a few public schools have adopted the Department of Education's policy on mother tongue-based education.

University of the Philippines Baguio Sentro ng Wikang Filipino coordinator Junley Lazaga said since the order’s promulgation in 2009, Filipino language use in the curricula has never gained foothold.

As part of their commitment for the progress of the national language, DepEd-Baguio division superintendent Ellen Donato said public schools have been complying with this policy despite many teachers still preferring English as a medium in class discussions.

“It is our concern to know the status and implementation of this policy as studies have shown that using Filipino language as a medium in teaching subjects in school is effective,” Lazaga said.

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Venus Raj supports use of interpreters

For Maria Venus Raj, even her perceived debacle in the final question and answer portion of the Miss Universe pageant last week was really not a “major, major problem” for her either.

In fact, Venus’s answer to Hollywood actor and pageant judge William Baldwin’s question on what was her biggest mistake in her life and what she did about it was what she really wanted to say.

“You know what, sir, in my 22 years of existence I can say that there is nothing major, major, I mean, problem that I have done in my life,” she said in the Miss Universe stage last August 23.

Explaining what happened to showbiz talk shows over the weekend, Venus said it was all a result of her jitters before a large crowd and the noise in the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

“Hindi ka conscious sa mga sinasabi mo. Hindi ko siguro narinig na inulit ko na siya pangalawang beses,” she told ABS-CBN’s The Buzz on Sunday.

“Parang siguro kung gusto mong bigyan ng emphasis ang isang word. Like salamat, salamat. But hindi ko siguro masyadong narinig ang sarili ko while talking. Sobrang dami ng tao ro’n at nagsisigawan sila,” Venus said on GMA-7’s “Startalk.”

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Gloria Diaz explains interpreter row

MANILA—Former Miss Universe Gloria Diaz believes she may have been misunderstood when she proposed that contestants from the Philippines should use language interpreters in international beauty pageants.

She said her proposal should not be taken as an insult aimed at Cebuanos.

Some Cebuanos felt Diaz was belittling their English-speaking abilities and demanded an apology.

“Gloria Diaz, take heed, This is in riposte to your obtuse dictum towards us Cebuanos/Cebuanas; I really find it utterly inadmissible, rude and not to mention atrocious for someone who's been idolized by some to pigeonhole us as non-English speakers,” a Youtube user said.

“Let me clarify it once and for all. People should have the right to say or to answer (questions) in whatever language they want to say it in. If they're Cebuanos, they can say it in Cebuano. I did not say  that they did not speak English,” Diaz fired back on Saturday.

“If you’re Ilocano, say it in Ilocano. But if you’re Ilocano who speaks good English, say it in English. If you’re Cebuano who can speak Spanish, if you’re comfortable with Spanish, say it in Spanish. That’s what I said and that’s what I meant,” she added.

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Philippine government loses case for citing Wikipedia

MANILA—For God’s sake, get an expert witness; don’t cite Wikipedia.

For going to court with an argument referenced from Wikipedia, the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) lost an appeal to reverse a decision nullifying a couple’s 19-year marriage on the ground of psychological incapacity.

“The Republic, with all the resources and manpower at its disposal, has all the means with which to counter the expert testimony offered by [the ex-wife]. Most certainly, the Republic has access to government institutions, i.e., National Center for Mental Health, which has qualified psychiatric experts whose opinion it could have sought to evaluate [the woman] and her spouse,” the Court of Appeals special 15th division said in a 13-page decision.

Associate Justice Magdangal de Leon penned the decision promulgated last month. Associate Justices Mario Lopez and Manuel Barrios concurred.

The Inquirer is withholding the identities of the parties involved so as not to intrude on their privacy.

However, the details of the OSG’s attempts to preserve this particular marriage and family before the Court by using an online source that “makes no guarantee of validity” of information, are public information.

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New English translation of the Holy Qur’an in the Philippines          

The latest edition of the Holy Qur’an in English language by Prof. M.S. Tajar will become available this coming Holy Month of Ramadan. This edition is a collaborative effort between three eminent Muslim scholars from Pakistan, Iran, and the Philippines.
            
The English translation was undertaken by the late Professor Mir Ahmad Ali of Pakistan, the transliteration in the Philippines by Prof. Tajar, and commentary (Tafseer) by the late great Islamic scholar H.I. Aqa Puya of Iran.

This third edition of the Holy Qur’an—the latest—contains the entire text of the Holy Qur’an plus all the related Hadith, traditions, and historical facts and figures behind each and every verse and chapter of the book. It also has a table of contents and glossary for easier location of the Surahs and the various topics and issues discussed in the Holy Qur’an.

The book will be made available in all branches of the country’s major bookstores.

