The Construct » Language

Breaking the carabao’s back

Alex — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 12:51:17 +0000

And we complain about the “poor” command of English our graduates have. There’s no reason to play chicken and egg on a problem that is caused by many wrongs on so many different levels. But one thing that the academe shouldn’t do is make matters worse by implementing obviously detrimental policies.

I just recently heard from my good friend Randwin (a fellow MA student, former classmate, and instructor at UP Los Baños) that their administration has allegedly mandated their division to turn all English GE courses to large classes of 160 students or more.

Any ESL teacher would see the flaw in such an arrangement. The lower the student ratio is, the better. For starters, it allows for more interactions between student and teacher. The teacher will also be more capable of monitoring each student’s progress.

Grading 25 papers on the merits of the good old Content, Oragnization, Style, Grammar and Mechanics is already a huge task. Imagine doing that for 160.

Obviously, some people at Los Baños are not too happy about the matter. Here’s Randwin’s take on the matter.

On Large Class UPLB: A Resounding “No!”

In one of my MA classes in Diliman, I once shared this plan of the UPLB administration to convert Eng 1, Eng 2, and Eng 10 large classes. A large class has 160-250 students while the status quo lecture class has 30-40 students. My classmates, ESL teachers and Call Center trainers were shocked and appalled. My teacher, a student of Noam Chomsky and an initiator of key subjects in Diliman, chuckled because the plan was absolutely crazy.

(According to a DOH survey, 3 of 10 government employees suffer some form of mental condition. I can think of 2 way up in the UPLB administration who might belong to those 3.)

As early as a few months after Chancellor Luis Rey Velasco took office, there have been rumors that the GE subjects offered by the Department of Humanities will be converted to large class format. On September 4, 2006, Prof. Ruperta Asuncion, who was then the English Division head, called for an emergency meeting. The administration told her to tell us to alter the syllabus of Eng 1, Eng 2, and Eng 10 so that it can be taught as large class. The administration expected it the following day because large class was to be implemented next semester. (As if rewriting a syllabus was as easy as making a cup of coffee.)

Several concerns were raised in our meeting: first, because Eng 1 and Eng 2 are GE courses approved by the BOR shouldn’t the BOR be informed first; second, what was the reason for the implementation of this scheme; and third, because all existing studies on ESL claim that small classes produce more competent students, aren’t we sacrificing our quality of education?

Instead of a syllabus, we submitted position papers against the large class scheme. One of my sources later told me that the administration just laughed at our papers. “Pa-position-position paper pa kayo,” one of them reportedly said.

Every semester, the administration would tell us to convert to large class. Every semester, our division head would present our reasons against it. When Prof. Asuncion stepped down as head (and later retired), it was Prof. Emerita Cervantes’s turn. And she defended our cause just as her predecessor did. Someone form the administration reportedly said: “Sawang- sawa na kami dyan.” If I was there I’d tell that person: “Kung sawang-sawa na kayo, ba’t di nyo pa kami tantanana?”

January 2010. A memo from the chancellor reached the Department of Humanities and the Department of Social Sciences. The memo came with a verbal instruction: Large class will be implemented for all GE classes next school year. It also came with a verbal threat: Take it or leave. (In the case of temporary faculty it’s take it or no renewal.)

On January 18, 2010, 9AM, the faculty of the Department of Humanities will be met by RGEP council head Panopio and Vice- Chancellor for Academic Affairs Laude not to consult but to tell us that we can’t do anything about it. It’s curious why Laude would be there. She’s the one who endorses our renewal to the chancellor.

Technically, it is the administration that is proposing the large class scheme. But so far, we have not been provided the rationale for such a move. (The situation is a far cry from Velasco’s promise of transparency when he took over from Chancellor David.) The rumor is that it has to do with money. Large class means fewer teachers. Fewer teachers means more items. More items means more money in the bank. More money in the bank means more interest. More interest means more savings.

(What is an item? Each department has a set number of items. Items correspond to the number of teacher you can hire. I’m not sure, but I think the government budgets salary according to items and not necessarily according to actual number of teachers. Therefore, even though no one is being paid for that item, there is money being set aside for that item. If no one uses it, the money goes to the bank. It’s an elaborate version of the 15-30 scheme in baranggays.) This is the worst time to be a member of the Academic Personnel Committee. Because few teachers are needed, it pains me to know that I would be one of the people responsible for determining who among my colleagues will not be renewed next school year. (In our division alone, there’s some 20 faculty members. The Department of Humanities has some 60.)

