Ghost Writing: Not Yet Dead and Buried

Reading student essays is usually a pleasure for writing teachers, especially when students research fresh topics, argue effectively, or share original points of view; occasionally, however, it is not so easy. Back in 2013 I blogged twice on ghost writing at universities, having been interviewed about it by a Daily Star reporter then. Now in 2018, despite greater awareness and heightened vigilance by teachers and other stakeholders, the spectre of ghost writing continues to rear its ugly head. The ghost writers have picked up on the fact that many teachers require “process” submissions rather than merely a satisfactory “product”, so they have adapted their work accordingly.

To what extent these unscrupulous individuals (and companies) are now outmanoeuvring experienced writing teachers remains a mystery. It appears that some invisible writers do nothing else for a living, so they do their work very “professionally”, if you will excuse the expression. The Daily Star last year reported again on the issue under the title “The Lucrative Business of Selling Essays”:

The ghost writer was quick to add that the projects would be done in a way that would not raise any questions from professors. “We give you things step by step and we upload [the work] to ‘Turnitin’ [an online tool used by universities and students globally to check for plagiarism]. We’ve been doing this for 10 years, it is guaranteed and confidential.” (reported by Ghinwa Obeid)

Universities such as AUB penalize plagiarized and inauthentic student writing very heavily, with assessments ranging from a zero on the essay to a zero on the course, including the possibility of a dean’s warning, suspension or expulsion. The pressure on students to achieve high grades is high, but the risk is higher. If you are a student under pressure, my advice is to do your own work properly and not take the risk. It isn’t worth it.

And teachers beware: the ghost writers seem to have become slyer than ever! 

The Lebanese Blogosphere

It is good to be blogging about language and teaching. A University of Westminster PhD dissertation by Maha Taki analyzing blogging in Lebanon shows that some Lebanese had started blogging by 2004. However, by 2008 at least, it appears there were no identifiable bloggers focused on either teaching or language ("Bloggers and the Blogosphere in Lebanon & Syria: Meanings and Activities"). Most of the early blogs, Taki reports, were political, triggered by the assassination of our Prime Minister in 2005 and the 2006 summer war in Lebanon. Here are the topics the Lebanese blogged about in 2008, based on Taki’s survey back then, in order of frequency:

• Activities, private thoughts and reflections
• Poetry, literature and art
• Social issues in country of origin
• Political issues in country of origin
• Local current affairs
• Religious and spiritual matters
• Human rights issues or development
• International political issues

Unfortunately, the early blogs, as reported by Taki, reflected the political divisions in the country. Many did not sound neutral. Also, there were more male than female bloggers, and the age distribution was mainly concentrated in the 20s and 30s. The vast majority of bloggers had university degrees, including a high proportion of postgraduate qualifications. Interestingly, nearly half the Lebanon bloggers had had some university education outside Lebanon, and the majority were single.

One hopes that blogs are now more inclusive in terms of who is blogging, what for, and what topics they tackle. Still, the microblogging site Twitter does not provide a topic category for teachers/teaching or education when one first registers one's profile, nor do some blog aggregators like a Lebanese one that currently exists. This would force teachers, initially at least, to identify their blogs under titles such as “lifestyle”, “personal/reflections”, etc., which may not be enough to distinguish the blogs. Tagging and hashtags for teaching etc. can help of course, but the options given upon registration reflect an older mentality where certain categories did not really exist on their own.

Teacher bloggers need to get their voices across as teachers. In any case, it is good to be part of a community of bloggers united by common interests and concerns.

Information Pollution

When the Collins Dictionary announced “Fake News” as Word of the Year 2017, Human Rights Watch rightly expressed concern. Defined as “false, often sensational, information disseminated under the guise of news reporting”, the term has apparently seen a more than three-fold increase in use in one year. Whether as a statement of fact or as an accusation, “fake news” has become ubiquitous. On the other hand, if you report on human rights violations, you do not want your serious news to be confused with fake news! “With each encounter with victims, human rights activists must bring a commitment to meticulous fact-finding, the sifting of evidence, the corroboration of details, and the pursuit of a truth that will ultimately lead to justice,” warns Iaine Levine in “Why ‘Fake News’ as Word of the Year is Bad for Human Rights”.

The Collins Dictionary was not the first in this choice. The Australian Macquarie Dictionary had announced “fake news” as Word of the Year for 2016. The dictionary defined it as “disinformation and hoaxes published on websites for political purposes or to drive web traffic” and “the incorrect information being passed along by social media”.

