Recently, in between the sex scandal issue and the ConAss, the Inquirer ran a series of articles focusing on the poor quality of English textbooks made and published for the basic education level.
As one who has written textbooks (both in technology learning and English), I know that writing a textbook is one arduous task. It’s a combination of technical and creative writing all the while balancing method, accuracy, and style. The quality of textbooks does rely heavily on the writer’s competency. However, it is also important to note that extraneous (e.g. economic) aspects in textbook publishing eventually become defining factors to the quality.
The textbook publishing business is a cutthroat one. In my opinion, the only two profitable activities of any English language professional here in the Philippines is to 1) be a consultant and 2) write textbooks. There is simply much money to be made from royalties and textbooks are perhaps the only books that could sell by the thousands in our non-reading culture.
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Ideally, books are reviewed, edited, and revised to ensure that it is in the best format before it hits the printers. However, the process of getting a book to print offers so many possibilities for lapses and errors to come up. Even in the editing process, editorial influence does play a huge role. Author and editor might have different styles and a simple edit on sentence structure can have an impact in the structure and sense of paragraphs and discourses.
There is also the technology issue. Differences in the setting of Spellcheck of Microsoft Word across writers and editors can pose a possible problems. Then there also the transition from manuscript to layout. Even in the copy-past or import process, the technology can render text differently. I’ve seen these happen.
While there is an semblance of collaboration, the traditional writing process is still a linear process. In the case of the alleged “sick books” issue, everyone is passing the buck along. If this truly is a collaborative process, then everyone should have responsibility. Right now, accountability is moot. Administration is blaming the author. Author is passing it to the evaluation committee.
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Here’s an idea for the Internet age then. Wikis and online document managers can provide better collaboration that can help address quite a lot of these issues. A chosen group of collaborators can now share a collective expertise on any given topic. With each collaborator now assuming the roles of both author and editor, writing and editing can now happen at the same time. A style guide and outline would help curb “broth spoilage” in this case of having many cooks.
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Now only if we can offer a better solution of the money issue. Timetables are often fixed to ensure on-time sales to meet ROI the soonest time possible. To meet or beat the deadline, books might eventually come out in what the IT world can call a “shippable format” – lots of bugs but can be address through patches (supplements) and newer versions (editions). The difference with books compared to software, however, is that they’re often mass-printed and stored in warehouses to maximize the profit that can be had for every run. Editions can come few and far in between.
Government-subsidized books should not have been subject to this kind of issue but that’s just the reality. It is still a multi-million peso deal and profit-taking is just part of the process.
A Web 2.0 solution to publishing concerns is out of the question since IT infrastructure in schools are still inadequate.
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Quite a lot of people are complaining about the quality of English of Filipinos these days. While I have made it clear my position regarding “good” vs. “bad” in previous discussions on this blog, I will not discount that, on a practical level, our nation’s on-the-average competency in English does create a lot of problems.
Like it or not, we live in a global economy. Many of our younger professionals rely on BPOs for jobs – a sector in which English is the medium for communication. Unless China finally emerges to be the new superpower, English will continue to be the matrix language of the different fields. Even if China ultimately does become a force, I doubt if English will quickly be surpassed by Mandarin as the language of technology and business. With that, a huge premium on learning English remains.
Thus, it becomes necessary for I would not discount the importance of a strong English language program that should start at the learner’s formative years. The saying “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” pertains to the difficulty of breaking the “bad” fundamentals one eventually learns through a course of one’s learning life. I’m sure call centers would have it much easier if their training programs focus only on the technical aspect and localization if only Filipinos already have developed strong grasps of speech sounds and grammar from basic education.
This example of “sick books” simply shows the quality of our efforts in trying to address the language issue.
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I also think that english has become a necessity for every person. Their are varieties of english training courses that are available online which you can choose from, also if a person is interested in writing textbooks or even simple writing thats really good for the improvement of english……