If you ask me, only one person deserves the boot. If money is the problem, our Chancellor shouldn’t be squandering UP’s precious budget on sidewalk displays (those infamous three-coat painted solid concrete Oro can sized bangas littering the sidewalks), 60-foot Christmas trees, and life-size Nativity scenes. If money is the problem, our Chancellor should be creative enough to think of ways to tie up with international research institutions and earn money by simply being a university in the truest sense. Or have the balls to demand a bigger budget from the government. Elections is just around the corner anyway.

Fire Velasco and hire someone new. Preferably someone who understands that the one thing every UP student is proud of is quality education.

January 15, 2010
Los Baños, Laguna

Pirated scholarship

Alex — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:21:32 +0000

I feel so old in saying “How I wish we had the learning resources kids have these days.” The Internet and the availability of information has, I think, has pretty much the same effect as, say the photocopying machine or the word processor. I just can’t imagine writing a 100-page thesis

Just last night, my younger university colleague, Raymond and I were sharing a few of the ideas that are quite interesting research areas for us language scholars. Then we came to the issue of access to the latest ideas and resources. How can one do relevant research when we’re still quoting 20 year-old materials.

Wikipedia is up-to-date but still questionable for most as a “citable” resource. But who needs Wikipedia if you can get the actual ebooks and book scans online for free? Sites like Gigapedia (which has been online for more than a year now, wonder why only very few UP people know about it) have a better catalog for recent books than local libraries.

Writing my thesis has been one expensive ride. Wanting to do it not only the right but ethical way, I’ve invested in software licenses and books and ebooks. The running total of my thesis-related expense is somewhere double what a UP instructor gets in a month.

But who else has that money to spend on academic books? Probably not your undergrad (though if UP undergrads can drive BMWs, maybe they can). If you’re an undergraduate working on a thesis where even the printing costs can drain your allowance, would you even bother with buying books or resort to other means of getting the same information without the expense?

Now we come to the more sensitive issue of ethics. Leaked ebooks and scans definitely violate intellectual property. Any self-respecting academic should respect IP.

And how different is it over photocopying – something that has been part of the UP culture for a very long time now? But if you’re in the third world where just one book costs thousands of pesos (and you need like 20-40 to work on a study) and it would take years for the university library to even get a copy, putting on that scholarly eyepatch really is the most viable action.

To paraphrase former UP President Dodong Nemenzo, piracy is the revenge of the third world. But should it also be the way forward for third-world academics? Talk about post-colonial.

Arr!

The originality of thought

Alex — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 10:31:40 +0000

It really is a hard thing to come up with something original these days. That proverbial bucket in the sea of knowledge is a constant bitching reminder that no matter how much you read and learn, you won’t be able to match the billions of Google’s indexed pages.

Makes you wonder how difficult it really is to write a dissertation these days. I consider myself pretty well-read given my age for my field locally. And yet there’s still a lot of material that I am aware of and have not read, and material that that I haven’t even thought existed despite the thousands of bibliographic entries I’ve browsed. I hate to admit it but I’ve just recently come across Steven Pinker who is, by specialization a psychologist, but anchors many of his arguments on language.

And boy, how I hate myself for only reading about him just now. Quite a lot of my interests in language studies are actually dealt by his works – game theory, pragmatics, and even physics in language. Yes, physics! (Check this video of his talk at Google where he discusses ideas from his book The Stuff of Thought.)

That had me thinking about that joke I had in our graduate class in Semantics about establishing a field on “quantum linguistics.” I argued that deixis and tense can be related to the concepts of space and time. When I was joking about it, I wondered if that was an original idea. Turns out, it isn’t. According to Pinker there’s “space in our prepositions, matter in nouns, time tenses, and causality in verbs.” Humble pie for me.

Still, this has me thinking. How much original and world-changing thought can be conjured up by an ordinary mind? Perhaps that’s the reason why God only sends a genius like Einstein once a century. Maybe the world won’t just be able to deal with such revolutionary ideas if they come plenty and quick in between. The rest of us are just plain bound for mental mediocrity.

Linguistic Auschwitz

Alex — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 06:42:24 +0000

Lake Superior State University recently posted a list of their banished words for 2010.

