THW take higher-education English tuition to the Next Level

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Week 10

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An Australian young adult female band, an impetus to this post.

Motion: THW take higher-education English tuition to the Next Level
Role: Member (gov.)

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I listened to the music of the above ^ band some time ago. It was your by now typical girl band, trying to make themselves germane in a male-dominated music industry. I could not decide whether they were singing in American or British English. Accents notoriously fade away when Anglo-Americans are singing; if you don’t believe, try listening to Def Leppard, so it came with that territory. I decided that they were British, based on the slightly naive looks on their faces. Then I set out to find out. The truth was that the band hailed from Australia. It was neither American nor British.

The Aussie accent is nasal; it reminds us more of the British accent, but it is its own kind. Geographically, Australia is closer to the US, but an entire ocean separates the two. The funny thing is that the easiest way to identify that band as an Aussie band would have been a visual clue: bare shoulders. That is a tip off to Australia. American or British female singers would not bare their shoulders, for their climates are cold enough in both so that there was no reason. Also, coyness may play a role. Another thing is their name: Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers. The name is so rude that in the UK & US, it would not fly. It reminds me of another female-fronted Aussie band, Amy(l) and the Sniffers: rude as well. So, not American, not British, they are from down under, or Terra Australis.

A-Levels
Here, senior high schoolers end their curriculum with the so-called “ylioppilaskirjoitukset”, whose nearest but not solid eq. in the UK is A-levels and in the USA SAT. Fifteen or ten years ago, the reading comprehension test was about how some people acted as real-estate agents on foreclosed properties. Consequently, they were dealing in apts. to people for squatting. That was a time ago, and I do not even know how insanely challenging the texts are by now. Exposure to English is so deep here, given all the A.V. entertainment from the UK and US an average Finn receives that listening and reading comprehension exams are already MORE challenging in English than they are in exams on our two domestic languages, Finnish and Swedish, or any other continental or world language.

We know that language is not merely syntax and a vocabulary. It is also three other things: concepts (things that are endemic to speakers of said language and thin on the ground elsewhere in the world), fanaticisms (the particular, unique preoccupations of the people who speak that language in a native manner) and phoneticisms (the way in which their spoken language differs from the written language). You have to learn all of that to be able to navigate in a linguistic pond astutely. I could in all honesty do all of that, but then again I am older, so how is a farmer’s son whose daily existence may revolve around mink cages supposed to understand such hard challenges to his cognitive system?

Higher-Learning Seats Need to Follow Suit
Because of the above, my claim and statement is that we should let universities make their curricula more challenging. We cannot let our higher education tread water if and when our junior and senior high school pupils are already treated with such mid-insanely challenging material. Universities have made their curricula tough in requiring their students to read a lot, especially fiction, when it comes to students of the English language. However, there are also polarly opposite means.

Let Us Raise the Bar
My grand idea is that a particular class should be divided into five camps of learners in terms of phonetics & pronunciation. Traditionally, people have been divided into speakers of US or UK English, depending on their character and foreign experiences. Some are naturally more drawn to Alison Moyet and Monty Python (and the rest), and the others to Elvis Presley and The Sopranos (and the rest). For all that, there are indeed more countries that speak English on a native level. Students should also learn other Englishes. I am leaving colonial Englishes out, because Hong Kong English is an English with Cantonese influences and Indian English an English with Farsi, Hindi, Sanskrit or Urdu influences – and it does not serve a purpose to teach those to Western students, who do not share that other ethnic constituent language.

What I am envisioning is 5 major types of English: American, Australian, English proper, Irish and Scottish English. Namely, I feel that Canadian, New Zealand and South African English do not differ in their own right enough from the rest, or they have a similar colonial baggage as ˆ. Incoming students should be assigned respectively to speak like the above-mentioned native speakers in small subdivisions of 3–7 students and receive 101, 202, 303 and 404 tuition in speaking like a native. Coming out of the university, they might be quizzed: “Where did you learn to speak into your nose like that? In Australia?” To which they would respond: “No, at a European university.”

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t). Tarpeellinen puhe tekee selväksi, että englannin kielen tason on noustava kauttaaltaan eikä pelkästään nuorimmissa ikäluokissa. Jos sen taso nousee päiväkodeissa, sen täytyy nousta myös aikuisten päiväkodeissa eli yliopistoissa. Vastapuolen tehtäväksi jää puolustaa status quo’ta. 

THB social media are needed twice as bad in bilingual countries

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Week 51

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Reading the newspaper and commenting it on Facebook in a bilingual country.

