Holistic Educator

CHAT – Cultural Historical Activity Theory

2011-08-01T14:25:00.003Z

Bateson (1972) draws our attention to the relationship between man and his tools. He asks:

“Suppose I am a blind man, and I use a stick...Is my mental system bounded at the handle of the stick? Is it bounded by my skin? Does it start halfway up the stick? Does it start at the tip of the stick? But these are nonsense questions...If what you are trying to explain is a given piece of behavior, such as the locomotion of the blind man, then, for this purpose, you will need the street, the stick, the man; the street, the stick, and so on, round and round.”

As such, the stick becomes an integral part of the blind person’s sensory system and it is precisely this relationship between people and tools that sociocultural theories (SCTs) seek to address. SCT is able to provide researchers and thinkers with a framework for understanding the ways in which digital technologies and literacy practices transform each other through a deictic relationship.

Writing, being a highly protean craft, is situated within and bound up with some sort of 'activity system' which shapes it, and is also shaped by it. And far from working alone, even a solitary writer is drawing on a complex combination of socio-cultural and historical resources (language, knowledge of the world, technologies, conventions, etc.), and as such, a writer is enaged in a social act, not just communication.

In order for me to investigate the relationship between people and computers, when it comes to writing assessment in a classroom, I can look at some key constructs in SCTs to guide me:

Mediation (the idea that humans do not act directly on the world):
After Vygotsy, his protégé Leont’ev (1979) developed the ‘Activity Theory’ school of thought. This sees an ‘activity system’ as the primary unit of analysis. That is, not simply the study of the writer, and his/her writing tool, or the individual workings of his/her mind, but the entire system in which it all takes place via the cultural tools used.

An analysis can, therefore, shift across multiple views to study an activity system, triangulating the various views (Engestrom, 1990). A central question if I adopt an AT analysis is choosing the most useful ‘lenses’ or perspectives for analysis among the many possible ones (Rogoff, 1993)

I feel that the lens of CHAT can provide insights into changes in writers’ practices or into how their writing is restructured or impacted when a computer is the writing tool. CHAT could also provide insights into conflicts between students’ beliefs and their actual writing practices and to help us understand instances of student resistance to new tools in contexts of new uses of technology for learning. CHAT can help illuminate challenges related to cultures of use of tools occurring when students approach a new task with old habits.

Interaction and co-construction:
Learning is mediated between a novice, more knowledgeable others, and cultural artefacts; i.e. it is interpsychological.
This usually involves some form of mentoring by a more knowledgeable person who engages in joint instructional activities through ‘scaffolding’ (Bruner, 1974). This appropriation process is reciprocal, mutual, and promotes cognitive change, rather than the mere ‘transfer’ of knowledge from a teacher to a learner.
Learning is then constructed individually in the mind of the novice, i.e. it is intrapsychological. Vygotsky further believed that this development principally takes place through a form of apprenticeship learning, where interaction with teachers or peers allows the learner to advance through their zone of proximal development (ZPD). This is Vygotsky’s notion of the range of possibilities or potential of the learner to develop. Thus, instructional activities should occur beyond what the learner can do, but not beyond what he/she knows.
Learning is, therefore, in some way collaborative, even in the absence of more knowledgeable others.
Whilst looking at a writing assessment performed in a collaborative classroom setting, where learners produce their own text on computer but discuss their work with other learners, we can investigate the activity by looking at the interaction and co-construction processes. From this perspective writing is hardly a solitary activity, as we discuss ideas with others; envisage how the intended audience will respond to our writing. It is, therefore, shaped by this constant interaction and interpenetration, leading to “a high social polish and lustre by the effects of reactions and response... on the part of the social audience” (Voloshinov, 1986: p. 93).

If I am to document the process of writing in this context, then this could involve a multi-modal ethnography (video recording of task with audio of collaboration with screen capture), and I believe the data has the potential to be very rich, with not only verbal data revealing how learners edited, revised, etc (stuff which cognitive researchers are interested in), but also the literacy practices, participation frameworks, etc. I could focus on the mediation between the participants (technological and otherwise) in the system using CHAT’s “triangular” (Engestrom, 1987, 1990) framework for the analysis and evaluation.

The data could be interpreted using CHAT (cultural historical activity theory) as a theoretical framework, with the context of a writing assessment as an ‘activity system’. This is because modern implementations of CHAT in investigating how material artefacts mediate human activity have seen common ground with ANT (actor-network theory) insights, but with more of a focus on human agency – and intentionality – rather than on perfect symmetry as in ‘pure’ ANT. Such is the ‘third’ generation of activity theory research which is moving from studying single activities to exploring the networks of interacting activities.

Actor-Network Theory

2011-07-23T11:17:00.001Z

If we take the view that the tools we use for certain actions do not simply facilitate them, but they ultimately transform them in a mutually constitutive way, then the study of one (actor) necessitates the study of the other (actor). As such, an approach known as Actor Network Theory (ANT), or ‘the sociology of translations’, takes the tools/artefacts themselves as the focus of enquiry and investigation. In this respect ANT levels the status of human and non-human actors (a construct known in ANT jargon as ‘symmetry’) in the construction of the social. This extends the fundamental assumptions underpinning sociocultural theories (SCT) which take the constructs of ‘mediation’ and ‘activity’ as the basic unit of analyses.

The ‘T’ in ANT is somewhat problematic in that rather than being a theory, ANT is a “way to intervene” (Fenwick and Edward, 2010: p. 1) in educational research and “how we might enact and engage” with it. ANT-based research is, therefore, not confined to any one methodological framework, and begins with an endeavour to “follow the actors” (Latour, 2005).

ANT therefore, for my research, may allow me to investigate the relationship/impact of computers on writing with neither a social nor technological deterministic bias. A computer’s affordances and limitations give it agency, and rather than focussing solely on the writers as ‘actors’ (who shape the technology they employ), or the computers (which determine human activity through their affordances), ANT sees all relevant actors in any network as each exerting an influence on the other. And when it comes to writing practices on computer, an ANT approach may provide a means of revealing complex depictions of the relationships between the ‘actors’ (the computer and its peripherals, the writer, the task at hand/writing assignment, fellow students, etc.). We can ask here: how are these ‘actors’ related?

Arguing against abstract notions of the ‘social’, Bruno Latour asserts that it is the “movement of re-association and re-assembling” (Latour, 2005: p. 7) which forms the basis of the social world; and as such it is the very creation and maintenance of these associations, or networks, which should be the subject of enquiry.

An ANT account of the impact of computers on writing, through the networks in which it takes place, has the potential to reveal the specific ways technology can exert its influence on writers, as well as how writers utilise the affordances, as subsequently allowing us to see how social orders are created and maintained.

World Café

2011-06-26T00:30:00.003Z

Gosh it's been a while.

From organising and presenting at academic conferences, I now have to do the toughest job of all - facilitating a 'World Café' session for academic staff. Why did I even bother suggesting it???

A World Cafe approach is designed to focus and enhance the quality of a key conversation or debate by drawing on the talent and wisdom of a group of people engaged in a collective conversation.

World Café dialogues are designed on the assumption that people-through their collective wisdom and intelligence-have within them the creativity to confront even the most difficult challenges. The process is simple, yet it can yield surprising results. The design of the World Café session enables groups—of any number—to participate together in evolving rounds of dialogue with others while at the same time remaining part of a single, larger, connected conversation. Small, intimate conversations link and build on each other as people move between groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into the questions or issues at hand. As the ideas and arguments develop through the diversity of views, listening, and physical movement between tables, a sense of the collective wisdom of the group becomes stronger. In this respect ‘diversity’ and ‘movement’ are key in a World Café session. Diversity, as only when we have many different perspectives do we allow an accurate picture of a complex problem. And the movement, usually from table to table, is much more than physical movement: As we move, we leave something behind to attain something new from another branch of the topic being discussed. We become, as such, bigger, wiser and represent a growing collective conversation, and innovative possibilities are more likely to emerge

Developing Academic Writing Skills

2010-11-01T15:26:00.001Z

My latest lecture on developing writing skills using a PROCESS framework:

Developing Academic Writing Skills on Prezi

The Levels of Learning

2010-10-02T09:20:00.000Z

My latest lecture on the levels of learning, using Bloom's taxonomy, advice from Prof Alan Macfarlane, and the STRIDE project.

Introduction v2

2010-09-06T13:56:00.001Z

Check out this SlideShare Presentation. Useful models of Digital Literacy.

Introduction v2

View more documents from hbeetham.

Reflections on reading

2010-08-02T14:55:00.002Z

Having scoped the literature, although not completely exhaustively, a conclusion that can be drawn from the mass of differing evidence seen is that research outcomes appear to be dependent on their particular contexts and specific methodologies employed in each case.

Whether writers – both skilled and un-skilled – change their writing procedure when computers are used still needs to be convincingly proven, especially in light of new technological developments, ubiquity, and more ergonomic tools and interfaces.

I have started to use the term writing ‘procedure’ now instead of ‘processes’ in my thinking. This is because if 'processes' refer to planning, editing, revising, etc.; then 'procedure' means the way in which those activities are carried out by the writer.