The list includes words in popular use right now such as “unfriend,” “tweet,” and “sexting.” The list continues to argue in favor of prescriptivism. Promoting a standard language to address miscommunication is one thing. “Banishing” words is something else.

What I don’t understand is that LSSU has an English program which I expect would at least acknowledge language change as part of linguistic development.

It’s interesting for such an institution to offer a totally different stance compared to institutions that acknowledge linguistic creativity like Oxford with its Word of the Year.

And guess what was 2009’s Word of the Year?

Book loot

Alex — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 22:28:14 +0000

I was supposed to pick out my overdue birthday and Christmas gift yesterday. Failed miserably yet again. You see, rewarding myself is an idea that’s foreign. Blame childhood issues, perhaps. Oftentimes, I get what I need and not what I really want. In those times when I do get what I want, I pine over expense for months defeating the whole idea of rewarding oneself.

I wanted to pick out a podcast kit so that I can finally start working on a few projects that I’ve been meaning to do since a couple of years back. Too bad audio stores just don’t carry decent podcast kits. Behringer offers the components of the package individually but it’d still set me back twenty grand. My second choice was a brand new acoustic guitar but kuripot struck me again and just decided to get me some new strings for my electric guitar.

A bit frustrated, I just settled to get some books. And it’s not like they’re for leisure reads either. God knows when was the last time I’ve read something just for kicks. All of them are somehow related to current and future writing projects. And boy books are just so expensive these days. Any paperback will set you back Php 500 easy. Can’t wait for my credit card bill next month.

PS. Oh, any idea where I can order these books? Methods for Critical Discourse Analysis [2009], Using Corpora in Discourse Analysis and Text, Discourse and Corpora. Forgot to ask Fully Booked if they can. For some reason, I don’t want to risk Amazon.

Another take on prescriptivism

Alex — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:50:33 +0000

You might remember those sort of “controversial” posts I had on language and prescriptivism (the one commenting on the Bebigerls and another commenting on one of Mr. Jose Carillo’s posts regarding the prescriptivist versus descriptivist debate). As language studies scholar, I do swear by descriptivism, since as a an applied linguist, I have to write about language as it’s being used rather than how it “should” be used.

But I do acknowledge the role of prescriptivism today especially in language teaching. I know that some colleagues in fields such as literature and creative writing do swear by the masterful and artful use of the language. Most have minimal to zero tolerance for grammar errors and lapses. And I do acknowledge their points. In my opinion, if even only for the basis of achieving mutual intelligibility, there is premium to teaching and learning a “standard” English.

And I do concern myself with this thought as of late. I need to bone up on my academic writing. I’ve been trying to write my thesis for the past couple of months only to find myself lacking the patience and discipline to write longer stretches of academic discourse. Years doing web content writing have transformed my writing style from being clear and concise to curt, disorganized, and fluffy.

And I concede that I have to go with a prescriptivist if only to remedy my writing style for the purposes of my thesis. I have to revisit Strunk and White and the MLA Handbook. I even grabbed a few books on style and usage including a couple of Mr. Carillo’s books which I know are excellent local materials on the subject while at the bookstore earlier.

While my position as a language scholar will always be descriptivist, I do maintain that it’s not about choosing one over the other but selecting which one is apt given the context.

Oh. Interesting that I found several David Crystal titles available at National Bookstore. And it was funny to see them located next to Lynne Truss books.

Flouters

Alex — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:09:21 +0000

Had quite an interesting discussion regarding Gricean pragmatics this morning and had me thinking about . It’s funny how all of these theories and books can be filtered down and summarized to just a few of their core sections. With H.P. Grice, many linguistics majors just remember him with his Co-operative Principle.

In a nutshell, the idea goes that to achieve mutual understanding in a conversation, communicators often follow abide by four maxims and these are:

Quantity – be informative
Quality – be truthful
Relation – be relevant
Manner – be clear and concise

The thing is, reality has it that even by flouting (breaking) these maxims, we are able to achieve creating all sorts of meaning and to some extent a mutual understanding because of our ability to interpret conversational implicatures. Sarcasm for example (though we have to admit that not all people are “sensitive” enough to interpret this).