Date: 19 Dec 2022
Motion: THB social media are needed twice as bad in bilingual countries
Role: Deputy PM (gov.)

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Lately, much has been written about Twitter and how it was handed over to Elon Musk in a historical bid, where, in my opinion, Musk paid a hundred times overprice over the actual value. Moreover, his orders have destabilised the status quo. Even me myself, who have advertised this blog on Twitter manually. Musk has eyed all such accounts as “Bot Accounts” (‘bad accounts’), which he wants to get rid of, so he issued a decree that links to social media platforms be ver-bot-en. It would be counterproductive, at least in my case. If all goes well, he backs down a bit from his initial plans, installs someone capable as CEO, goes back to Tesla and lets Twitter live on in slightly augmented and diminished, trimmed form. It is still people’s favourite “watercooler” in the world.

Facebook has been a spittoon as well, for far more time than Twitter. Masses have changed the general tone in that the acidity of old is now gone, for most discourse is peppered with emojis, general sense of empathy and hearts that was missing in the past. In bilingual countries, this is more important than elsewhere. Namely, official Facebook pages of commonly circulated minority/majority newspapers are the prime “interfaces”, where the two language groups can mingle in a productive way.

Digitally Assisted, Physical Distance Gives a Sense of Security
On newspapers’ sites, people comment under their own names, not aliases, but otherwise they are remote from each other, living in various families, social classes, towns and cities and provinces. Language groups in bilingual countries have traditionally avoided each other, because IRL there is often no way out if a talk situation derails. The fear of physical confrontation has been omnipresent, whereas on the internet it is absent. Threats are sometimes uttered, but they are almost never followed through, so in that sense one’s sense of security is not threatened. The most important thing is that different language groups treat ideas, ideologies and the way they communicate differently, thanks to inherent differences in culture, language and upbringing, and this is the salt of the interaction. It is refreshing for both parties on both sides of the language barrier to chew on what the other one said; it’s dust-weathering and eye-opening.

Issues to Talk About Are on the House
Secondly, people need something to talk about. That is provided by the publishing houses. This benefits specialists and generalists alike. If someone is a generalist, most topics are mundane in such a way that they can be commented with basic knowledge about how the world is (run), and that is how most people would like it. If someone is a specialist, (s)he can weigh in only, when the topic is narrowly enough defined to merit an expert’s comment. Moreover, publishing houses can give away this for “free”. Linked articles are only redacted versions of what has, is or will be published in the printed paper – yesterday, today or tomorrow. Sometimes people need to read elsewhere what they comment on the newspaper’s site, due to paywalls.

People Can Relate to People
It goes without saying that this activity is only accessible to those who speak the other language group’s minority or majority language fluently enough. People do not want to read long, sloppily written passages by a person who does not master the language. On the other hand, those who do can be seen as the “relatable people”, the kind that one could associate with outside the immediate company of one’s own language group. Through the interaction on a newspaper’s site, people on different sides of a national language barrier can get a sense of who their “cousins” on the other side are in terms of age, gender, education, name, politics, province, sense of humour etc.

It is important that people understand nuances of language and read and write well enough. For the obvious reason, listening and speaking skills are not needed (at all). Sometimes it is enough that people have learnt at school the ropes of the minority/majority language, but usually there is an “X” element of some auxiliary education that plays a role in being proficient in a language. For some, it has been a childhood spent at an embassy or summers spent working in menial jobs speaking that minority/majority language.

This applies to countries that have a clear bilingual identity. The best examples in the West are 🇧🇪 Belgium with Dutch and French, 🇨🇦 Canada with English and French and 🇫🇮 Finland with Finnish and Swedish. No doubt though, there are countless other examples around the world on other continents of bilingual frictions, realities and tensions. (Think 🇮🇱 Israel.) Neighbours could also be seen as vessels for this kind of thinking. There are likely hundreds of thousands of Britons, for example, who could hold a civil discourse on the Facebook site of a French newspaper, using their existing French to drive the conversation, in keeping with all said above about the nature of that conversation. For this reason, Facebook should not be shut down in the foreseeable future, for in this capacity it is a bridge over cultural gaps that benefit from further convergence.

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Perustelu(t)/puolustelu(t): Haluan olla toinen puhuja, sillä keskityn pelkästään yhden toimijan yhdenlaisiin sivuihin, jolloin parini voi keskittyä enemmän isoon kuvaan, kaikkiin toimijoihin ja yleisiin linjoihin. Minulla on kuitenkin punnittua sanottavaa, joten siksi on parempi, että olen I tiimissä enkä II:ssa.