Facebook is attempting to combat the viral spread of untrue stories in many ways, including alliances with various organizations such as FactCheck.org, yet the challenge is endless with myriads of sites encouraging pranksters and others to create their own genuine looking fake news stories. The list of such sites is long; here are just a few

  https://newspaper.jaguarpaw.co.uk/ (free newspaper generator)

· http://breakyourownnews.com/ (the breaking news generator)

· http://www.classtools.net/breakingnews/

· https://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp (the newspaper clipping generator)

The Council of Europe recently published the report Information Disorder :Toward an Interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy Making. The report authors, Wardle and Derakhshan analyze the problem of what they refer to as “information pollution”, avoiding the term “fake news” because of the way it has been appropriated by politicians lately. Rather, they emphasize the need to tackle “mis-, dis- and mal-information”. They rightly stress that the solution should involve everyone: technology companies, national governments, media organisations, civil society, education ministries and funding bodies.

 

At AUB, teachers of English work hand in hand with librarians to promote information literacy among students. News literacy and critical thinking are part of this, and they are increasingly relevant to people’s everyday lives – not just their academic work. 

Class Attendance Miracle

This semester I told one of my classes that they had broken an attendance record. Several weeks had passed and not one of the students in that class had been absent. This is a very rewarding occurrence as, on average, students unfortunately do have a tendency to skip classes every now and then: they are allowed a certain number of absences before the teacher can consider dropping them.

Empirical studies in education have shown that student performance is inversely correlated with absenteeism. Another question arises though: whether making attendance mandatory improves performance. Some studies have shown that it does.  One may add that logically it should, as long as the students are focused. However, other studies have revealed that “forced attendance” can lower student performance. Oosterveen, Kapoor, and Webbink reported recently in “The Price of Forced Attendance” that a long-term study at a large European university had proved this. The detrimental effects were more pronounced in younger students and those that lived far away from the university. These sorts of observations are not entirely new though. Back in 1999, Karen St. Clair argued “A Case Against Compulsory Class Attendance Policies in Higher Education”. It has also been argued – and observed – that student success is only strongly correlated with voluntary attendance.

Some educators – and students - have protested that taking attendance in class is a waste of time, reducing efficiency. However, from personal experience, it can help teachers get to know the students one by one, personalising teaching and learning. In any case, technology can assist disbelievers in checking attendance. For example, ID cards with radio frequency identification can be used – though of course these can be misused if the students are not attending out of conviction.
On another note, the reputation of academic institutions can be tarnished by low student attendance. As long as institutions require attendance data, teachers will gather it. The hope is that classes will be engaging enough for students to attend of their own free will rather than due to fear of punishment.

What a Mess!

Handwriting is dead! Studies comparing people who are used to handwriting with those more accustomed to typing have shown a relative deficiency of fine motor skills in the latter. The younger generation are no longer equipped with the skills to write neatly by hand, and teachers are complaining. How many of us teachers have stared in astonishment at illegible student handwriting over and over again? Experts are recommending replacing hand-written in-class tests with typed ones. The University of Cambridge, for example, is considering allowing laptops and tablets in examination rooms. It has launched consultations around the problem of students’ fading ability to write by hand.

Eight hundred years of tradition may soon end at Cambridge when typed exams replace handwritten ones. Academics there have complained about illegible handwriting influenced by reliance on computers in lectures and outside, and some departments have piloted computer-typed tests. Similarly, Harvard academic Eric Mazur encourages his students to use computers and smartphones in exams. Speaking at the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, the physics professor admitted that he allows pupils to look up information during tests in order to promote creative, analytical thinking rather than content recall. There is no need to memorize, he believes, with all this technology at our fingertips.

On another note, poor handwriting can affect grades. A study commissioned by stationery firm BIC concluded back in 2014 that the majority of teachers had marked down A-level and GCSE papers with illegible handwriting; it also revealed that more than a third of teachers had seen emoticons in exam answers or coursework.

Should we all downgrade papers with illegible wriing? Or should we follow the new fashion? Let me know what you think.

Writers and Audiences, Including Mysterious Ones

How much attention do you pay to your audience when you write? Linda Flower, a professor of rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University once wrote that it is the writer’s job to “create a momentary common ground between the reader and the writer….Even if the reader eventually disagrees, you want him or her to be able for the moment to see things as you see them.” As Fowler put it, you should try to bridge gaps in knowledge and attitudes while paying attention to readers’ needs.