Also, in light of prior research, I believe that a sequential mixed-methods approach, based on quantitative and subsequent qualitative analyses of think aloud protocols (TAPs), is the means by which the greatest amount of information can be gleaned from the subjects of such a study. This is because the use of TAPs allows for potentially rich quantitative and qualitative analyses, something prior researchers did not take advantage of, as far as can be ascertained. As such, this technique can be used by researchers with a ‘positivist’ orientation, where immediate meanings of utterances are excluded from research interest; but can also be used by ‘nonpositivist’ researchers, where meanings of subjects’ actions are central to the verbal data. Moreover, such a methodology would allow for a great level of theoretical analysis to take place, which is not always possible with a qualitative study of a small sample size, or quantitative study of a large sample size. Theoretical analysis is based upon drawing trends between different areas of analysis; in this sense it is meta-analysis, which may not be possible in a small-sample study. A mixed-methods approach allows for such a meta-analysis; something that may not be possible in a mono-method study.

Conference posters

2010-07-15T09:03:00.003Z

"Three generations of conversational code-switching" looked at bilingual language choice practices amongst south-Asians in Bradford (West Yorkshire). This presentation was delivered at the "New Challenges for Multilingualism" in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

3 generations of code-switching

This poster is based on my alreay PhD research on writing:

PhD proposal poster - writing processes

My Prezi

2010-06-07T13:22:00.010Z

PhD (Keyboarding and Handwriting: comparing writing processes across paper-based and computer-based modes in a timed writing test) on Prezi

I have delivered this Prezi presentation - or permutations of it - at the Post Graduate conference in Linguistics at Birkbeck college (University of London), Warwick University, and Lancaster University.

I think Prezi's zooming function aides cognition, for those who do not get motion-sickness :) It seems to be based on the principle of a glorified mind-map, and thereby puts more onus on the presenter to deliver and embellish the content.

Right, I'm back into blogging and will post stuff every week!

PhD Reflections 2: Research Design

2009-11-01T16:09:00.004Z

The first year of a PhD usually involves a study of research methods, strategies of inquiry, and epistemological and ontological underpinnings of research.

Our ontology, or better termed worldview (Creswell, 2009), is the lens through which we look at our research problem. Whilst this is inevitably connected to the our individual standpoint and expertise, it also has a lot to do with our chosen field of study and what we want to do with the research. The researcher then decides on what strategies of inquiry to adopt.

John Creswell conveniently divides worldviews into four:

Postpositivism: reductionist, deterministic, and lends itself to Quantitative strategies to research.

Social Constructivism: seek understanding through interaction and engagement and meanings are socially constructed. This ‘lens’ favours more Qualitative approaches to research.

Advocacy/participatory: seek emancipation for particular groups/individuals. The Social Constructivism approach doesn’t go far enough, so the researcher adopts recursive or dialectical methods. This ‘lens’ also favours qualitative strategies.

Pragmatism: arises out of situations and consequences, concerned with context and conditions of the research problem. Naturally, it favours Mixed-Methods strategies.

PhD Reflections 1: A Bachelor's Elevator Pitch

2009-10-15T18:56:00.011Z

I Had my first PhD meeting today. Actually second if you include the 'elevator pitch'.

That's a great concept that, 'elevator pitch'. As a former English teacher I used to readily notice people shilly-shallying when trying to explain something, and even developed classroom activities for ESOL learners as preperation for speaking exams and debates.

Not long ago I did a seminar for young people on leadership and rhetoric. We discussed Aristotelian rhetoric apropos of ethos, pathos, and logos, and participants each presented their own 'elevator pitch' on an issue that concerned them. The exercise was well received and the kids wanted me back for further sessions.

Now whilst most people are taught to read and write, the same is not said of speaking, or oracy as I heard it referred to once. Whilst I have discussed something about slovenliness in speech and its connection with thoughts in a previous post, it's important to note that 'Bachelor', as in Bachelor of Arts (BA) originally refers to someone who has mastered certain arts including those of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. These arts were understood as the linchpins of mediaeval learning. Grammar may have remained but logic and rhetoric are no longer recognised as a part of basic schooling, at least that's my experience.

Can Computers Change The Way People Write?

2009-10-10T14:12:00.005Z

This post is based on my Masters dissertation, as well as a couple of workshops delivered at IATEFL Pre-Conference Event 2009 (Cardiff) and NATECLA 2009 (Leeds)

My small-scale study aimed to discover differences in the writing processes of ESOL learners whilst completing timed writing tasks across paper-based (PB) and computer-based (CB) modalities. We are all too aware that the main change in all areas of teaching over the last decade has been the rapid increase in the use of technology. Computers have become an integral part of any classroom. What is surprising is the fact that there is relatively scant research about the impact computers have made on the teaching and learning of writing. Researchers such as Collier & Werier (1995), Wolfe et al (1996), Lee (2002), and Lee (2004) have conducted studies into this area but often with contradictory or inconclusive results. As with all areas of investigation it will likely take several years and the work of many researchers to reach a consensus.

As a contribution to this area of research, my study set out to discover whether, and to what extent, computers have impacted writing in an ESOL context. My research, which was angled towards my specialist fields of ESOL teaching and assessment, aimed to compare traditional PB composition tests with tasks completed using only word-processing.

A cohort of ESOL students of differing levels of competence was corralled and asked to complete a series of tasks based closely on the kind they would find in ESOL examinations. In order to track their approaches and processes whilst writing I utilised think-aloud protocols (TAPs) supported by appropriate statistical analyses of their recorded utterances. I chose the think aloud protocol method because of its immediacy and accuracy in recording the real-time process of writing. Of course, individual reporting is always subjective but TAPs guard against unreliable memories during retrospective interviews and the constrictive nature of, for example, rigid questionnaires.

I was fully prepared to discover results that were inconclusive, or even showed that technology had no real influence on the writing process. However, what I discovered was both surprising and interesting to me.

The results of the analysis, although —due to sample size — not definitive, clearly showed a tendency among students to actually compose differently on a word processor than on paper. ‘Writing’ (i.e. the mental and physical sub-processes involved in composition) can be quite clearly broken into different stages: planning, editing and drafting. With the usual caveats due to sample size and the difficulty of wrangling data based on subjective individual reporting, the study shows these stages are quite clearly delineated during traditional paper and pen composition. However, when composing using a computer, the subjects showed a tendency towards blending or enmeshing the planning and editing stages of their writing.

Obviously, there are clear mechanical differences in using a pen or a keyboard. For example, word-processing allows for an ongoing editing process throughout the task until a finished draft is completed, whereas pen and paper may inspire subjects to try and be neat in their writing; something that may easily act against editing decisions. Remember that for centuries we have looked down upon our desktops and now have to look up whilst manipulating a keyboard and mouse.

The fact that there is a tendency towards enmeshing of the stages of composition might also point towards a fundamental, if subtle, change of mental and physical approach to given tasks. Clearly this indicated assertion would need a large amount of further research to solidify.

What can be concluded for teachers (especially language teachers) is that we should be aware of the potential of technology to alter the processes, or stages, of writing. Maybe then we can consider designing tasks and assessments with such potential in mind, as the future of technology is a given mainstay in our society and our classrooms

I have started working on a doctoral thesis on computer-based writing tests, using what may possibly be a mixture of L1 and L2 learners.

References:
Collier, R., and Werier, C. (1995), ‘When computer writers compose by hand’, Computers and Composition, 12, 47-59.

Lee, Y.J. (2002), ‘A comparison of composing processes and written products in timed-essay tests across paper-and-pencil and computer modes’, Assessing Writing, 8:2, 135–157.

Lee, H.K. (2004), ‘A comparative study of ESL writers’ performance in a paper-based and a computer-delivered writing test’, Assessing Writing, 9:1, 4-26.

Wolfe, E. W Bolton, S., Feltovich, B., and Niday, D.M. (1996), ‘The influence of student experience with word processors on the quality of essays written for a direct writing assessment’, Assessing Writing, 3:2, 123–147.

A variation of this article will appear in the next issue of IATEFL ES(O)L Special Interest Group's newsletter.

Code-switching article

2008-10-26T19:15:00.005Z

I finally got round to making the code-switching article available via this link to a previous post: http://holisticeducator.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

Directly here

And PowerPoint:

Principles Governing Politeness

2008-08-31T18:27:00.002Z

Whilst teaching an adult ESOL class recently, I discussed differences in politeness features in different cultures and languages. Given the cultural variety present in today’s multicultural and multilingual Britain, miscommunications and ‘pragmatic failure’ abound.

In the work of social pragmatics, Leech’s (1983) ‘politeness maxims’, such as the ‘modesty maxim’ and the ‘agreement maxim’, are seen as cultural rules to describe language use. It is precisely these maxims that are unconsciously adhered to in different ways by members of different cultural communities.

Politeness in English generally favours the least coerciveness in requests and some circumlocution, as the extract from a classroom handout shows below where the learners must put each line in order of impoliteness. The activity I named ‘the politeness pyramid’.

Door!

Open the door!

Open the door please

Could you open the door please?

Would you mind opening the door please?

It’s a bit cold. Would you mind opening the door please?

Learners then discover how the longer sentence is the most polite. However, differences in the underlying conceptualisation of politeness give rise to different ways of expressing our illocutionary goals. It is thus difficult to maintain the assumption that politeness can be defined in the same way across different cultures. An example in point is naming strategies used by British and American speakers in conversation. Speakers from, say, Japan, may be more comfortable with formal naming strategies, such as the use of title and last name, English and American speakers may try to move to first name terms as quickly as possible and see honorification as a barrier to effective communication. These ‘involvement’ strategies that British and American speakers generally use when they first meet a stranger can create unease and difficulty on the part of second language learners who see such behaviour as over-familiarity.

Other differences between politeness in British English and Japanese can be related to the relative importance of individualistic values in British culture and collectivistic values in Japanese culture.

