Filipinos sue California hospital over English-only rule

LOS ANGELES, December 7—Dozens of Filipino hospital workers in California sued their employer Tuesday alleging they were the sole ethnic group targeted by a rule requiring them to speak only English.

The group of 52 nurses and medical staff filed a complaint accusing Delano Regional Medical Center of banning them from speaking Tagalog and other Filipino languages while letting other workers speak Spanish and Hindi.

The plaintiffs are seeking to join an August complaint filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Kern County federal court over the hospital’s enforcement of a rule requiring workers to speak English.

Filipino workers said they were called to a special meeting in August 2006 where they were warned not to speak Tagalog and told surveillance cameras would be installed, if necessary, to monitor them. Since then, workers said they were told on a daily basis by fellow staffers to speak only English, even on breaks.

“I felt like people were always watching us,” said tearful 56-year-old Elnora Cayme, who worked for the hospital from 1980 to 2008. “Even when we spoke English ... people would come and approach us and tell us, ‘English only.’”

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City public high school wins national values education award

ILOILO CITY, December 7, 2010 (PNA)—A public secondary school here bested all other high schools in the country in terms of implementing values education in the academe.

La Paz National High School (LPNHS) became the recipient of this year’s “Most Outstanding Implementor of Values Education” award given by the Pambansang Samahan Para sa Edukasyong Pagpapahalaga (PSEP) during its awarding rites recently at the Waterfront Hotel in Davao City.

The school received a plaque of recognition from the organizers.

PSEP is a nonstock, nonprofit, nonpartisan, and nonsectarian organization, committed to uphold and strengthen values education program and to evaluate their impact on the country’s development.

Mayor Jed Patrick E. Mabilog honored LPNHS with a Mayor’s Citation for its highly commendable performance.

“Such exemplary accomplishment attests to the high sense of professionalism and noble dedication of our educators, giving an outstanding testimony that indeed, the state’s investment to public education is not a lost cause after all,” he said.

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Manila schools receive English teaching materials from U.S.

MANILA, December 3, 2010 (PNA)—The United States Embassy on Wednesday turned over US$ 4,959 (about P218,196) worth of English teaching materials to school principals of 103 public elementary and high schools in Manila.

Each of the 103 school receive a pack containing books, back issues of English Teaching Forum magazine, educational photos, DVDs and an instructional CD, all produced by the U.S. State Department.

The materials are designed to help teachers acquire additional knowledge and strategies for becoming better English-language teachers so that their students develop stronger aptitude, competence, and fluency in English, the U.S. embassy in Manila said.

U.S. Ambassador Harry K. Thomas Jr. participated in the event along with Assistant Secretary Reynaldo D. Laguda of the Department of Education; Schools Superintendent Dr. Ponciano A. Menguito of the Division of City Schools-Manila, and Jakarta-based State Department Regional English Language Officer George Scholz.

“The reading materials and books we have received will give a great boost in our effort to improve our English proficiency program in our public schools,” said Dr. Menguito.

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South Cotabato pushes opening of Philippine Science High School campus by 2011

GENERAL SANTOS CITY, December 9, 2010 (PNA)—The provincial government of South Cotabato is pushing for the opening by next year of a new campus of the Philippine Science High School (PSHS) in nearby Koronadal City.

South Cotabato Governor Arthur Pingoy Jr. said they are currently working for the acquisition of a five-hectare lot in the city that would host the proposed establishment of the PSHS campus through a joint initiative with the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

The PSHS, which operates as an attached agency of the DOST, is a specialized public high school system that focuses on high quality science-based education and training.

“We will make sure that this will materialize here in the province. This is one way for us to produce future great scientists, mathematicians, doctors and even nurses from our poor but deserving families,” the governor said.

Citing initial talks with DOST Region 12 officials, Pingoy said Koronadal City was identified as ideal site for the proposed PSHS campus being the regional seat and center of Region 12 or Southwestern Mindanao.