India exporting English to China
Reshma Patil, Hindustan Times

Beijing’s publishers are lining up to check if books by Indian authors could teach Chinese students and call-centre employees better English than American textbooks. At a time when bilateral ties are strained, the neighbours are finding common ground over a foreign language. India is the country of honour at the 58-nation Beijing International Book Fair that opened on Monday with 27 Indian publishers showcasing 3,500 titles.

“The Chinese are greatly interested in copyright and translation rights for books to learn call-centre English,” Sanjiv Chawla, manager of exports at the Delhi-based Orient BlackSwan told HT at the fair. “The Chinese have a fixed idea that English is best taught by the Americans and British, so we have to explain that English is like a second-language for Indians.’’

Books on Buddhism, Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru are the centrepiece of India’s pavilion so that past cultural linkages strike a bond with China. But the Chinese publishers are mainly interested in India’s legacy of English education, to see if the books could be adapted to modernise Chinese teaching.

“The Chinese are asking us why Indians speak good English and write it so fast,’’ said Gopa Bose, proprietor of El Alma publications, Kolkata.

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To speak, perchance to “dream in Chinese”

When Deborah Fallows went to live in China with her husband, she was armed with a few semesters of Mandarin lessons. But when she got to Shanghai, she found she couldn’t recognize or speak a single word of what she'd been studying.

Fallows writes about her journey through the Chinese language—and her many missteps along the way — in her new book, Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language.

Fallows—who has a Ph.D. in linguistics and speaks six languages—knew that learning Chinese as an adult wouldn’t be easy. “Chinese is considered one of the world’s difficult languages,” she tells NPR’s Melissa Block, “along with Japanese and Arabic and Russian.”

Even with her background in languages, Fallows says learning Chinese was particularly challenging because it was so dissimilar from all other languages she had studied.

“I didn’t feel like I had anything to hang my hat on with this language,” Fallows explains. “It just bore no resemblance to romance languages, Germanic languages, Japanese—anything that I’d ever approached before.”

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Students have new options for books

Students are increasingly able to rent books for the semester at up to half the list price or to purchase electronic texts on devices such as Kindle, Nook or iPad. The expanded range of options comes after the National Association of College Stores predicted each student would pay an average of $667 in textbook costs this school year.

Alternatives such as these are a departure from the days when students would spend hundreds on a book and take their chances selling it back for a small fraction of the cost after exams.

“It used to be between new and used book sales,” said association spokesman Charles Schmidt. “Different people study in different ways. Now it is a choice of new, used, rental or e-book sales.”

This year’s average textbook bill is down from 2009’s $702 average bite. A big reason for this, Schmidt said, is increased used textbook sales in college bookstores. The association is hoping to drive costs down even further for students, he said, by renting texts for a semester at a fraction of the book’s original cost. The group estimates 1,500 of its 3,000 member stores will offer the service, up from 300 in 2009.

BackPackers Student Bookstores also features textbook rentals. The chain’s three Raleigh stores serve N.C. State University, and its new rental policy saves students up to 60 percent off the list price of textbooks, depending on the likelihood of the book getting resold later. Students pay the rental price and keep the books for the semester, turning them in after exams. There are no refunds like those of a buyback sale, but the initial cost of getting the text is less.

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Student reading scores in state best in years

For the first time in years, more than half of California’s public school students are reading at grade level or above, new test results showed Monday.

“This is cause for excitement,” said California’s schools chief Jack O'Connell. “Despite consistent, severe and devastating (budget) cuts, our schools continue to prepare our students.”

Of the nearly 5 million students in grades two to 11 tested in reading last spring - including students whose first language isn't English - 52 percent scored “proficient or above,” continuing a trend of yearly improvement since 2003, when just 35 percent of students read at that level.

Looking at native English speakers alone, reading proficiency climbed to 60 percent - and rose to 69 percent among bilingual English speakers, the test results showed.

Students did less well on the elementary math portion of the California Standards Test (grades two through seven), with 48 percent scoring at least proficient. But proficiency has also steadily improved, up from 35 percent in 2003, the state Department of Education reported.

Fewer than a third of students taking algebra I, algebra II or geometry scored proficient.

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Lodi students take a dip in math results, but improve in English

Local sophomores have taken a slight dip compared to their counterparts statewide when it comes to passing the math portion of the annual state high school exit exam. Results were released Tuesday.

“We are encouraged by the increase in the number of students passing the English-language arts sub-test on their first attempt,” said Ed Eldridge, Lodi Unified School District's coordinator for assessment, research and evaluation. “In fact, the 2010 school year represented the second year in a row that there was an increase in the percent of LUSD students passing this sub-test.”

The exam was given earlier this year to 10th-graders in the subjects of math and English-language arts, and based on the California state standards which define what students should be learning each year.