Some further reading:

Brown, P. & Levinson, S. (1987), Politeness: Some universals in language usage, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fukushima, S. (2000), Requests and Culture: Politeness in British English and
Japanese, Bern: Peter Lang.

Grice, H.P. (1989), Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Leech, G. (1983), Principles of Pragmatics, London: Longman.

Language Policy and Planning in Pakistan

2008-08-31T09:42:00.003Z

As a kind of follow up to the code-switching work, I have written this brief piece on Language Policy and Planning in Pakistan.

When Mohammed Ali Jinnah (the founder of Pakistan and its first Governor-General) declared Urdu as the national language of Pakistan, only 7.5% of the people in the West of the country, and a mere 0.5% of those in the East, knew it as a first language (Weinstein, 1983; as cited by Powell, 2002: 241). Nevertheless Urdu, already the usual medium of instruction in Panjab, North West Frontier, Balochistan and Kashmir, was decreed a compulsory subject in all government schools.

The diglossic situation in Pakistan consisted of disparate language communities each of which preferred its vernacular. These varieties included Sindhi, which had played a significant official role since the province was annexed by the British in the 1850s; and Saraiki, which is spoken around the southern Panjab region. Altogether there are 58 of these communities in Pakistan (Rahman, 2004: 1). Each of these communities challenged (and since have challenged) the official language planning policy since Pakstan’s conception resulting in so-called “language riots” in January 1971 and July 1972 (Ahmed, 1992; as cited by Rahman, 2004: 4). The greatest opposition, however, came from East Pakistan, present day Bangldesh. Due to independence the Bengalis seemed to support Urdu as a symbol of Muslim nationalism, but afterwards found themselves geographically isolated from the government (which was based in the western half of the country), and culturally marginalised despite comprising 54% of the population (Rahman, 1999; as cited by Powell, 2002: 241). Rahman (1999) describes the policy of language planning in Pakistan as one which used Urdu to contain regionalism and English to check Islamisation (ibid: 242).

Powell (2002: 242) writes: “A 1958 National Education Commission under Ayub Khan’s military regime (1958-69) urged the promotion of unity through Urdu, but since the civil and military bureaucracies were English-educated and in favour of social modernisation, they sent out mixed messages.”

Eventually, under Zia-ul-Haq (1977-88), the National Education Policy of 1979 phased out English-medium instruction everywhere, only to be replaced entirely by Urdu-medium or vernacular-medium. This was offset by the policies of the later Bhutto government which supported more English. Hence, the socioeconomic hierarchy of language remained; with English at the top, Urdu next, and the regional languages below these. According to Rahman (2005: 1), Muslims in South Asia (including Pakistanis) have responded to English in three ways: (a) rejection and resistance, (b) acceptance and assimilation, and (c) pragmatic utilisation.

This has since been the case in Pakistan and, indeed, in South Asia as whole. English is the expensive product to which the elite have access, and as such plays a major role in the construction of pro-Western secular identities; its snob value makes it a class marker and symbol of polarisation of a society. Rahman (1998; as cited by Powell 242) describes the ‘double-speak’ of Pakistani elites who would utilise English for their own benefit while promoting Urdu for the nation; and bureaucrats and politicians who speak up for Urdu in public but make sure in private that their children learn English (even General Zia, according to anecdote).

Consequently, Urdu state education has such low esteem that there has been a huge expansion in private education, nearly all of it English-medium. This provides a way for some to join the existing elite, leaving the poorly educated without sufficient proficiency in the language most highly valued by both the civilian and the military bureaucracies. In short, English has remained a language for the elite in order to perpetuate their hegemony.

References:

Ahmed, F. (1992), ‘The Language Question in Sindh’ in Zaidi, [page unkown]

Rahman, T. (2005), The Muslim Response to English in South Asia: With Special Reference to Inequality, Intolerance, and Militancy in Pakistan, Journal of Language Identity & Education, 4:2, 119-135.

Powell, R. (2002), Language planning and the British empire: Comparing Pakistan,
Malaysia and Kenya, Current Issues in Language Planning, 3:3, 205–79.

Rahman, T. (1999), Language and Culture in Education, Karachi: OUP

Rahman, T. (2004), Language Policy and Localization in Pakistan: Proposal for a Paradigmatic Shift, Crossing the Digital Divide, SCALLA Conference on Computational Linguistics, 5:7, January. [Available online http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/P/P06/P06-1143.pdf]

Weinstein, B. (1983), The Civil Tongue: The Political Consequences of Language Choices, New York: Longman.

Zaidi, S.A (1992), Regional Imbalances and the National Question in Pakistan, Lahore: Vanguard Books.

Code-switching

2008-05-24T09:51:00.013Z

I have written a research report for the Language Issues journal summarising a study I did in Bradford. The title of the paper is "Three generations of conversational code-switching in Bradford’s South Asian community: a survey" . I commented briefly in a previous post called Da Lingua Code back in March. Below is link to a pdf version of the article and Appendices which could not fit in the printed journal and I promised the editor, Rakesh, that I would make them available on the blog. They consist of:

Appendix 1: Questionnairre on language use

Appendix 2: An extract from the EMILLE corpus "The Afternoon Show with Navinder Bhogal"

The link to download is below

Low Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition (LESLLA)

2008-04-03T17:57:00.007Z

Low Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition (LESLLA) for Adults is an international forum of researchers who share an interest in research on the development of second language skills by adult immigrants with little or no schooling prior to entering the country of entry.

The goal of the LESLLA is to share empirical research and information to help inform and guide further research on second language acquisition for the low-educated adult population. This research in turn will provide guidance to education policy development in all those countries in which immigrants settle and most need educational support.

You can find out more about them here.

Test your language skills online

2008-03-27T19:14:00.005Z

When it comes to defining a second-language learner’s proficiency, what options are there? Most of what is available is time consuming and expensive. However, the DIALANG project has developed a Web-based instrument that allows learners to assess their proficiency in, particularly EU, languages. The method is entirely ‘self-assessment’ as well as being self-managed, and makes use of a series of so-called ‘can-do’ statements on the basis of the levels of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). The CEFR consists of six levels of the four skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), and is becoming a widely used instrument to define targets of language proficiency in many European countries.

DIALANG realises the convenience of low-stakes computer aided language assessment, and even affords the opportunity for test takers to self-rate their own writing using a series of benchmarks (see Luoma and Tarnanen, 2003)

Try out the DIALANG test for your self here. Just select your language and download the programme. Note: you will nee to Install SUN Java Runtime Environment first.

More info on the CEFR here.

Linguistics Quiz

2008-03-22T11:05:00.002Z

Test your knowledge of various areas of linguistics with these interactive exercises. Just follow the links below:

Language and communication

Grammar (syntax, morphology, phonology, phonetics)

First language acquisition

Second language acquisition

Semantics and Pragmatics

Sociolinguistics

Da Lingua Code

2008-03-13T22:36:00.013Z

Now that the unintentional sabbatical is over....

What do the following phrases have in common?

Hasta la vista baby

It’s a nice day, hana?

Sometimes I'll start a sentence in English y termino en español

Answer: they are all forms of ‘code-switching’; that is, the (more or less deliberate) switching by bilinguals (or multilinguals) of two or more languages in conversation. More precisely, the alternate use of two or more languages in the same utterance or conversation. CS normally occurs in communities that are undergoing rapid social and linguistic change, group boundaries may be diffuse, and norms and standards vary according to people’s perception of the degree of separateness between the two languages. Also, what may look like interference from a bilingual’s first language can in fact be a conscious strategy of achieving a particular stylistic and rhetorical effect, when speaking to a fellow bilingual.

With regards to linguistic structures of CS, we can use a three-way division:
1. Tag-switching - It's a nice day, hana? (isn’t it?)

2. Intra-sentential switching - Switching within a clause or sentence boundary. Examples of this type can be found in many Bollywood films: Stop it, otherwise meh ap ko marungee (I will hit you!).

3. Inter-sentential switching - Switching occurs at a clause or sentence boundary, where each clause or sentence is in one language or the other. An example would be, as given by the linguist Shana Poplack as the title of one of her papers: Sometimes I'll start a sentence in English y termino en español (and finish it in Spanish).

4. Intra-lexical switching - Change occurs within a word boundary, e.g. English ‘shop’ with a Panjabi plural ending as in shoppã. It can involve using a word from the donor language that is grammaticalised according to the recipient language (or vice versa). An example would be ‘You've kharabed it!’ Kharab means to ‘damage’ or ‘ruin’ in Urdu and it being said as an English verb with _ed morpheme in past simple.

I looked into CS practises recently, particularly with three generations of south-Asian immigrant families in Bradford, West Yorkshire. This involved recording people, interviewing, and questionnaires. In one sample, I recorded a friend, and analysed her CS. In the extract she is engaged in a telephone conversation with her brother and uses a variety of CS acts that demonstrate her mastery of both English and Panjabi, and ethnic solidarity with the interlocutor.
(If you would like to hear the audios then please do let me know)

Example 1 (inter-sentential switching):
Did he not make photocopies...Mae usko akhiya si photocopy bana
{I him tell (past morpheme) photocopy make (verb compound)}
Did he not make photocopies...[I told him to make photocopies]
Here, the second sentence is said in Panjabi to reinforce the point of the first sentence Did he not make photocopies.
Note: verb compounding and noun reduplication are two archetypal areas which have long been noted as a feature of Hindi/Urdu/Panjabi to English CS, e.g. painting karna, shopping karna, car-wash karna, the list is endless.

