Waiting for Superman

Made a date with Dina some time ago to watch "Waiting for Superman", a documentary about the public education system in the United States when I saw the advertisement on Filmhouse's website. Both of us have been engaging in some interesting exchanges about the education system in our countries and it has been a joy.

Little did we know that this documentary is so subtly powerful in its message that it left the both of us in tears. Neither of us are facing a failing public education system back home but as educators, the journey that we went on in that 1.5 hour was a powerful reminder on what public education is all about. When the education system fails to provide hope for the youths who had once hoped of getting out of the vicious poverty cycle, and when some schools fail to help more than 2/3 of their students graduate from middle school and acquire a basic certificate, and when the unions didn't even dare to allow for a vote so that there's a possible way to get rid of the rotten eggs in the teaching force, it definitely paints a bleak picture. In the end, all the parents can do is continue to pray for a lottery strike to get their children into one of the better public charter schools. (of course, as documented in the film, only 1 in 5 of the public charter schools are doing well too)     



Of course, we only saw what was in the documentary. Nonetheless, it seems to suggest a strong take away, ie. Sometimes, too much democracy and too much union rights may not be in the best interest for overhauling changes after all.

PS: Just when things seem to just get brighter for D.C (the worst performing state), the chancellor, who was interviewed in the documentary, resigned. Politics!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqW0JISv-vc

Reorientation - some readings on education issues

With the first semester almost over (since I just took the rescheduled examination last night, and most results are not released yet) , I found it time to reorientate myself. Having immersed almost entirely in the world of sociolinguistics stuff, it is time to navigate my way back to education issues. I guess, the bilingualism course by Gafaranga will assist me in this re-orientation, and hopefully the friday lectures are not going to fail in my expectations.

Anyway, i thought this reading worth some thoughts. The age of wikipedia and online learning...
Wikipedia comes of age How could I apply this in secondary classrooms?

Takeaways from today's Bilingualism lecture

Gafaranga: Language is not mathematics.

Auld Lang Syne

On my trip in Spain and Portugal, we learnt that they eat 12 grapes 12 seconds before the strike of twelve to welcome the new year. The British sing Auld Lang Syne instead. We sang it on the streets during the Hogmany Street Party along with the Scots and tourist. After some search, I figured out the reason why. The song is really Scottish! Robert Burns rewrote the original poem and fitted it to an old Scottish tune.

Seems that the original tune sounded like this -

and in true Scottish style, one can try to sing the popularised version today in Scottish pronunciation!

On Royal Land, finding out about the Royal stories...

Trips in Europe are rarely complete without visits to the royal palaces and hearing stories about the monarchies. It is the same when you visit China, Vietnam, India. However, living on a royal land somehow makes me view modern films on the royal stories with a special eye. The upcoming The King's Speech would definitely be one of the films I am going to watch. But let's talk about his granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II first.

Over the semester, Queen Elizabeth II's pronunciation has been dicussed a couple of times.
Has her pronunciation changed? Has she learnt to speak more like the middle class? To try to be closer to her people? Or it is a misconception to compare her change with only the old and new BBC standards, since on the whole, the way that British people speak has also changed? Variationist sociolinguistics do such work to discover the dynamics between people of different status.

It is one of the links which I love too, as it transforms me into the olden days. The first televised Christmas broadcast in UK in 1957! (note, it is 1957 again!)

Let's listen to the Queen again in her recent 2010 Christmas broadcast.

It is obvious that her pronunciation has changed but does it necessarily mean she was trying to be more commoner? Perhaps, perhaps not. Try thinking about how our own speech style has changed over the course of our lives!

PS: I like the 2009 , because I have never known that she actually makes addresses to the Commonwealth nations as well. Notice that some of the Commonwealth nations have very similiar school uniforms as our schools.

Old films and their charm

This is one of the most amazing links I saw in 2010.
Singapore in 1957

History has never come so alive before! Even though it was filmed from the colonists' eyes, the scenes and street views were truly ours and I just have to keep telling myself, that was the Singapore which my grandmothers and my parents would have memories of !

Old films have a charm in them.

I finished reading George Owell's classic 1984 on my trip (which became a must read for me after encountering it in my course) and had the story images filling up my head. I found the link for the first movie based on 1984. It was made in 1956 ( notice the years?) and the music was so fitting for the mood of the novel---scary. I saw the trailer for the newer film and decided that if I am to spend 2 hours watching it, it would be the old one first, as it is nearer to the writing time. There's a newer film made in 1984 (so symbolic!) Perhaps it is me, I kind of like things in their chronological order, if i have a choice.