Students must pass the California High School Exit Exam to graduate from high school. Those who do not pass the tests in 10th grade have at least five more opportunities to do so before the end of the school year. The next time it will be administered is in November.
But the test is designed so that most students should be able to pass it on their first attempt, according to local officials. In Lodi Unified, for example, 8 out of 10 first-time test takers do so, according to Eldridge.
The latest state data indicate that an increasing percentage of students statewide are passing the CAHSEE in the 10th grade, which is the first opportunity students have to take it.

Some 80.6 percent of the Class of 2012 has already passed the English-language arts portion, compared to 79.2 percent of 10th-graders in the Class of 2011.

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One-third of university students unhappy with lecturers’ performance
By Richard Garner, Education Editor

Thousands of university students still find their lecturers too remote despite pledges that standards of service would improve with the introduction of top-up fees of up to £3,225 a year.

A national survey by the Higher Education Funding Council for England showing the level of student satisfaction with their courses reveals there has been no improvement in three years.

Overall, 82 per cent are satisfied with their course – but the figure dips to 67 per cent when it comes to assessment of their work and the feedback they get from lecturers.

Satisfaction has fallen over learning resources – down from 80 per cent to 79 per cent – and this area is likely to be slashed again next year as universities brace themselves for further cuts.

Aaron Porter, president of the National Union of Students, described the survey as “a wake-up call to vice-chancellors,” adding: “They must buck up their ideas and do far more to improve the experience they offer to students.”

David Willetts, Universities secretary, added the survey “reflects real and persistent concerns over the feedback given on students' work and I hope the sector will address that.”

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Northern Ireland man told to sit English language test for Australia job

A man from Northern Ireland was left stunned after being told he had to do an English language test as part of a job application in Australia.

Gerard Kellett, who grew up in Belfast before emigrating Down Under several years ago, had applied to become a graduate nurse at a hospital in Brisbane, Queensland, and believed he had all the necessary qualifications.

But the 41-year-old was then told that, because he had undergone secondary school education in Northern Ireland, he would have to pass the English test first.

“It was a ridiculous situation,” said Mr. Kellet, a former pupil of Campbell College in Belfast.

“Even though English is clearly my first—and indeed my only—language, I was being classed as a foreign student and therefore someone who may not have been able to speak the language very well.”

He added: “In Australia, these students have to sit a competency test to determine their capability in English.

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Professor of swearing looks Down Under

Victoria University’s 2010 Ian Gordon Fellow is, among other things, an expert in swearing and the linguistic taboos of the English language.

Speaking in Wellington on 7 September, Professor Kate Burridge, who is Chair of Linguistics in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University, Melbourne, will tackle the topic of swearing and taboo language in antipodean English.

She says swearing is a “particularly rich area of creativity” engaged in by ordinary New Zealand and Australian English speakers.

“Bad language has always been characterised as an earmark of Australian and New Zealand English. I’d like to ask the question how uniquely antipodean it is,” she says.

Professor Burridge, who is in New Zealand for three public lectures, says she will provide an account of antipodean swearing patterns, based on examples from written and spoken data. In her other free public lectures she will discuss the French influence on English, and the ways English is changing and developing.

Her visit to Victoria University is courtesy of the Ian Gordon Fellowship, which was set up to support and promote the study of English language and linguistics at Victoria.

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Business English revives schools
By Akiko Inoue, Yomiuri Shimbun

The recent corporate trend of making English the “official language” within companies has given a tailwind to the formerly faltering English language school business.

As a number of companies aim to establish or maintain a global presence, English language schools are working to develop educational programs more practical than those offered by their rivals for businesspeople who need to use English at work.

Such a move came after companies, including online shopping mall operator Rakuten, Inc. and Fast Retailing Co., the operator of casual clothing chain Uniqlo, required their employees to use English as their official in-house language.

The English education-related industry has striven to capitalize on what it views as a golden opportunity.

During the April-June period, Berlitz Japan, Inc., an operator of foreign language schools, saw the number of its corporate customers and individual regular students who are company employees jump 50 percent from a year earlier. Its summer short program also has attracted about 2-1/2 times as many students as in the previous year.

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English-language pulp fiction translates to success in India
By Emily Wax, Washington Post Foreign Service

CHENNAI, INDIA—Hindi and Tamil paperbacks, the gaudy equivalent of American dime novels and British penny dreadfuls, were a staple of old India, sold at the country’s railway stations, bus depots and chai stands. Now, a push to translate them into English is creating new fans for the genre among middle- and upper-class Indians.

Thousands of such titles were published starting in the 1920s. Many are household names. They include campy vampire serials, supernatural thrillers, and a slew of Hindi crime novels featuring fast-talking detectives, multiple murders and crowds of prostitutes. Pulp fiction written in Tamil, a major language of South India, is peopled with Hindu sorcerers, overblown evil scientists and tortured inter-caste lovers.