When writing these blog posts I often wonder what goes on in readers’ minds when they see them. The Google stats engine indicates readers in various parts of the world, including North America and Europe, Ukraine and Russia, the Far East and Africa, even places like Vietnam and Turkmenistan. Do all these readers find these blog postings interesting, one wonders? There is always the question of how to connect with readers with specific interests without boring too many others. Whether the readers really need to know all this is a good question to ask oneself before publishing anything. Upon reflection, some of my posts appear duller and possibly less thought-provoking than others – yet for some mysterious reason Google reports that people are reading them all over the world. The world of online audiences is a world of mystery compared with that of more tangible, defined audiences such as those of face-to-face classrooms.

One wishes there were more interaction with these mysterious, far-flung audiences - more feedback so that one could improve or better adapt to readers’ needs. For some writers, it is a challenging, puzzling world out there!

The Story of Mascara

When you see mascara do you think “maskhara”? Well, you are not too mistaken if you do: that is the Arabic origin of the word! Most etymological dictionaries trace the English word back to Spanish mascara or Italian maschera, meaning mask, indicating a connection with makeup (and, similarly, in Portuguese mascara means mask). Some dictionaries go a step further, tracing it from there back to its Arabic origin.

 Arabic maskhara refers to someone or something that is ridiculous, or to mockery. Interestingly, in both Urdu and Hindi the word means clown. In Pashto it means funny or ridiculous; in Persian, mockery; and apparently, in Swahili, to mock or scoff.

 One Standard Arabic word for mascara is actually kohl, not mascara; the latter tends to be used more in spoken colloquial Arabic, as if it is borrowed from English. Technically, it may be argued that the two words are not synonymous: the first is used more for eyeliners while the latter is generally used for lash makeup. Merriam Webster defines kohl as “a preparation used especially in Arabia and Egypt to darken the edges of the eyelids” although various sources indicate that in ancient times kohl was used for lashes and eyebrows as well as eyelids. Similarly, various sources trace alcohol back to al-kohl (or al-kuhul) as indicated in my previous blog post – but that is another story.

 In Arabic, al-kohl was originally used to refer to the fine powder used for makeup, and in English it also referred to the powder in earlier times. The word was later used to refer to alcohol the liquid since the formation of kohl through vaporization involves a process similar to that of alcohol formation.

Most sources see eye to eye on all that.

Telephone Arabe

A fellow blogger colleague recently wrote on uncommon words in English. My post here, on the other hand, is on commonly used English words that originated from Arabic:

•  Admiral: Amir Al-Bahr
•  Alchemy: Al-Kimia
•  Alcohol: Al-Kuhul 
•  Alcove: Al-Qubba
•  Algebra: Al-Jabr
•  Coffee: Qahwah
•  Cotton: Qutn
•  Gazelle: Ghazal
•  Ghoul: Ghoul
•  Giraffe: Zarafa
•  Sahara: Sahraa
•  Sugar: Sukkar 
•  Sultana: Sultana
•  Syrup: Sharab
•  Zero: Sifr

Most of these words reached the English language by indirect integration from other languages, mainly European, such as French, Spanish or Italian, often though not in every case, through Latin. Some words, such as coffee, reached Europe through Ottoman Turkish (kahve in this case). Along the way, as expected, and as in the game Chinese whispers (literally “telephone arabe” in French), the words were distorted or adapted to fit the integrating language, as in admiral (admiralis in Latin).

  

Beyond words, there are numbers from Arabic. The numeric system using numbers from zero (sifr) to nine originated in the Arab world, replacing the relatively awkward system of Roman numerals that were used before.

 

Stay tuned for more.

More on Word of the Year

Merriam Webster finally announced its Word of the Year 2016 as surreal, subsequent to rising lookups following various shocking world events. Defined as “"marked by the intense irrational reality of a dream”, the largest spike in lookups for it followed the US presidential election in November, as reported by Webster.

If I were to personally choose a word of the year for 2016, it would be sympathy. There have been many unfortunate events around the word this year, including serious human tragedies. The least one can do in such circumstances is sympathize – not in the sense of pity, but more in the form of empathy, putting oneself in the sufferers’ shoes as opposed to carrying on with one’s life as if nothing were wrong. Among the dictionary definitions of sympathy are the following:

• Webster: “the act or capacity of entering into or sharing the feelings or interests of another/ the feeling or mental state brought about by such sensitivity”
• Cambridge: “understanding and care for someone else’s suffering”
• Oxford: “understanding between people; common feeling”

My colleague and fellow blogger Jessy Assy has already chosen her 2017 word of the year, as a sort of New Year’s resolution: balance (Jessy Assy’s Writing Diary). In a busy, frantic, multi-tasking world, one needs balance – one can definitely sympathize with that!

What is your word of the year? Why not share it with us?