Example 2 (intra-lexical switching):
In this example, prepositional-phrase “in my room” is said syntactically in Panjabi with “room” grammaticalised (intra-lexical switching):
I forgot to tell you, mer room-ech caparae paysen.
{My room in clothes (were located)}
I forgot to tell you, [there were some clothes in my room]

Example 3:
In the following example, Panjabi becomes the syntactic base language to which two English words are added.
Ahha jerey dryer se ni kaday yesterday?
{Yeah those dryer from which took yesterday}
Yeah, those that (I) took out of the dryer yesterday?

Example 4 (Tag switching for emblematic reasons):
Teekenah?
Ok then?

I discovered that for second and third generations of immigrant families, such language behaviour—and CS choice— is based around the negotiation of their multicultural and multilingual identities. As south-Asian youth readily CS with their ethnic peers almost as signal of ethnolinguistic solidarity, this can translate into making conscious choices regarding which aspects of L1 (the first or ‘ethnic’ language) and L2 (the second language) cultures to adopt and which of those particular functions and contexts will involve use of each language e.g. spiritual/religious issues, matters related to food, family, etc.

Many people frown upon CS and see it as a type of “semilingualism” (a type of deficit theory referring to a bilingual speaking two languages but only partially). They believe that English is important for their children’s future and that a majority language education is the best way to guarantee proficiency in the majority language (and hence academic achievement). They feel that their ethnic language has become deficient in what Pierre Bourdieu, the French Sociologist, called cultural ‘capital’ (Bourdieu 1991: 230-231); in short, it is ghettoised.

Whether this pattern of language use is because people are not satisfied with their identities associated with either language, or because they are able to negotiate simultaneously two or more positively evaluated identities is a moot point. I feel another post on 'language and class' coming along soon...watch this space.

Some further stuff:
Alladina, S. and Edwards, V. (1991), Multilingualism in the British Isles Volume 2, London: Longman.

Auer, P. ed. (1998), Code-switching in Conversation: language, interaction and Identity, London: Routledge

Baker, C. (1995), Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters (1st ed. 1993)

Genesee, F. (1989), ‘Early bilingual language development: one language or two?’ Journal of Child Language 16:1, 161-79

Grosjean , F. (1982), Life with Two Languages, London and Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press

Macaulay, R. (1977), Language, social class and education: a Glasgow study, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press

Myers-Scotton, C. (1993), Social Motivations for Code-Switching. Evidence from Africa, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Wei, L. (1994), Three Generations, Two Languages, One Family, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters

Brawl in Classroom

2008-03-10T18:58:00.004Z

It's been a while since I posted due to work and study commitments but see what you make of this video before my next article is posted. I apologise for the music; it's embeded as part of the link.

Stupid in America

2007-09-29T12:20:00.000Z

An investigation by John Stossel entitled "Stupid in America" highlighting some of the flaws with the education system in the United States.

Do you think UK schools are following suit?

John Taylor Gatto - Classrooms of the Heart

2007-07-17T13:48:00.000Z

John Taylor Gatto uses alternative methods to inspire deprived children to enjoy education. His secret - he hates “schooling” and ignores tests; instead, he concentrates on preparing pupils for life.

Yeah but, no but, yeah but…..

2007-07-14T09:13:00.001Z

I recently attended a conference with a local councillor who said that Asian-Muslim children in my city are speaking ‘pidgin English’ and ‘pidgin Urdu’ (that the former was a consequence of the latter) and that their lack of articulacy was a problem for their educational prospects. Interesting. Whilst I acknowledge the ‘pidgin English’ of many Asian youth, I don’t think this is attributable to learning another language at home. White working-class children are just as bad; remember Vicky Pollard?

This has more to do with the way language is being taught at home and school and literacy as 'perception'. In this vein, one of my favourite essayists, Neil Postman writes:

"A young man whose range of response to that which displeases him is located somewhere between the word "bullshit" and some other unoriginal obscenity does not simply have a vocabulary deficiency; he has a perception deficiency. He cannot distinguish among degrees or kinds of displeasure. The world may be said to be a blur to him, and it is not sufficient to provide him with a vocabulary list. He must somehow have his consciousness raised. He must be persuaded that he is missing something, that there is value, for him, in seeing what is now hidden from his view. Having achieved some sense of what there is to see, he will then require the words, perhaps demand the words, with which to understand and express a wider field of vision. "

“A name (or word),” Socrates said, “is an instrument of teaching and of distinguishing natures”. Bertand Russell made the same point: “Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it”. “Languaging”, knowing, thinking, and living are thus intertwined. From this came the notion of the indissociability of language and culture promoted by German linguists Herder (1762-1835) and Humbolt (1762-1835). These scholars put forward the idea that different people speak differently because they think differently, and they think differently because their language offers them a particular way of expressing the world around them (hence the idea of ‘linguistic relativity’). See Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Are we prisoners of our language? Does language determine thought rather than the other war around? Will a decline in deep thinking result in slovenliness in language?

“It [language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts”

(Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946).

I recently met a woman who did a PhD in something connected to nursing and language. She said that that there was a direct link between the much infantilised way nurses spoke to elderly people in care homes (‘elderspeak’ if you like: e.g. overuse of ‘we’, “Hello, how are we today?” and speaking louder), and cases of dementia in those people.

Am I way off?

Hands up if you're an idiot

2007-06-03T14:09:00.000Z

Hands up if you're an idiot from medium self esteem

Social Identity and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages)

2007-05-22T18:57:00.000Z

My specialism is ESOL (English for Speakers of other Languages, or EFL/ESL as it is sometimes referred to) and Applied Linguistics; it’s what I teach and research. This blog entry is connected to an essay that I wrote some time ago and, as this blog attracts people with all sorts of issues surrounding education, I hope readers—both ESOL specialists and otherwise—will find it interesting. What follows is a much simplified version of my essay with most academic references eliminated and others kept that general educators may be interested in.

For many ESOL learners in the UK, learning English is a route to better employment, further education, and and/or a key to social integration. In the current socio-political climate, lack of English language skills is cited by some as a possible cause of social divisions between different sections of multicultural Britain (Gerard, 2006; BBC News, 2004). The former Home Secretary David Blunkett went even further by urging British Asian families to speak English at home and to refrain from speaking their ethnic languages in order to overcome what he called ‘schizophrenic rifts between generations of families’ (Hinsliff, 2002). Consequently, second language acquisition (SLA) is by no means a purely linguistic process and, until recently, studies in this area have tended to focus on easily measurable components of language learning, such as the mastery of vocabulary. However, of late, the identity of language learners has emerged as one of the major issues in applied linguistics research. This subject is of particular relevance to language teachers as we are often referred to as ‘cultural mediators’ (A free book on this topic here). In this vein, it is important to look at ESOL teaching from the perspective that language learning is a part of social identity (re)construction, social inclusion, and achieving the larger identity of citizenry in the second culture. Adequate speaking (and pronunciation) skills are instrumental in achieving these goals, as, the way we speak—the way we sound to our interlocutors—is how we project our identity as individuals and how we indicate our membership of particular communities as social beings. Conversely, limited pronunciation skills, resulting in inappropriate or incorrect choices, can restrict social interactions, negatively influence estimations of a speaker’s credibility, language ability, and subsequently undermine self confidence.

The intentional acquisition of a new linguistic identity can result in a ‘seismic mental shift’ (Hoffman, 1989: 105) in a language learner’s interpretation of the world. This is particularly the case with those learners who wish to remain and integrate with the host community and become legitimate participants in the second culture whilst maintaining identification with their native ethnic group. This process was very aptly described by Andrei Codrescu, an American writer of Romanian origin, when he stated in The Woes of Translation (in Raised by Puppets: Only to Be Killed by Research): “I was once a Romanian and I translated myself into an American”. And the sad story of Richard Rodriguez who, through learning English and being told to communicate in English with his family (a language they could but poorly use), subsequently became cut off from them. He confesses to being “paralyzed by the thought of [his parents’] pained faces” when he spoke English to them.

Pronunciation choices—attuning our language to our specific purposes and contexts—are made intuitively by native speakers and how this is to be effectively incorporated into the ESOL classroom is beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, some of the students that I teach in Bradford have been attending ESOL classes for several years and bemoan the fact that their pronunciation of certain words and phrases are still grossly inaccurate. Many students—at varying levels—approach me individually requesting ‘accent’ training, as they feel that they only receive sporadic practice in producing accurate spoken language. A series of intimate discussions with my learners has revealed that for many of them, learning English, and their place in British society, is as much about making the right impression as about knowing the language. One particular learner from the Czech Republic told me how his confidence has been ‘hammered’ by his very idiosyncratic pronunciation of English, something that he feels has not been addressed enough in three years of ESOL learning. Most importantly, he felt that this was his main obstacle in finding work—accent discrimination is nothing new, even to native speakers. When the development of spoken competence is neglected from the early stages of ESOL learning, there is a lesser chance of correcting inaccuracies, putting ESOL learners at serious risk educationally and socially.

I believe what my small-scale study reveals are but microcosms of a failure to address a pedagogic need of many ESOL learners. Although I do not say more pronunciation teaching equals (necessarily) better integration, I do say that more emphasis on pronunciation, or even a separate class dedicated particularly to the teaching of segmentals and suprasegmentals in everyday speech, would go some way in addressing this pedagogic need.

In EFL research much has been written about the goals of pronunciation teaching. Is native-like competency a realistic goal? UK ESOL learners live in the country whose language they are learning, and many are part of settled communities. ‘Perfect’ pronunciation is far more conceivable to be a realistic goal in this context than an EFL school in, say, Japan where English is non-existent outside of the classroom.