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Finally, Philippines overtakes India as world leader of the BPO industry

MANILA, December 5—The Philippines has overtaken India to become the world leader in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, the latest reports and trends show.

In a statement released last December 2, the Contract Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) said the country has now become the call center of the world, with around 350,000 Filipinos working in call centers against India’s 330,000-strong workforce.

The CCAP said that revenues from the country’s call-center industry are also expected to reach $5.7 billion by end-2010, higher than India’s projected $5.5 billion.

Call centers make up 70 per cent of the BPO industry in the Philippines. According to the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), 600,000 Filipinos are currently employed in the country’s BPO industry.

The latest IBM Global Locations Trend Annual Report, released recently in New York, shows that the Philippines has overtaken India after challenging it for the top position for several years. India now ranks No. 2, the first time it is not in the leading position for these activities.

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International writers grace Philippine PEN confab in Cebu

November 29, 2010—The Philippine PEN (Poets & Playwrights, Essayists, Novelists) is holding its annual writers’ conference from December 4 to 5 at Montebelo Villa Hotel in Cebu City. The international conference on the theme “Solidarity in Literature without Borders” brings together writers not only from the Philippines, but also from the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the Americas.

Foreign writers who are expected to join Filipino writers from all over the country in several panel discussions of current issues in literature and writing include Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, Spain; Nori Nakagami, Japan; Nguyen Bao Chan, Vietnam; Alvin Pang, Singapore; Robin Lim, Indonesia; Lina Zerón, Mexico; Ruth Elynia Mabanglo, USA; Marianne Villanueva, USA; and Joseph Akawu Ushie, Nigeria.

The conference keynote speech will be delivered by Cebu executive judge and multi-awarded poet Simeon Dumdum Jr. The annual José Rizal Lecture, the high point of the conference, will be delivered by highly respected Cebu scholar Resil Mojares.

Expected to grace the José Rizal Lecture is Sen. Edgardo Angara, a staunch supporter of culture and the arts in the Philippines.

The conference is supported by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts.

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Education department launches mobile school called “Dunong-Gulong”

MANILA, Nov. 30 (PNA)—The Department of Education (DepEd) and UNTV, a private media organization, will soon start fielding two buses equipped with state-of-the art learning tools which will ply the roads of Quezon and Masbate provinces to bring education to out-of-school youth and adult learners.

Called DepEd-UNTV “Dunong Gulong,” the two units of bus worth P6.5 million each will have learning tools, generator for power supply, folding chairs and tables, a toilet and a sleeping quarter.

The two brand-new Hyundai buses will serve as mobile classrooms to bring alternative learning system (ALS) to illiterates, school dropouts, indigenous people, and those with physical disabilities. It will also carry programs for adolescents, Muslim migrants, parents and disadvantaged children.

“Dunong-Gulong,” a novel approach to learning-teaching, is one of the alternative modes of delivering education services to learners who are outside the formal school system. It is designed to stay for a month in the targeted area for the enhanced delivery of learning modules.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro said such initiative is a model of how public-private partnership can help achieve the government’s goal of making education accessible to all Filipino learners.

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Pakistan facing language “crisis” in schools

December 7, 2010--Pakistan’s commitment to using Urdu as the medium of instruction in its state schools and its ambition to widen access to English language teaching are creating barriers to effective education, limiting economic mobility and undermining social cohesion.

These are the stark warnings made in a report on the current state of Pakistan’s schools published last month by the British Council and debated by academics and policy makers in a series of public meetings across the country.

The report, Teaching and learning in Pakistan: the role of language in education, sets out proposals that, if implemented, would seek to raise the status of the country’s main regional languages, lower barriers to higher-paid government jobs and help to strengthen ties between language groups at a time when political instability is straining national unity.

The report’s author, British academic Hywel Coleman, who is an honorary research fellow at the University of Leeds, argues that action must be taken urgently.

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Government, British Council intensify English language training
 
KIGALI, December 3, 2010—The government of Rwanda in partnership with the British Council have emphasized their commitment to promote the development of English language in the country.