“These stories are from the heart of India,” said Kaveri Lalchand, co-director of Chennai’s Blaft Publications, which has issued several popular English-language anthologies of Tamil yarns rounded up from household cupboards and coffeehouses. “What’s great about them is that they’re not being written abroad or by people sitting in universities.”

The healthy sales of the nostalgia-infused collections show how big India’s English-language book industry has grown and how willing it is to take risks with more avant-garde publications, according to Pritham Chakravarthy, who translated the 17 stories in “The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction.”

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Fadeout for a culture that’s neither Indian nor British
By Mian Ridge, International Herald Tribune

CALCUTTA—Entering the crumbling mansion of the Lawrence D’Souza Old Age Home here is a visit to a vanishing world.

Breakfast tea from a cup and saucer, Agatha Christie murder mysteries and Mills & Boon romances, a weekly visit from the hairdresser, who sets a dowager’s delicate hair in a 1940s-style wave. Sometimes, a tailor comes to make the old-style garments beloved by Anglo-Indian women of a certain age. Floral tea dresses, for example.

“On Sundays, we listen to jive, although we don’t dance much anymore,” Sybil Martyr, a 96-year-old retired schoolteacher, said with a crisp English accent.

“We’re museum pieces,” she said.

The definition has varied over time, but under the Indian Constitution the term Anglo-Indian means an Indian citizen whose paternal line can be traced to Europe. Both of Mrs. Martyr’s grandfathers were Scots.

Like most Anglo-Indian women of her generation, she has lived all her life in India and has never been to Britain. But she converses only in English. At school, she said, she learned a little Latin and French and enough “kitchen Bengali” to speak to servants.

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High court in India raps the government for its language policy

BANGALORE—Pulling up the state government for not obeying the full Bench verdict on the language policy, the Karnataka High Court has asked it to consider a fresh application filed by Rashtrotthana Parishat, seeking permission to start an English-medium school, purely in terms of the July 2, 2008 verdict.

“How can you do this? What you have done is unconstitutional. I remember having quashed 500 such endorsements. The verdict of the full Bench is the law of the land,” Justice S Abdul Nazeer observed while allowing the petition.

The Rashtrotthana Parishat, a wing of the RSS in the state, filed the petition seeking direction to the authorities to consider its application for starting an English-medium school in the city.

The organization, which is running around 30 educational institutions in the state, has challenged the endorsement of the February 27, 2009 order issued by the DDPI, Bangalore South, rejecting its application. The authorities had rejected the proposal on the ground that the SLP filed by the state is yet to be decided by the apex court, with regard to the 1994 language policy.

The high court ordered issuance of notice to the vice-chancellor of Mysore University, with regard to a petition filed by 22 students who studied in the affiliated colleges of the University between 2002 to 2009. The petitioners have challenged the withdrawal of degrees conferred by the University on grounds of a controversy regarding obtaining marks card through fraudulent means.

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English as Morocco’s second language
By Nabila Taj, Global Voices Online

In a recent interview with African Writing Online, Laila Lalami, a Moroccan-American author, elaborates on her educational upbringing. Lalami grew up speaking Moroccan Arabic, but it was not until she was a teenager that she “finally came across Moroccan novels, written by Moroccan authors, and featuring Moroccan characters.” This is primarily because Lalami attended a French school as a child. She says:

“French was the language in which I was first exposed to literature, beginning with children’s comics like Tintin and Asterix, through young adult novels like those of Alexandre Dumas, all the way to classics like those of Victor Hugo.”

Nonetheless, Lalami published her first novel, Secret Son, in English after earning a Ph.D in linguistics from the University of Southern California.

Lalami’s experience is quite common for a student in Morocco. Said Bellari, a writer for Moroccoboard.com, advocates the gradual eradication of the dependence on the French language, and the introduction of English as the official second language of Morocco. In his essay, he introduces a newfangled concept known as “disliteracy:”

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Building bridges through the English language in Hungary

BUDAPEST—A total of 45 English-language students and their teachers from Hungary and six other countries participated in a U.S. Embassy-sponsored summer camp on the theme “Teaching Tolerance through English” at Lake Balaton from July 31 to August 14.

The students and teachers engaged in a variety of athletic, theatrical, artistic and educational activities designed to promote tolerance and an appreciation of each other’s cultures while enhancing their English language skills.

After the two-week program, students will continue their joint projects via e-mail and exchange visits. The program is fully sponsored by the American Embassy in Budapest, and the U.S. Embassies in Bulgaria, Kosovo, Lithuania, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia.

Visiting the camp on August 12, Ambassador Kounalakis said that a real strength of the camp was in facilitating communication. He encouraged all of the students to continue the work they have begun at camp and to be leaders in building understanding and cohesion in their communities and across peoples.

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