In this vein, an investigation by Alene Moyer in 1999 is very relevant. This study of 24 Anglophone students[1] in German, found that only one attained native-like competency. What distinguished this one learner was that he had a deep fascination with the German language and culture. This is of particular relevance to ESOL learners in the UK, as, acculturation[2] is a key factor in second language acquisition.

As well as the apparent links above the following may prove useful to ESOL practioners and general educators:

Rodriguez: Hunger of Memory- The Education of Richard Rodriguez

Hoffman: Lost in Translation. A Life in a new language

Morley: Pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages.

Delpit: Other People’s Children

Kim: Communication and cross-cultural adaptation

Garcia Mayo and Garcia Lecumberri (Eds.): Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language

[1] All participants had no exposure to German before the age of eleven years.
[2] Acculturation: the process of becoming adapted to a new culture

Clichés

2007-05-20T15:37:00.000Z

What precisely is a cliché? And is it really the ‘bad guy of the English language’? Or is that just a vexed question? As even bad guys have their defendants and McArthur in The Oxford Companion to the English Language reminds us that the general dislike of the cliché is founded on a desire for originality of expression.

What do phrases such as fly off the handle (p.67), in flagrante delicto (p.93) and let the cat out of the bag (p.114) actually mean? And what are their origins in this mother tongue of ours? Betty Kirkpatrick presents a fascinating insight into over 1300 of our most hackneyed phrases - idiom clichés, catchphrases, similes, proverb clichés, vogue expressions and metaphors - along with their meanings, timescales and origins.

Kirkpatrick begins by a thoughtful discussion on the meaning of the word ‘cliché’; coming from the French word ‘clicer’ (to stereotype), the word was originally used in printing. She concludes that they do not immediately fit into any immediate distinctive linguistic category. With each cliché alphabetically listed Kirkpatrick also provides the history of use over time for each with reference to a wide variety of sources including the Bible, Shakespeare and other works of literature.

Sample entries:
‘pride and joy’ (p.150) a hackneyed phrase used to refer to someone or something of which one is very proud, as Their grandson is their pride and joy…The expression comes from a poem, Rokeby (1813) written by Walter Scott in which it was used to describe children. As a cliché it is still commonly used.

‘a hair of the dog’ (p.82) is a hackneyed phrase used to refer to an alcoholic drink taken as a supposed cure for a hangover, although it is just as likely to prolong the said hangover. It is a common cliché today, as ‘How about a hair of dog? You look absolutely terrible’. It appeared in John Heywood’s collection of proverbs (1546) and has its origin in an old remedy for a dogbite which consisted of burning the hair of a dog and placing it on the bite.

‘warts and all’ (p. 194) is an illusion cliché to the instructions given by Oliver Cromwell to Sir Peter Lely when he was painting his portrait that the artist should make him appear as he really was, including any imperfections, such as warts ‘I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise I will not pay a farthing for it.’ The expression, which is widespread in modern times, means despite any shortcomings or drawbacks, as ‘I hope she is going to marry him warts and all and not try to change him’.

The book’s drawbacks are that it may lack practical application as clichés are alphabetically listed and not thematically cross-referenced. It also lacks etymological and philological explanations. However Kirkpatrick explains this in her introduction, claiming that subject matter indexing would have resulted in ‘over-fragmentation of the book’. Nevertheless the book is a must for all language buffs and linguists interested in the development and usage of English and those who speak it - as an Arabic proverb suggests, ‘you don’t understand a people until you understand their clichés’. A worthwhile addition to the wordsmith’s shelf.

'Eating' Education - Natural Curriculum 2

2007-05-06T09:37:00.000Z

Testing is just getting out of hand: with so much target-driven emphasis on ‘the basics’ it seems that giving children a joyful and value-driven childhood and education, which will ultimately stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives, is never going to get on the agenda.

As aptly stated by the poet and singer, Dawud Wharnsby:

Eating education is like eating Christmas pudding: too much can make your stomach sore, too much can spoil your whole Christmas.

Learning from a man who learned all he learned from another,
can lead you to a safe place, but destroy your sense of wonder.

Trapped inside a book, locked inside a lecture
when do you find the time to love and spend your days in forests?

When ideals are fleeting tell me, then who do you turn to?

They proved to you that God was dead and to them you’re just a number.

Boats tied up to shore. Men tied up to shore.

Education and the working Man by Dawud Wharnsby

Expect another generation of semiliterate dysfunctional teenagers by the next decade.

Language Tests and Border Control

2007-05-03T18:51:00.000Z

My pal saltydog and I have been chin-wagging about professionalism and all that. I have agreed with him to comment on this, only I recently had a meeting with a senior lecturer in TESOL at an Australian University and have noticed some developments taking place down under (and over here). It just so happened that they have taken priority in my mind so I have decided to comment on them below.

Language tests have long been used as a form of border control, ever since the example of the Shibboleth test in the Bible (Judges 12: 4–6), in which defeated soldiers trying to pass as members of the victorious ethnic group were “outed” and subsequently slaughtered on the basis of a minor feature of their pronunciation of a particular consonant sound 'sh' — as found in the word “shibboleth”. Those trying to “pass” were required to say this word in order to check their pronunciation—and hence their identity. And so the use of language tests as part of a process of linguistic identification continues to this day; and concomitant with it—to facilitate the movement of populations—is its use to resist the movement of peoples.

A slightly more contemporary example is the linguistic identification process used as part of the settlement of claims to refugee status in a number of Western countries. Members of minority communities who are subject to persecution in their homeland (for example, minorities within Afghanistan) have to establish that they have come directly from the area in which they suffer persecution and not from a first country of exile (for example, Pakistan); as, under international law, a second country of exile has no obligation to grant refugee status if the first country of exile is not itself engaged in persecution of these refugees. Linguistic evidence/identification becomes involved at this stage and would-be refugees are interviewed in their mother tongue, and recordings of the speech sample are then subject to linguistic analysis. If a sample shows evidence of linguistic forms characteristic of the variety spoken among expatriate refugee communities outside the homeland, the applicant’s claim to refugee status is immediately denied.

As you can imagine, the potential for the abuse of such language tests is great indeed, and graphically illustrated in the case of the notorious Australian Dictation Test, which was used in the early twentieth century as an instrument of blatant racial and political exclusion. People arriving in the country who were deemed undesirable on racial or political grounds were subjected to a test of dictation of 100 words in a language, which it was assumed they did not understand. They inevitably failed the test, which was then used as grounds for exclusion. Several thousand people were excluded by this means. The test was adopted in the newly independent Australian federation of former British colonies from 1901 as a means of achieving the goals of the so-called White Australia Policy and continued well into the 1960s.

A sobering reminder of the way in which technical expertise in language testing may be used as a cover for political motives.

Expect some comment on professionalism soon. In the meantime, enjoy saltydog.

National curriculum or natural curriculum?

2007-04-18T17:26:00.000Z

There seems to be deep seated confusion in society over the purposes of education and what constitutes a good education. Although we may not agree how it should be done, almost everyone agrees that self-respect and respect for others should be a result of having been educated. Martin Luther King warned us that: “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals”. Howard Gardner in his book Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century goes even further by nominating ‘species humility’ as the virtue to cultivate man in the twenty-first century.

In any case, thinking out how to live is a more fundamental and urgent use of man’s intellect than discovering facts. A philosopher named Jonathan Glover, of the University of London, says that teaching young people to think rationally and critically can make them less susceptible to false ideologies, propaganda and political manipulation. His research into atrocities committed by dictators and despots suggests that those communities that have succeeding in resisting dictatorship and cruelty are those that nurture what he calls “the benign rebel” in their children. He says: “You can never be sure what will happen to any country in 20 years’ time; 20 years ago, many people went for their holidays in Yugoslavia.” (see Guardian, 13th October 1999). Children, we are told by educational policy makers, should be problem solvers, creative thinkers and morally sophisticated. But what kind of pedagogy makes such learning possible? And how does one nurture a “benign rebel”?

The goal of education, according to Bertrand Russell, is to “give a sense of the value of things” and help to create “wise citizens” encouraging a combination of citizenship with individual creativeness; ipso facto, we must regard “a child as a gardener regards a young tree, as something with a certain intrinsic nature, which will develop into an admirable form, given proper soil and air and light”—such was the “humanistic conception” of Russell. That is, the idea that education is not merely filling an empty vessel, but allowing something to grow in its own way. Charlotte Mason recognized three critical ingredients of a complete education when she said: “Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.” For her the idea that vivifies this is that “Education is a science of relations”. According to Mortimer J. Adler, “The aim of education is to cultivate the individual’s capacities for mental growth and moral development; to help him acquire the intellectual and moral virtues requisite for a good human life.”

But how does one teach moral character and relations? The answer is that manners are not taught, they are caught. And it is dependent on accidents such as parental affection, some kind of stability, friendship, and a delicate balance between self-confidence and a concern for others. The best thinkers were never taught so, but that they were given room to think.

The method of education of Socrates, the Greek philosopher, was called the elenchus; his idea was to open a space for learning through getting rid of junk that can clutter up the mind and prevent it from clear and fresh thinking. In his explanation of the characteristics of Socratic teaching Peter Abbs explains that ‘education is an activity of mind, a particular emotional and critical orientation towards experience’. Such an effort requires a pedagogy that combines children’s cognitive as well as emotional development. Something, I believe, cannot take place in a modern classroom setting alone.