This was revealed yesterday by the Education Minister Dr. Charles Murigande and Martin Davidson the CEO of the British Council during the English for Development in Africa forum in Kigali.

The two-day meeting brought together officials from Cameroon, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sudan, South Africa and Tanzania and aims at providing an opportunity for top policymakers across Africa to share best practices and set an agenda for collaboration on English to achieve MDGs by raising the quality of education.

Addressing the press yesterday, Murigande alongside British Council officials said that the government is currently investing a lot in the development of English language in schools.

“For the last two years we have been collaborating with the council to train our teacher's English language and avail an opportunity to learn English and this has played a great role in promoting the use of English in schools,” Muligande said.

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Michael Gove unveils education reforms

November 24, 2010—Michael Gove has accused Labour of squeezing the “fun and enjoyment” out of school as he unveiled the most radical programme of education reforms for a generation.

The Education Secretary said the last Government had marginalised teachers and created a toxic target culture that forced pupils into taking simple subjects of little value to employers.

In an interview, he warned that England was being left behind over developed nations that educated children to a much higher standard.

The comments came as the Coalition prepared to publish a White Paper today that will toughen up exams, overhaul the national curriculum, reform teacher training and give staff more power to discipline pupils. All schools will be forced to meet tough new targets or face being taken over.

In one of the most radical changes, league tables used by parents to rate state secondary schools will be tightened up to stop teachers pushing pupils onto “soft” subjects to inflate their ranking.

For the first time, schools will be rewarded for the number of pupils with good GCSEs in five core subjects – English, maths, science, a language and one humanities subject...

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Teachers blame social networking websites for low grades, poor concentration

November 18, 2010—Teachers believe social networking sites are to blame for pupil's poor grades, a study has revealed.

According to the report, children who spend much of their time online find it harder to concentrate in class, are permanently distracted and have shorter attention spans.
Teachers also put the dip in the quality of childrens’ homework down to their willingness to spend their evenings on Facebook and Twitter instead of studying.

A study has revealed that teachers believe social networking sites are to blame for pupil’s poor grades. And many are unhappy at the increase in the number of children who are using text-speak or social networking chat—such as “2mor,” “msg,” “lol” and “bk”—in place of English grammar.

The worrying stats emerged in a study of 500 teachers conducted by leading school trips provider JCA, which motivates personal and social development outside the classroom. A spokeswoman for JCA Janie Burt said: “This research clearly demonstrates that students up and down the country are spending more and more time using social media.”

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Textbooks face obsolescence due to rising computer use in classrooms

NOVEMBER 12, 2010—Nearly seven in 10 teachers claim that having state-of-the art IT equipment in classrooms is more important than investing in traditional textbooks.

A study also found that more than half of teachers believe pupils are “seriously disadvantaged” if they do not have access to the Internet at home. Thirty per cent of those polled predicted that textbooks will become obsolete in the future due to the rising use of gadgets in classrooms.

The findings, in a joint survey by the e-Learning Foundation charity and the Times Educational Supplement, follow moves by the Department for Education to slash support for IT in schools.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, has twice raided schools’ IT budgets since taking office, plundering £100 million from a grant to local authorities to pay for new computers and broadband schemes.

Valerie Thompson, chief executive of the E-Learning Foundation, said: “If we are serious about improving the life chances of the most disadvantaged, we have to tackle the digital divide, otherwise the poorest children will be left even further behind.”

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Celebrity bemoans poor use of English language
By Roya Nikkhah, Telegraph.co.uk

November 14, 2010—Penelope Keith, the star of The Good Life, has expressed her exasperation about the poor use of the English language in modern Britain.

The actress believes our lives are diminished by poor elocution and grammar; real conversation has been replaced by text messages and social networking websites; and television pampers to our thirst for public humiliation.

Keith—who became a household name in the 1970s sitcom playing Margot Leadbetter, the suburban social climber with the plummy accent—worries that, with the decline of “old-fashioned” things such as grammar and elocution, good manners are disappearing, too.

