The Construct

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.

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