Education in many minds today however, has become synonymous with ‘training’, or, at least, a species of it. Training in what? We have ‘potty training’, ‘dog training’ ‘training for the army’. Education, on the other hand, in its traditional sense, is about opening up of the mind, transcending detail and skill (for any particular occupation); or, in the words of Peter Abbs ‘educing, releasing, then liberating’. It is no coincidence that the word school comes from the Greek word schole which means both leisure and discussion. Also, the word academy derives from Akademus—the man who owned the garden in which Plato and his disciples discussed philosophy. Looking at these terms vis-à-vis their original meanings provides them with a resonance lacking nowadays.

Schools today however, are more like political institutions with identified public functions. And, due to reasons of protection and control, I believe, they are stifling children’s ability to critically think, express opinion and pursue the tricky business of ‘self-management’. One of the reasons for this is that the overly prescriptive nature of curricula as well as a fixation with stage-age learning which preclude such things from happening in a classroom effectively. Activities, discussions and children’s responses are provisional in such learning and not steered by the teacher. Over-specialisation within curricula can have profound narrowing effects on children’s ability and capacity to converse, think laterally and originally. It is presumably for this reason that Einstein said: “Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” One of my favourite writers, Mortimer J. Adler, states: “Because man is viewed as having only an animal career and not a human destiny, interest and adjustment have taken the place of discipline and cultivation”.

Education is most assuredly a tool for social change and a means by which people can perceive, interpret, criticise and finally transform the world about them. Such education, as mentioned above, is a different kind of quest to today, where market achievement is the yard-stick for success, and I believe there is need for us to re-look at our perceptions of cleverness or achievement.

Anyway, my point is that parents are the main educators of their children; and, by having children they oblige themselves to become educated in doing so effectively. That is, it is their duty to make their children good citizens—not the teachers’. Parenting comprises all the tasks involved in raising a child to an independent adult.

Standard English

2007-04-12T17:37:00.000Z

Demos, a left-of-centre think-tank, recently issued a report on 'Standard British English'

Comments can be found here; and counter-comment here.

"In a series of recommendations, the report, As you like it: Catching up in an age of global English, says that far from being corruptions of English, new versions of the language, such as "Chinglish" and "Singlish" (Chinese and Singaporean varieties of English) have values "that we must learn to accommodate and relate to"."

I suppose some of this comes back to ELT (English Language Teaching) being a victim of its own success; the 'native speaker' teacher becoming all the more irrelevant (and the native variety alongside). The centralising power of international ELT was bound to wane at some point. Not that I think it will diminish entirely, as the more other varieties of English grow, the more demand to learn the 'best' or 'most correct' one. I say this because as long as BANA countries (Britain, Australia, North America) continue to profit from ELT we will hear all about the endearing penomenon of 'Chinglish' and 'Singlish'. But when profits are at risk all of a sudden it is all to do with 'standards'. What matters (as mentioned in the article) is the fact that the ELT industry injects up to £14.5bn into the British economy. That’s a huge sum. And of course, the basis of much of this is Standard British English. There are of course other areas of concern too, like the vast entertainment industry, telecommunications, trade, high tech industry and so on and so forth. I suppose these are the crucial elements in which the debate about ‘standards’ takes place.

For more information there is a lengthy report by David Graddol published by the British Council.

Citizenship

2007-04-08T21:01:00.000Z

I commend Baljeet Ghale for her recent comments on the fallacy of ‘British Citizenship’ teaching, or ‘state run political education’ as a colleague of mine once called it. I mean, how one goes about teaching an identity, something that is shaped over many years and by many things, is beyond overworked teachers in UK schools. This goes to the heart of the debate about personal identity.

What makes us?

I wish I knew, I wish I knew
what makes me, me, and what makes you, you.
It's just another point of view, ooo.
A state of mind I'm going through, yes.
(Cat Stevens, 1971)

There are many things that shape our identity: our profession; family status; religious belief; political persuasion, etc. But ultimately, identity—learning to become ‘one’s self’— is first about knowing how to define ‘the other’. I wish I knew, I wish I knew what makes me, me, and what makes you, you.

A case in point is a television discussion programme I once saw about the arts in India. The discussants included two women writers from India, a film-maker and a writer who were both Asian-British, as well as an academic and a presenter who were both white-British. Most of the guests tried to make the point that Indian art is changing as a result of Asian-British art, whereas the two British-Asian guests tried to counter this idea by insisting that their art is not part of Indian art but part of British multicultural art. They failed to make any impact in the discussion. What was evident was that the discussants failed to respond to even the idea that the work of the two British-born Asians could be regarded as ‘British art’ rather than ‘Indian art’.

It is this vein that I think naturalisation (the goal of citizenship teaching) may have more to do with institutionalisation (establishing practices of an institution), reification (where something which is only an idea is considered real), and routinization (when behaviour patterns become routine).

Government Surveillance

2007-04-02T17:04:00.000Z

Remember this ? And this ?

The following was submitted by Réshad Suffee and, well, it's old but still relevant:

The government’s recent outburst, asking universities to spy on “Asian looking” students, is just one of many Islamophobic attacks on Muslim and Muslim heritage people in the UK.

As a lecturer, I know the impact has been severe and insidious. In one of my classes Muslim heritage students were afraid to participate fully in a session on human rights, run in conjunction with my local Amnesty group. One of the topics was Guantanamo Bay, the grotesque American prison camp holding innocent detainees. The Amnesty tutor asked my class if they would sign a petition. Some students were too afraid of repercussions and being accused of supporting terror and therefore did not sign. This even worried me for a moment, then I remembered all the other letters I'd sent already!

The climate of fear created by the current hysteria permeates student life; innocuous topics on global politics instantly fill the room with tension and apprehension. ‘Is the teachers view accepting?’ is the unspoken question that gives implicit permission for students to open up. Otherwise if in doubt they remain silent: because of the discourse created by MP’s and the media many will now assume you are in favour of Islamophobic government policy, pro-Iraq war and Islamophobic unless you explicitly say you are not.

Students now have to think twice before talking about issues such as Palestine, one student told me: “Not only Palestine but other issues prevailing in the Islamic world. Even if talking about Islam I feel as though the lecturer may think I’m extreme just because I’m passionate about my deen [religion, way of life]. ”

Another comment from a student in a majority non-Muslim class said “I feel I have to re-think about whatever comments regarding Islam I have that I may want to say.”

Most would find it hard to trust lecturers under this sort of government surveillance although one student courageously said it would make him “…probably more likely to study harder to prove that Muslims CAN and DO have intelligence”
But why should he have to be made to feel this extra pressure? Why have the government taken away the academic freedoms of a religious minority?

As a part time student myself I know that some Muslim and Muslim heritage students are afraid of communicating equality information for fear of consequences. A recent example is the chemical weapons and missile launcher discovered in Pendle in the home of white racists. It did not make the mainstream media in the UK, due to the censorship. The Muslim and Black Equality internet sites ran the story and I circulated it to Muslim students. Some were worried that if the story was not true that it might be seen as ‘anti-western’ propaganda and be used against them. We eventually found the story was true, (featured in Socialist Worker newspaper and the Black Information Link) yet the fear remains that if we openly discuss these issues we may be labelled as anti-western extremists. If we don’t discuss these issues, then who will alert us to the increasing dangers?

I am lucky in that I have been able to discuss the matter with my postgraduate course lecturers. My tutors are completely against the notion of spying on their ‘Asian looking’ students for ‘extremism’ and have told me so. The course I study requires me to be open and forthright on personal and political issues. If they had told me that my views were being monitored, I would not be able to continue with my counselling Masters. How could I? Free speech is essential; metaphor and expression of anger are considered cathartic on such a course, the eliciting of honest and genuine feelings is vital for personal development. One Black non-Muslim student has already brought up the issues of Palestine. I have mentioned the Iraq war. Under Government proposals we would both be now being watched by our lecturers. (Yet what has it come to that we now have to confront our lecturers and find out if they are spying on us!)

The fact remains though that the counsellors on university campuses have always had a legal obligation to report clients whom they ‘suspect’ of terrorist activities. (Astonishingly they are also prohibited from telling their clients that this might be the case as part of the initial contract of confidentiality)

The university campus counsellor as an agent of the state and not attending to the needs of the client is an affront to the profession. Will ‘Asian looking’ university students now have a jaded therapeutic relationship with their counsellors?

The fact that the press have also reported that some Asian equality officers and Imams at Universities (cited in Socialist Worker) are also collaborating with the government’s agenda means that Muslim heritage students often feel that they have no one to turn to for support. I spoke to a Bradford Muslim student about his perceptions. “We are too afraid to get involved. We think there is nothing we can do about it. We just have to accept this. Who can we complain to?” He replied in a depressed tone voice.

Who is to determine the definition of extremism? I recall the recent case of a young man listening to the Western pop group ‘the Clash’ in a taxi who was arrested by the police, and we all remember the disgusting treatment of Walter Wolfgang under the terrorism act for heckling Jack Straw at the new Labour conference.

Another major issue is abuse and harassment. As an Equality Officer for my union I know all too well of the dirty tricks Universities will use to manipulate and victimize both students and lecturers. We all know that Universities particularly are becoming more corporate and thus less benevolent. One case I dealt with included false allegations and demands for money by the university as tactics to remove a student.

How lucky for any malevolent management that the government has given them another weapon of intimidation: to threaten to accuse you of being an extremist. An unscrupulous and racist lecturer with Black Minority Ethnic students in their lessons could cause trouble for their students with this tool.