The misunderstanding of everyday words, the creeping Americanisation of our “wonderful” language, which she says has now affected the once-impervious BBC, and the popularity of social networking websites such as Twitter has, she concludes, contributed to the growing “misuse” of English.

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Evolving English: One language, many voices illuminate British Library
By Ben Miller, Culture24.org

November 16, 2010—Above the British Library’s central exhibition space, words and phrases including “sex up,” “chav,” and “wags” glow in the darkness.

Part of a chronological list of new additions to the English language from the beginning of the 20th century onwards, they end with “vuvuzela,” the blaring plastic horn used to drown out the World Cup in South Africa earlier this year.

Below, there’s a fire-ravaged, 1,000-year-old version of Anglo-Saxon war poem “Beowulf,” maps of the first English settlements in the world, early 18th century newspapers reporting the lottery results, and first editions of the works of Shakespeare.

The vast majority of the items are taken from the institution’s vaults, but it’s the interpretation given to them which brings the show to life.

Exploring the pros and cons of text messaging within minutes of examining the script of Richard III can feel disconcerting, but it’s also tremendous fun in a diverse display of staggeringly impressive exhibits.

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OIRA and the English Language

November 28, 2010—Write for your audience. Keep sentences short and simple. Use the active voice and avoid the passive. Short words are better than long ones, and don’t turn a noun into a verb (personal worst example ever encountered: “enterprising the network”).

No, these are not tips from a high school composition class, but reminders for civil servants on how to write from the Plain Language Action and Information Network (PLAIN), newly designated by the Office of Management and Budget as the official interagency working group for the promotion of readability.

Cass Sunstein, administrator for OMB's office of information and regulatory affairs, appointed the group to be the language minders of the federal government in a Nov. 22 memo that’s a result of President Obama signing into law on Oct. 13 the Plain Writing Act of 2010.

The act requires that by Oct. 13, 2011, documents necessary for obtaining any federal benefit or service and documents for filing taxes—those which provide information about benefits or services or how to comply with federal regulations—be written in plain language. That means, Sunstein wrote, concise and simple writing that avoids jargon, redundancy, ambiguity and obscurity.

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Boston schools to expand vacation classes to hone English, math skills

November 23, 2010—Boston Public Schools will increase efforts to bolster student proficiency in English and math next year by adding six schools to a program that teaches extra classes over February and April vacations.

In 2011, the number of schools participating in the Acceleration Academies program will increase from nine to 15, Matthew Wilder, school district spokesman, said today.

Last February, week-long workshops matched about 100 teachers with more than 1,200 students from grades three through eight, focusing on English Language Arts. In April, the students received math instruction, according to the school district.

In a statement today, the district said the program has already seen positive results, boasting a 20 point gain in Student Growth Percentile in English and a 17 point gain in math among participating students. SGP measures students' improvement by comparing their MCAS results from one year to the next.

“These results prove that for our most vulnerable students, additional time with a great teacher can make a huge difference,” Superintendent Carol Johnson said in the statement.

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Court: Defendants with limited English have right to interpreter
 
ATLANTA, November 22, 2010 (CNN)—Defendants with limited English-language skills have a constitutional right to court interpreters in criminal trials, the Supreme Court of Georgia ruled Monday.

The ruling came in a case involving a Mandarin Chinese speaker who was sentenced to 10 years in prison on two counts of cruelty to a child. Annie Ling, who had limited English language skills, did not understand that she had the option to plead guilty instead of going to trial and possibly facing a longer sentence, said the American Civil Liberties Union, one of two groups that filed a friend-of-the-court brief stating that denying a defendant an interpreter violates the U.S. Constitution and civil rights laws.

“The court acknowledged that we don’t have two systems of justice in this country—one  for English speakers and another for everyone else,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, director of the National Security/Immigrants’ Rights Project at the ACLU of Georgia. “The constitutional guarantee of due process applies to everyone in this country, not just fluent English speakers.”