Word of the Year 2016

Mashable recently reported that Merriam Webster had not yet announced its Word of the Year although, by the end of November, “fascism” had been the most frequently looked up word; unhappy about this, those in charge of the dictionary are encouraging users to look up other words in an apparent effort to change the results! On the other hand, dictionaries such as Collins, Oxford, Cambridge, and dictionary.com have already announced their words of the year.

 

The Collins Word of the Year is Brexit: “The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union”. The word showed a high increase in usage, unsurprisingly, as the UK referendum results shook the world.

The Oxford Word of the Year is Post-Truth: “an adjective relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. Apparently, interest in it spiked in relation to both the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States.

The Cambridge Dictionary saw a fourfold increase in searches for its Word of the Year, paranoid: “feeling extremely nervous and worried because you believe that other people do not like you or are trying to harm you”. While the editors say they cannot be certain why readers were looking up the word, they assume it must be the uncertain times we are living in, where people no longer have faith in the institutions they have traditionally trusted. Similar words have shown similar increases: anxiety, chaos, breaking down, prejudice, bigotry, bullying, and nostalgic. On a brighter note, adorable has seen a high increase in searches as well. The editors believe readers must be trying to comfort themselves by watching videos of cute animals!

Xenophobia is dictionary.com’s Word of the Year: “fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers”. Apparently, lookups spiked by 938% just after the Brexit referendum results, on June 24. In July, searches for hate crime multiplied as newspaper coverage of hate crimes rose post-Brexit.

A snapshot from the dictionaries – a snapshot of our world today.

Wishing my readers a happier new year!

 

Open Access Week

Academics worldwide will soon be celebrating International Open Access Week, from October 24 to 30. When I first blogged about Open Access in 2012, the movement had been likened to the Arab Spring, having been referred to as an “Academic Spring”. Since then, it has picked up momentum, as can be seen from the Web site of International Open Access Week.

Events are taking place globally in celebration of this movement opposing traditional, commercial publishing. Workshops, presentations, seminars, discussions and conferences are actively promoting Open Access, and a number of Arab countries have become involved over the years, including Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. Online groups have formed in celebration - from Egypt to Taiwan, and from Portugal to Tanzania. In Glasgow, Creative Commons UK will be launched as part of the celebratory week, another interesting development.

New terms are gradually being coined to refer to various aspects of the open access movement: gratis open access versus libre open access; gold open access; hybrid open access; delayed open access, etc. I will not bore you with the differences now as some readers may not care and others may find this unnecessarily complicated. For those interested, these concepts may be worth following up.

The Directory of Open Access Journals has a news section where you may read up on the various developments. Currently, for example, it shows an article on the open access strategy in Algeria: academic researchers are involved, and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research is in favour. Interestingly, the Directory includes the Lebanese Science Journal, published by the National Council for Scientific Research, which was added in July 2016, including articles in English and French, and this journal is not the first. UNESCO notes that the DOAJ indexed a Lebanese journal in 2015, Journal of Numerical Mathematics and Stochastics published by Euclidean Press, and that a few other OA journals are published in Lebanon. Additionally, UNESCO states that the Lebanese Library Association supports the OA movement through a variety of activities that promote it among faculty, students and librarians (Global Open Access Portal). However, UNESCO identifies challenges for the Arab world, including lack of OA journals in Arabic, lack of staff qualified to manage OA databases, insufficient government regulation and donor mandates, and general lack of awareness.

 

 

The Challenge of Fairness in Student Assessment

It may seem easy for teachers to judge students; in fact, it is part of their job. How fair the teachers are in their assessment is another matter. This is where assessment of students needs assessment!

The reason why fairness in student assessment is important is obvious: every student should be given an equal opportunity to show what he or she has understood, knows, and can do. Both ethically and legally, tests (and other assessment instruments) should be culturally inclusive, unbiased, and accessible to students with special needs, such as second language learners and people with disabilities.

Culturally sensitive assessments are based on content and scenarios that cater to diverse populations. They attempt to give equal chances to students regardless of gender, place of origin, and socio-economic background. Biased tests, on the other hand, give unfair advantage to some. Unfair advantage privileges those with a certain background or experiences (rather than those with better aptitude or preparation for a test). The presence of bias invalidates scores because of irrelevant components that affect student performance across groups.

Accessibility of assessments is important based on an individual’s right to a quality education. This involves the use of tools, devices, and accommodations that allow students with special needs to take either the same tests as others or suitable equivalents. AUB is a good example of an institution that is showing greater sensitivity to students with special needs by providing special staff and accommodations to facilitate the academic experience of these students.