As far as online discourse go, many constantly flout most if not all of these maxims (some all at once). Take social media and blogging for example. How much information do we convey to our audience? How truthful are we? How relevant is our message? How clear and concise are these messages? Survey the statuses of friends on Facebook or people’s tweets and you’d struggle to make sense of most of them. And still, the Web thrives with our discourses.

Sure there are quite a lot of cases of misunderstanding because of varying interpretations but we just have to deal with understanding’s evil twin.

Aray ko! Put@#1&%@!

Alex — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:09:00 +0000

The good thing about science is it keeps on interpreting things that make me understand a bit of myself better each day. I have always regarded myself as a bit of a masochist. I never thought of relating that to my curse-dominated ideolect but science has.

Keele University researchers studied the relationship of cursing with pain tolerance and they found that those who curse can endure pain nearly 50% longer than those who don’t. This result gives everyone who gets hurt some good reason to belt out expletives.

On average, the students could tolerate the pain for nearly two minutes when swearing compared with only one minute and 15 seconds when they refrained from using expletives.

Researchers have yet to explain the link but they believe that it has something to do with the human beings’ flight or fight response. For a more detailed, check out this article on BBC.

Anyway, at least this gives me a bit of license to skip the PC bullcrap and curse whenever I want. I’ll just pretend that I stubbed my toe or bit my tongue.

On prescriptivism… again

To blog in Filipino?

Alex — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:06:24 +0000

I’ve been working on this blog for the past few days and I got to browse some blog posts from three or so years ago when I blogged using Filipino (or Taglish). Just check this sort-of fictional piece I wrote from my days of being a corporate monkey. Those were the days. When I can still write with hot-knife-through-butter ease in my native tongue.

Makes me want to shift all of a sudden…

Talagang nakapangungulila din naman kung bakit laging Inggles na lang ang gamit kong wika upang magsulat sa aking blog. Hindi naman pawang mga banyaga lamang ang mambabasa nitong blog ko na ito. Karamihan pa rin naman ng mga bumibisita dito ay mga mga kaibgan at mga dating kamag-aral na makiintindi ng aking pagsusulat.

Piff. Maybe that sounded like I was trying too hard. Amazingly, I didn’t struggle but I’m sure folks from the Filipino department would frown at that bit. Just like riding a bike, I guess. Rusty but you never unlearn it. Maybe I should try it out again one of these days when I finally step into that mood.

On prescriptivism… again

Alex — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 09:23:05 +0000

Well, I have already written about prescriptivism at length before. I was really settled in letting the issue go but something caught my eye just this weekend. For some reason, I keep getting a weekly spam from the Jose Carillo English Forum. (Jose Carillo, as some might know, is an award-winning author of books that prescribe “correct English.”) In his advisory, he pits descriptivism against prescriptivism by comparing one of my favorite linguists, David Crystal with Lynne Truss of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves fame. You can find a lengthy post about it on his blog here.

Now for as a scholar of English language studies, there are a few things in the post that made me pause, back track, and read through the piece again.

Top of mind, I am quite uncomfortable with the representatives he picked for the conflicting schools of thought. David Crystal is one of the key figures in linguistics for the past couple of decades and authored many of the important books in the study of English linguistics. Lynne Truss is a writer and a journalist by trade (though graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature) who, as far as I know, has never penned any major work in linguistics. But this point is trivial (and a bit biased since Crystal is an inspiration to my current research) compared to what is probably a major oversight from Mr. Carillo in his piece.

Linguistics is the scientific study of language. Being a science, its aim is not to dictate how things should be but to explain the state of things. I might be quoting some other linguist with that line but that’s common knowledge among linguists of today. John McWhorter, in his course for The Teaching Company, even emphasized that it is not linguistics’ role to police grammar.

While I am not saying that there is no room for prescription in this world (as there are instances in language teaching where prescription will aid the learner), what I’m saying is that, as far as linguistics-as-a-science goes, I think it is questionable to claim that the current state of linguistics is characterized by the conflict between these “two major opposing camps.” Linguistics has branched out into many other subfields and across disciplines to appear to be stymied by this debate. While, discussions regarding this schism might still continue in some circles, particularly in language teaching approaches, by virtue of linguistics being a science, any scholarly work in the field is primarily descriptive.

***

Oh, a minor site announcement, I’ve finally taken down my blog in English and moved all discussions to the online community I’ve created with some of the young turks in the department. Shameless plug: Please visit and register at The English Studies Forum.