PS: it is tagged under 看戏随身书，though it really should be 电影原著篇

More on languages

I am not sure if the Teochew language will be endangered in the near future but it definitely is in Singapore. I am overwhelmed by the surprised looks on the faces of some of my friends when I said that I speak a half-baked Teochew. I am actually proud of being able to speak my dialect (or this language, from some linguists' point of view) actually.

So I was really glad to find Teochew lessons link online.

Technology has definitely made foreign language learning much easier! I recall the days in PKU when I only had audio cassettes for learning Bahasa Indonesian. Till this day, I don't dare to claim that I know the language as I have forgotten most of the vocabulary and I am really not conversant in it. I could probably say more than what Obama did in his address in Indonesia,(see old post "Power of speaking their language" ) though there are speculations that he is really conversant in the language. However, I am able to understand simple sentences from reading, ie the passive skills. Add on a Indonesian-English dictionary and some extra time, I could probably translate quite accurately simple sentences too. But I am simply not conversant since I don't recall much daily life vocabulary.

Probably that explained the joy in my heart when I tried to converse in Malay with the Malaysian family whom I met in Spain. Think Cik was quite surprised that a Singaporean gal would be speaking to them in Malay. Her comment "yah, your sentence is grammatical" could be just a casual compliment (we all do that to new learners of our languages) but it was enough to send me to the skies. I guess, it is a reminder that compliments and encouragements are really important to students who are not confident of themselves. Every little sentence counts.

Obsessed with reading about Endangered Languages

It all started with The Linguists and the lang soc activities. Really, or maybe it is just my obsession with reading and watching about loss cultures. I am learning to be not too sentimental about it while keeping my acknowledgement and awareness that we might be losing more than we think we are as a humankind. So it got me all excited even when all that I read was about work done on the documentation of endangered languages. The database launched by Cambridge is really one big piece of massive work. I salute the linguists and scientists for their work.

At the same time, judging from how I struggled with phonology and how much i rely on written phonetic forms to remember for good and reproduce all the vocabulary from foreign languages, I know I do not have that kind of ear to jump into this world of documentation and investigation. Nonetheless, it is really a joy to read and know about their works.

My french friend gave me this link while we were discussing a little about phonology. I  have absolutely no means to differentiate and reproduce all the sounds in the Yi language but I've also learnt from the linguists that technology and platforms such as Youtube might actually be a good way of revitalising endangered languages. So long as their young speakers are really to pick it up again.

Holiday in Mylnes Court

I wanted to start the year with a blog post that reflected my 2010 and perhaps talk a little about my 2011, while i recuperate from my 双牙之行. However, I have decided to do some documenting job instead. Have been reading and googling and digressing on some knowledge that I have came across. So the next few posts will just go into the interesting weblinks section. Count it as a documentation of my 2010 too.

First to be linked would be the book that I am currently reading : When Languages Die.
I am becoming a big fan of K.David Harrison! Remember the film "The Linguists", which inspired one of my first post when i started my MSc? Seriously, I love theoreticians who see the real world and talk about real things out there in the world. His knowledge as a theoretician and his intellectual pursue is more than just that. The documentation work that he and his team do may not reverse this trend but it adds on to knowledge of the world and reshape how our history, how our knowledge of human civilisation and even human cognitive processes might be written. 

Okie, more links to appear...

Festive Theatre Edinburgh

Watched the best theatre performance in Edinburgh so far, The Secret Garden, at the Festive Theatre. 
Intrigued by the glass facade which seems to suggest that the Festive Theatre is a pretty new theatre, I did a mini research on it and discovered that it is in fact the oldest continuous theatrical site in Edinburgh. All old things come with aplenty of stories, so you can read its history in the link. I just thought that the glass facade, though really grand looking, was really unbefitting for the history carried by the theatrical site, so I tried searching for an image of the old Empire Theatre.

Here's the results -

1. Empire Theatre - probably in the late 80s or latest 1991
2. Empire Theatre - probably in the late 80s or latest 1991- showing Pound Savers in its current look!
3. Festive Theatre 1-   image 2
4. Conversion stage in 1993

I guess, the glass facade was a good job done after all :)