18. Adopted the American form of government;
embraced the American dream
spoke the American language
and were content to be called "little brown
Americans".
19. Decades after the US granted the
Philippines its independence in 1946, many
Filipinos still believed in and actively
campaigned for the Philippines becoming the
51st state of the United States.
20. American teach us through:
the mass media,
the arts,
social,
business
and political interaction
21. o has been relegated to a college elective
o and to private gatherings of wealthy
clans of Spanish descent.
22. Why has English become so easy to
learn and so easy to use in the
Philippines?
23.
24. Adults are constantly teaching their kids:
"close-open"
"beautiful eyes"
"Where's your nose, mouth, cheek, etc.?"
"Where's the dog, cat, moon, etc.?"
25. body parts
names of animals
names of objects
action verbs
simple adjectives
polite expressions
nursery rhymes
simple questions
26. In the Philippines, it is an affordable item, a
skill that can be used to increase one's position,
respectability and marketability.
In most cases, the better one's ability to
understand and use English, the better one's chances
of career advancement.
27.
28. The Filipinos' skill and cheap labor are in
demand, yes, but so is their command and
comprehension of English which makes it easy for
foreign employers to tell them what to do. English,
after all, is a global language and, luckily - some say
unluckily - Filipinos managed to unravel this code
quite early and easily.
30. Filipinos are not Americans. Why then do
we continue to dream their dreams and
speak their language?
31. Much as our purists and nationalists wanted to erase
all traces of American colonial influence, they knew that the
language, rather than the dreams, was less difficult to delete.
Or so, they thought. Like the US military bases in the
Philippines, English had become a symbol of the subtle but
strong dominance of America. It took a strong-willed
Philippine Senate and the eruption of Mount Pinatubo to
figuratively and literally bury the US bases in ashes.
Obliterating English is another matter.
32. In a setting where education is one of the
lowest budget priorities, where teachers are among
the lowest paid professionals, and where the
systematic translation of English to Filipino has never
been given serious thought or considered important,
the shift from English to Filipino ended in confusion
and frustration.
34. The government-approved textbooks they will
study illustrate the problem. A passage in one for
eight-year-olds reads:
“The dog rolled on the floor
so fast and fell on the
ground. There he laid yelling
louder than ever
. The dog
yelled on top of his voice.”
35. A book for 11-year-olds advises, mysteriously:
“Just remember this acronym —
DOCSiShQACNMN—to make it easy for you to
remember the order of adjectives in a series.”
37. Teachers have been flunking English for years.
In 2004 only one in five teachers passed the English-
proficiency test.
38. Call-centres complain that they reject
nine-tenths of otherwise qualified job
applicants, mostly college graduates,
because of their poor command of English.
39. 1. Tell me something about yourself.
2. Why should we hire you for our company?
3. How do you handle work-pressure?
4. What has been your most significant
achievement?
5. How do you see yourself five years from
now?
6. What are your goals in life?
40. English as a subject has suffered from lack of
money, along with public education as a whole.
Some Filipinos also blame the introduction in
the 1970s of Filipino, an artificial national language,
as the medium of instruction.
42. What many Filipinos miss is that English can
also be used as a key to understanding ourselves.
English, after all, does not belong to America. If we
accept it with grace and use it with wisdom, it can
belong to the rest of the world.
43. English in the Philippines
by Doray Espinosa (Language Institute of Japan - LIOJ)
http://gilesig.org/26Phil.htm
The Philippines and the English language
http://www.economist.com/node/13794772