None of us expect any sort of fair hearing if accused of ‘extremism’. The cases of W.M.D., Guantanamo Bay and our personal experiences of government organisations omitting evidence or acting on opinions rather than facts confirm for us that were we ever to be denounced and accused by Universities, we would have no rights. We are in a helpless position, the opinions and power of a racist few can subvert justice. Agendas and politics take precedence over societies laws.

This is no different from when peace protesters and conscientious objectors were labelled as ‘anti-American’ in the Vietnam War. It is no different to the McCarthy trials in the US which resulted in decent and honest people losing their jobs, losing their homes and many losing their lives from the oppression. It is no different to every witch-hunt instigated by authorities to demonise and scapegoat a vulnerable group.

In a climate of oppression, where legitimate criticism of the government by University students and lecturers is effectively crushed through fear of repercussions, the foundations of our education system are slowly destroyed. The fear is a real fear. I must say that I am even afraid writing this piece, for the possible consequence to my career, my education, and my life in the U.K.

When they have finished with Muslim and Muslim heritage students, there will be without doubt another vulnerable group in the line of fire. Solidarity between all minorities is essential.

We all recall the famous BBC documentary about Nazi Germany, where an elderly German woman was confronted with a document bearing her signature. It 'denounced' her neighbour as a lesbian. This resulted in her neighbour’s subsequent surveillance, detention and ultimately her murder by the state. The old lady stared at her signature, confirmed that it was hers and horrified said "I couldn't have done this, it's not possible. I wouldn't have done this."

She had forgotten that caught up in the hysteria she had denounced her neighbour. In twenty years time what will we say to our children when they ask us if we too were involved in the persecution of the Muslim heritage peoples in Europe?

Author: Réshad Suffee

Réshad Suffee is a ESOL lecturer and equality activist based in West Yorkshire. He has taught in various further education colleges and also for adult education providers in community settings. His interests include classical music, politics, and general equality campaigning.

A decent book

2007-03-24T16:42:00.000Z

By Nicholas Ostler

Publisher: HarperCollins

ISBN: 0007118708

Year: 2005

Pages: 624 Hardback

Historical linguist Nicholas Ostler presents herein an in-depth and comprehensive biography of the world’s languages—a story that has been little told; making this book one of a few in this genre (see also ‘Dictionary of Languages’ by Andrew Dalby). Thought provoking and eloquently written, Ostler takes the reader on a 615 page journey through all the continents of the world, and details their language histories going back 5000 years. The book begins with a chapter on the epic encounter between Hermen Cortes, the Spanish coloniser, and Motecuhzoma (Montezuma), the then king of Mexico; the former speaking Spanish and the latter Nahuatl, and the subsequent language explosion that occurred as a result. The author then goes on to discuss the languages of the desert: Sumerian, Akkadian and Aramaic (as well as others), and the triumph of the latter over the former; and the incredible victory of Arabic—its Semitic cousin—over all languages of the region and beyond, so creating the linguistic situation lasting till today. The language of Islam even managed to uproot Egyptian, a language that survived foreign takeovers for three millennia. The ‘uncanny resilience’ of Chinese through twenty centuries of invasions is discussed through exhaustive analyses, as well as the ‘charmed progress’ of Sanskrit from North India to Java and Japan, the ‘engaging self regard’ of Greek which accompanied the spread of Hellenism between 334-325 BC from Macedonia through Egypt to present day Pakistan, finally yielding to the power of Rome in 146 BC; thus coalescing to make the Graeco-Roman culture that have given birth to the languages of modern Europe and the later global spread of English. Yet, presently, Greek and Latin are shielded by mere Orthodox liturgy and little else. Conquest, re-conquest, religious proselytisation, economic power, migration, population growth etc. are all discussed and evaluated vis-à-vis languages’ rise and fall, and why some take root and others wither.

Ostler’s analyses delve much deeper than most works in the genre; he aims to open up a whole new avenue of historical study, where “language dynamics” are a tool for social analysis. He also demonstrates the ‘inward history’ of languages; 'a language community is not just a group marked out by its use of a particular language: it is an evolving community…[a] language brings with it a mass of perceptions, clichés, judgments…[i]n some sense, then, when one language replaces another, a peoples view of the world must also be changing' [1]. Hence, the inextricable links between language and culture are continually re-asserted by Ostler throughout his work.And this is what Ostler devotes much of his introduction to, concluding that the spread of languages may seldom be reversible, but it is never stable: he predicts a turn in the fortunes of English very soon. In fact, he cites one intelligent estimate [2] that predicts that by 2050 English, Hindi-Urdu, Spanish and Arabic should be just about on par, with Chinese still exceeding by a factor of 2.5. English and Chinese will then be predominantly the language of older people, Arabic of the young and Spanish, Hindi-Urdu of the in-between.

In his chapter ‘the current top twenty’ Ostler divides Arabic up into different languages citing their mutual unintelligibility as proof for doing so. Yet, when it comes to English he represents it as one over-arching lingua franca; even though Singlish (Singapore English), Hawaiin pidgin English, as well as others, have their own respective dictionaries and are themselves mutually unintelligible—our esteemed lingua franca is not as standardised as we may assume it to be. Moreover, other studies (e.g. ethnologue) have not made this distinction and rank Arabic as a single hyper-language community being fourth in the world. Ostler on the other hand ranks Egyptian Arabic as twenty third, casting ‘Arabics’ as distinct languages.

I love this book—that is because I am crazy about languages and their effects on people (and vice versa). But even if you are not a language freak like me, this gem is great just to pick up and read with some amazing facts and stories to educate and share—615pp but well worth the shelf space.

References

1. Chapter 2, p. 13.

2. The ‘engco’ model.

Bilingualism - translating your self

2007-01-07T20:11:00.001Z

I saw this and, being brought up in a bi/tri-lingual home, I wanted to comment.

Do you remember that story when you were young where a mother mouse saves her young from a ferocious cat by barking “bow wow”, and then the cat runs away in terror. The mother mouse then said to her offspring, “See children, it pays to know a second language”.

Yet bilingualism is quite difficult for this island race to appreciate. We have become accustomed to the notion that the world is becoming more homogeneous, that there is a linguistic convergence, with English gradually becoming the universal language.

Bilingualism is considered to be an asset but it can also be a social problem. This is because language is so intimately a part of one’s identity. The distrust shown by many people and even governments toward bilingual individuals stems largely from the feeling that we are not 100% loyal citizens because we can speak another language. Our loyalties are in question because we can appear to hold dual ‘lingualistic’—and, subsequently cultural—allegiance. The Basques in Spain and the Ukrainians in the Soviet Union are examples of people who have suffered for this very reason.

In spite of this, there seems to be a resurgence of feelings of ethnic identity, especially among linguistic minorities: The Basques, the Bretons, the Irish etc. It seems that resistance has served to stimulate ethnic feelings.

Because bilinguals carry extra linguistic baggage we can often be seen as foreign and hence suspect. Whilst negotiating between identities bilinguals usually opt for one of their two ‘worlds’ and risk rejection from the other.

[back to the topic] Throughout human history, bilingualism has been an important part of the educational process. Since ancient times, children have struggled to learn a second, third, and even fourth language; as to be educated meant to know a language other that one’s own. Hence, the best way to teach children a second language has been an issue for educationalists since time immemorial. Indeed the Romans, who adopted Hellenistic models of speech and culture, knew the benefits of Greek, and subsequently, tutored their children with a Greek rhetor alongside a Latin orator. Thus Greek language was introduced to Roman children before they had any formal instruction in their first language—before they had any discernible grasp of Latin.

In Islamic societies there has always been a tradition of learning foreign languages and concern with the relevant pedagogy. In his much celebrated work, al-Muqaddimah (The Prolegomena), Ibn Khaldun (1377 C.E.) elaborated extensively on the principles of learning a foreign language; his work is arguably the earliest documented treatise on modern approaches to language and communication.

The question of optimal age and language acquisition is complex and depends on a number of variables, including cultural, sociolinguistic, and the nature of the teaching methodology. By no means does this issue lend itself to a universal answer for why some do well and others flop; however, two positions are apparent: the ‘younger is better’ stand and the ‘older is better’ stand.

Research supporting the ‘younger is better’ stand mainly refers to phonological advantages and the supposed ‘window of opportunity’ that closes in late childhood. This position is championed by advocates of the ‘Critical Period Hypothesis’; the belief that it is futile (or very difficult at best) in teaching a second language effectively beyond the ‘critical period’ (i.e. approximately fourteen years). This is often referred to as the ‘Joseph Conrad phenomenon’, named so in memory of the famous writer who learned English as a third language at the age of twenty-five, wrote classic novels, but whose speech was practically unintelligible due to a thick Polish accent.

Research supporting the ‘older is better’ position is largely on the basis of syntax and morphological measures of ability. This, in my opinion, is because older children are more likely to have cognitive and mnemonic devices at their disposal; and consequently being more ready for grammar and extensive reading study.

How ever people go about educating their children bilingually, it is imperative that parents/educators understand the biological, psychological, sociological, and every other implication in doing so. Early Bilingual education can bring great benefits to society; but I can’t help but recall the sad story of Richard Rodriguez who, through learning English and being told to communicate in English only with his family (a language they could but poorly use), subsequently became cut off from them. He confesses to being “paralyzed by the thought of his parents’ pained faces” when he spoke English to them.

