Literacy in the Facebook Era - Waray Dictionary and Language ...

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Fullmer 4 Or you might see her reading this: (Example 2) 3 A good friend is someone we can count on, as well as being so much more. A friend is someone with whom we can relax and just hang out, have fun and share our innermost thoughts, deep dark secrets, lofty and noble goals, or our hopes, joys, and fears It thus behooves us as educators to be aware not only of the changes in our students’ lifestyles, but more specifically their new reading and writing practices, and to adapt our teaching of what some call “academic English” in the era of what I’ll label “internet English.” The following three questions drive my research: 1. What are the linguistic characteristics of the English texts students read and write outside of the classroom? 2. How does this affect, positively or negatively, students’ ability to comprehend and produce standard English? 3. How should teachers adapt in response to this fundamental change? I. Background The State of English in the Philippines Before making any conclusions about the impact of these new reading and writing practices, where exactly does spoken and written English stand in 2010 in the Philippines? The country represents a unique case study: from Grade 3 through college, English is the medium of instruction in most courses. In addition, due to the wide amount of English media and in public and professional settings, this ‘foreign’ language saturates the culture. On the one hand, the statistics appear positive: the generally accepted English literacy rate is well above 90%. On the other hand, the general consensus seems to be that there has been a qualitative erosion of English since the so-called golden era of English in the 1950s and 60s. Writes Don (Bernardo, 2009, pp. 17-18): 3 Retrieved from a fourth-year high school student’s Facebook profile. The text was encoded by the student to be shared with her friends. The passage is originally from Taste Berries for Teens: Inspirational Short Stories and Encouragement, by Bettie B. Youngs (1999).
Fullmer 5 The knowledge of English among Filipinos has been on a steady decline. The second language is now a very far second especially among graduates. Consider the following instances. A study showed that only 3 percent of those who apply at call centers pass the English proficiency test. Recently, a big bank in Makati wanted to hire a new batch of candidates for their Information Technology Department. The starting pay was high; the potential for growth is great. But it took quite a while to have the needed minimum number. One of the reasons for rejection of many applicants: poor English. Is English fluency really declining? The answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no. First, in my experience teaching at the Eastern Visayas State University, language competence varies greatly from student to student. Some possess better English than my students in the United States; others lack either the confidence or skill to speak anything more than halting words and phrases. This is supported by the Heyneman-Loxley Effect, a theory that states that socioeconomic background and school-level factors have a greater effect on students’ performance than their intelligence or aptitude (1983). Second, outside of professional situations, in practice what is spoken is a mixture of English, Tagalog and the local mother tongue. For example, the Tagalog for “Have you finished your homework?” is transformed from “Natapos mo na ba yung takdang-aralin mo?” to “Finish na ba yung homework mo?” As this example demonstrates, L1 (Tagalog) grammar is preserved while vocabulary is replaced by L2 (English). Is this hybridization a good thing? Will speaking “Taglish” socially help or hinder our students from speaking English professionally? Third—and here is the topic of my research—the English that students are exposed to currently is fundamentally different from English in the Philippines a generation ago. The substance of school textbooks has not changed much: Roger Thompson (2003) notes that one sample textbook of 400 pages contains 42 pages of authentic texts (want ads, editorials, sample telephone conversations) and 37 pages of literature (mostly 3-4 page selections by Filipino authors), the rest composed of exercises and quizzes. Thus, according to Thompson, all the English language readings for four years of high school education could be read aloud in 12 hours. But outside the Filipino classroom, the English language has changed drastically.
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