Ling was arrested and charged with two counts of cruelty to a child. Her children were removed from the home and placed in foster care, according to court documents. After a 2008 trial, Ling was convicted of one count of cruelty to a child, and sentenced to 15 years, with 10 to serve in prison. The conviction was appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.

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Marathi or nothing, says consumer commission
        
December 1, 2010—While Marathi has long been used at the consumer court, a judgment by the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission on Monday has now made it the only acceptable language for seeking even the most basic “daad,” or relief.

Ruling that any papers submitted in English would be rejected outright, the Commission said that those who did not understand Marathi should get their affidavits translated.

“The forums have been constituted for redressal of grievances of the consumers in Maharashtra. Their pay, salaries, and allowances have been paid out of fund of the state government. If the law requires things to be done in a particular manner, then it should be done in that manner only,” the Commission said.

The matter came to the court after a dispute between Atul Tawade, an employee of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), and Goregaon’s Sindhur Housing Society over the use of English in a reply filed before the consumer forum. While Tawade contended that all papers should be in Marathi, the society said that since he understood English, there was no reason for them to translate their response.

The forum, in January, rejected Tawade’s plea saying that he was an educated diploma holder who was conversant in English...

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Companies going all-out in English
By Keisuke Okada, The Japan Times

Enhancing employee English-language skills has become a high-priority management challenge for Japanese corporations, regardless of their size and industry.

This is especially true for companies whose survival hinges on developing new customers or clients in foreign markets. They are focusing in particular on fast-growing Asian economies, where English is becoming the common means of communication.

“We can no longer depend solely on domestic demand, which continues to shrink, reflecting the eroding competitiveness of the Japanese manufacturing sector,” said Keiji Nosaka, a senior executive of Nosaka Denki Co., a small metal plating factory in Ota Ward, Tokyo. “To stay afloat, we are looking for new customers in Southeast Asia.”

Nosaka’s firm specializes in the production and installation of highly advanced plating and surface-treatment equipment. For many years, the domestic market made up the vast bulk of its sales. Only occasionally were its machines exported for installation at Japanese client plants in Southeast Asia.

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Use of English stirs fear of job loss for Japanese

TOKYO, November 21, 2010—In the cafeteria at the headquarters of Japan’s top online retailer Rakuten, employees with furrowed brows can often be seen trying to comprehend the company’s strictly English language menus.

The online giant is swapping Japanese for English as its official language company-wide in preparation for an overseas expansion, a move “crucial for us to survive in this competitive industry,” said spokesman Hirotoshi Kato.

It is not the only Japanese firm to eschew its native tongue as it searches for overseas growth beyond a moribund, shrinking domestic market.

As the population shrinks and a stronger yen boosts companies’ power for overseas acquisitions, the need for better international communication is growing in Japan as firms pin their survival on emerging markets.

Fast Retailing, which operates the cheap-chic Uniqlo brand, also plans to evolve into a more global company, looking to increase its overseas sales ratio to more than 50 per cent in five years from about 10 per cent now.

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Binding ties
By Derrick Vinesh, TheStar.com.my

November 21, 2010—One day, as singer Justin Bieber drove around town in his Ferrari, he picked up his mobile phone and asked his girlfriend out on a romantic date.

After she agreed, he picked her up from her house. She seemed very happy, as it was their first date.

They went to a restaurant and had pizza. They had huge appetites, so they ate many slices of pizza.

Suddenly, “Boom!” and Justin turned into a cute pink rabbit, while his girlfriend turned into a tortoise.

“So, what is the moral of the story? Do not eat too much pizza?” asked Star-NiE (Newspaper-in-Education) trainer Lynn D’Cruz, to laughter from students gathered in the Abdullah Badawi Hall at Bukit Mertajam High School, Penang.

D’Cruz was reading out an essay that was jointly written by a few Form Three students from the school together with visiting students from the Dechapattanayanukul High School in Pattani, Thailand, who took part in a special Star-NiE workshop in the school recently.

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