Storytelling [2]

2007-01-06T15:47:00.000Z

It's the 7th Annual National Storytelling week 27th January – 3rd February 2007 so I decided to post this:

A Basic Approach to Telling Stories
By Ben Haggarty

Storytelling is an art of both interpretation and improvisation. You tell a story in your own language for the listeners who are immediately in front of you. You can tell the same story to 500 adults in a theatre, 35 seven year olds in a classroom or to a friend down the telephone... In each case the story is the same, but, by necessity, the language, tempo and energies involved will be different. A storyteller is simultaneously the interpreter, adapter, author, performer, director and critic of his or her material. So, the task before you, when you find a story you like - and really liking the story so much that you must tell it is perhaps the most important part of the whole process - is to make it your own; make your own version...

What follows is a basic approach to that task, agreed upon by most storytellers:

When you’ve found a story you want to tell, read it through several times and then put the book away.

Then try, very simply, to run through the story. The ‘story’ is essentially ‘what happens’. (The ability to discriminate between what belongs to the story and what belongs to the storyteller: the elaboration’s, the embellishments, comes quite quickly with experience). Try to do this aloud - in a monotone if you like, with no expression. Tell the ‘bare bones’ of the story: just nouns, verbs, the minimum of adjectives and reported speech. At this stage your principal concern is with getting your mind clear about the mechanics of the story - the ‘what happened next?’

When you’ve done this you’ll probably need to go back over the text because you might find that there are bits which aren’t quite clear.

Put the book away and try pacing around your room telling the story out loud, still focusing on the mechanics, the ‘what happens’ and ‘how?’

Have one last look at the text, if you need to, and then put it away forever.

Sit down. There is probably one image, amidst many, that really stands out for you in the story. Identify it - it may be obscure but don’t try to analyse why it attracts you! It is important because it is your doorway into the visual world of the story. In your minds eye, explore the picture. Zoom in on close-up details, pan across the scene, take in the colour, the light source, the costumes… what is the background? You are directing your own private film, and the more details you can clarify, the clearer the story will become to you. Visualisation is the key to telling stories. When you tell, it is as if a film is unwinding in your imagination and you are describing what you see to others. The more clearly you see your story, the more clearly your listeners will see it, though their versions may be quite different from yours. You do not need to describe every detail you are seeing, just know that you could if you were asked.

Choose a few other moments, dramatic moments, turning points, and visualise them.

Then go for a walk and tell your story to the bees. Let the world think your mad. Who really cares?

Now you’re ready to begin because, in truth, you can only learn to tell stories by telling stories. And you need someone to tell them to. This is where your friends and colleagues come in… The most common fear people have about telling stories is, quite rightly, the fear of forgetting the story. Find someone to tell the story to, without making a song and dance about it. Quite casually and informally, tell them the story, or rather, tell them about the story, perhaps starting, ‘I found this story the other day, I think it’s quite interesting, it’s all about…’ and ending, ‘So, what do you think?’

You’ve got through it, and in fact you did more or less remember it all! It wasn’t such an ordeal. Perhaps you should tell the story in this light, informal way to one or two more people.

Then comes the moment when you have to ‘formally’ tell it. You’ve done the head work. Your mind is reassured that it knows what happened. So, go on! Plunge in! It will work.

It did! Now do it again with another audience. Again and again. The first five or six times you tell a new story are really exiting; the story seems to have a life of its own. Jokes emerge, whole new scenes and even characters reveal themselves. You get intimations that, although you thought it was about this, it’s actually about that… It is a wonderful activity. The more you do it the more at ease and natural your storytelling will become.

By the time you’ve told your story about eight times a pattern will begin to establish itself; the words gelling, inflections and movements becoming settled. Your own unique version is appearing.

Reproduced with kind permission from The Society for Storytelling .
From a Conference Pack for ‘the Traditional Storytelling in Education Conference’.
Organised in London by The Crick Crack Club in October 1994

Anne Cryer...

2007-01-05T22:10:00.000Z

She's at it again.

English provision in West Yorkshire is over-flowing with Asian (mostly Muslim) women - my classes are full.

According to the West Yorkshire Pathfinder Report , the Learning and Skills Council research highlights that demand for English classes 'greatly exceeds supply'.

Waiting lists are endlessly long, with people waiting one year to start classes, and that's despite rules saying that people must have been in the country for some time before they're eligible for the lessons.

Yes, there are some in the Asian/Pakistani community that discourage, or even physically prevent, women from learning; but then there are many white working class families, where a strong patriarchal tradition still exists, with men who do the same. The facts quoted above prove that the vast majority of Asian/Pakistani women make adequate use of the FREE English provision the West Yorkshire colleges offer. Now they wouldn't want to decline anything that was free would they?

She likes making mountains out of molehills with the Asian/Pakistani community. I wonder why they keep voting for her.

Home-educators and the EU

2007-01-05T17:43:00.000Z

If you're home-educating* in the UK you might be interested in the following story from Germany:

"PADERBORN COUNTY, Germany, January 12, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A German school official has ordered seven families homeschooling their children in Northwest Germany to enroll their children in public schools immediately, or the children will be forcibly removed by police and taken to school. Any resistance on the part of the parents will result in the children being removed from their homes, according to a Home School Legal Defense Association report.

"The families argued that, as Christians, they wanted to protect their children from the godless and humanistic values being taught in public schools. They also assured officials that they were providing an adequate education through a German correspondence school."

[and the best bit] "County education director Heinz Kohler dismissed the families' beliefs, stating, "you and your children are not living in isolation on some island but rather in an environment posing intra- and extracurricular situations where you'll have to accept that your world view will be curtailed."

Well I wonder then how our increased involvement with the EU will affect Home-educators in the UK.

* Personally, I don't really like this term but it's used by people and has been readily accepted.

The art of storytelling (not storyreading) [1]

2007-01-04T21:46:00.000Z

Stories are a necessary educational tool of personal and social development; indeed, we use them as a means of understanding ourselves, our society, other cultures, and our place in the world. They conjure memories of childhood and, depending on the context, provide a moral framework for children—i.e., the tools to figure out what’s right and what’s wrong.

Whilst reading bedtime stories to my kids I came across some problems: sometimes they just didn’t ‘get’ the stories and at other times as my eyes were fixed on the book, they would start doing something else. So, after some thought and research, I want to now share with you how I believe parents/educators can make maximum use of this perennial pedagogic tool without the problems that I experienced.

Firstly, stories ought to be told, not read; the whole person needs to be engaged. Storytelling is fundamentally part of the human oral tradition that has lasted since time immemorial. And within each of us is a storyteller just waiting to get out. What I propose here is a method to ‘get out’ the storyteller from within you.

Problems with reading
Just as the book you are holding can be a physical barrier between you and your audience, so can your continual reference to the words, sentences on the page, etc, often hindering fluidity and the opportunity for gestures and body language. This is completely opposed to the natural language of personal communication—the language in which traditional storytelling and the oral tradition have been passed down. As the famous linguist Abercombie put it, ‘We speak with our vocal organs, but we converse with our entire bodies’.

In telling, however, you shape the story to your needs (and the audience’s), one can address directly, expand, modify to any situation, and make eye contact (or not); basically you can tell as the situation demands and maintain a community of attention with your listeners. Each teller can add his or her own uniqueness of imagination.

So, how do you do it? Well, what I propose is the use of ‘story skeletons’. These skeletons are very easy to make and memorise upon one or two readings. The skeleton should give, in minimal, a plot outline, background information where necessary (e.g. cultural context if the plot is dependent on this), and some character detail. It should NOT be continuous text. That would go against the whole improvisatoriness and spontaneity (if you know what I mean). The aim should be to record those elements that are essential to the story and the ‘teller’ then embellishes with his/her own words - that’s it. Let me give you an example:

It should be noted that the skeleton provides the bare frame and should not be used during the telling.

The Lion and the Mouse (from Aesop’s Fables)
Hot day / jungle / lion sleep / mouse going home in a tree / ran across lion’s tail / woke up angry “how dare… / mouse begged “please… / one day I’ll help you when you need / lion laughed “how can you help me? I’m so big, you are small / let mouse go and went back to sleep / mouse skittered home / weeks passed / lion caught in net / hunters / tighter / scared “roar!” / mouse heard, ran to help / “Now it’s my turn to help you” / climbed up on thick rope / gnawed / free! / Lion sorry “I was wrong… /
Moral: even a little one can help in times of trouble.

The original full version is found here

So, whether you unroll your mat under the nearest tree and call together a crowd, whether you buttonhole a stranger in a cafe, or murmur in the ear of a sleepy child, I hope this method is useful to you.

Would you like to share your story skeletons on this blog? Just send them to me and I would be happy to post them up on the blog. I hope to add one every week to provide a resource bank for parents/educators.

Introduction

2007-01-03T21:11:00.000Z

Holistic Education
By ‘holistic education’ I mean an education that seeks to achieve more than simply moulding ‘educatees’ into productive workers or even citizens; but rather as cultivating the moral, emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions of developing children. A holistic way of thinking, or holism, aims to integrate one’s learning experience (or process) with one’s environment, spiritual values, and the freedom to experiment, in order to make learning more inviting, enchanting and, quite simply, more natural; as it is through this process that we find meaning and purpose in our world.

Why Blog?
Well, it’s easy and views can be put across informally, in a loose-limbed, vernacular tone. It’s also speedy and gives the opportunity to interact with diverse audiences both inside and outside academe and across different fields. Views put forth here are those of the contributors/writers. I assume that most people are like me: they skim and scan blogs to get an idea of what they’re reading. So I intend to keep postings short and sweet. I hope to tackle serious questions on education as well as share ideas and resources on this perennially important topic.