The type of assessment given is also important. For example, “performance assessment” in the form of projects may be considered fairer than traditional testing because it is more individualized; students may choose their own topics and may receive formative feedback as projects take time.

Of course, the teaching experience - before any evaluation – should also be fair. Fairness in assessment includes both what precedes assessment (such as resources and access) as well as the actual assessment design.

Grammar Police?

There seems to be a renaissance of language pedantry with the advance of technology and social networking. Not only does Google try to correct people's grammar by asking them what they mean, Facebook groups such as “I judge you when you use poor grammar”, are quite popular. English teachers, especially teachers of writing, are expected to behave as language police. If students make grammar errors in other courses or later, in their careers, their English teachers are often blamed. No one likes to be viewed as a scary police officer though, just as students resent being viewed as criminals for violating grammar rules. In fact, a recent study concluded that "People Obsessed With Grammar Aren't as Nice as Everybody Else". While language attitudes have been correlated with personality traits before, this study interestingly focused on attitudes towards typing errors and grammar variation through confused homonyms (words that sound the same but that should be spelled differently). Details of the study were published in the article “If You’re House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email: Personality Influences Reactions to Written Errors in Email Messages”.

Split verbs are known to be particularly irritating to language purists, yet Steven Pinker defends them as follows:

Any speaker who has not been brainwashed by the split-verb myth can sense that these corrections go against the rhythm and logic of English phrasing. The myth originated centuries ago in a thick-witted analogy to Latin, in which it is impossible to split an infinitive because it consists of a single word, like dicere, 'to say'. But in English, infinitives like 'to go' and future-tense forms like 'will go' are two words, not one, and there is not the slightest reason to interdict adverbs from the position between them.

Let us not be thick-witted and mean when it comes to grammar! Besides, effective communication is not merely about grammar: it is about content, logic, general clarity of expression, relevance, and overall fluency. If grammar is also “polished”, all the better; if not, it is not such a disaster – or is it?

Students or Consumers?

Many institutions of higher education all over the world now view students as customers. One only has to take a look at the terminology used on web sites and in student booklets to see this. Student handbooks have come to be called "student consumer handbooks". Last year the UK government issued a student guide on student consumer rights: Higher Education: Guide to Consumer Rights for Students. Prepared by the Competition and Markets Authority, it addresses students as customers of their institutions - customers with rights as follows:

Students have consumer rights. Universities and other higher education providers that don’t meet their obligations to undergraduate students may be in breach of consumer protection law.

This guide sets out what undergraduate students need to know about their rights when choosing or taking a higher education course, and what to do if things go wrong. It is also of use to those advising or assisting students.

While no one can deny the rights of students to a proper education, with adequate prior information on the courses they take, in terms of objectives, teaching methods and assessment, a new study has revealed that students who perceive themselves as consumers tend to earn lower grades than others: “The Student-as-Consumer Approach in Higher Education and its Effects on Academic Performance”. The study, noting that a “consumer identity appears to be increasingly recognised by students,” was based on a survey of hundreds of students from 35 English universities. The researchers found a negative correlation between the extent to which a student behaved like a consumer and the level of their academic performance. They noted that a lower learner identity correlated with a higher consumer orientation. As a teacher, one is not surprized by such findings. It only makes sense that those who view themselves as buying their degrees would learn less than those who are genuinely eager to learn, better themselves, and contribute to society.

Nate Kreuter, an English Professor in the US once rightly remarked in Inside Higher Ed that the growing “student as consumer” mentality was eroding key values in higher education. He explained that luring students with “slick advertising”, providing them with easy credit, turning universities into brands, promoting growth for the sake of growth, and “vocationalizing higher education” is not the way to run a university; the only advantage of viewing students as customers is reminding ourselves that our universities are accountable to our students (“Customer Mentality”).

When universities themselves encourage the consumer mentality amongst students, treating pupils more like customers than active learners, this could backfire. As Dr. Louise Bunce, one of the authors of the UK study, noted, “While it is positive that universities are expected to offer more value to students as a result of higher tuition fees, students also need to be aware that learning cannot be bought.”

Students beware.

Feeling Under the Weather?

Since the weather is occupying news headlines these days, it would be interesting to look at some weather idioms in English; the first that came to mind was “feeling under the weather”, meaning feeling unwell. Currently it is used mostly when someone is ill with a cold or flu. Its historical origin, however, appears to be nautical, not directly related to colds and such illnesses at all - it was used in sailing when some passengers were sent below deck, to protect them from the weather, for feeling seasick or generally unwell ("God Bless You! Idioms for Those With the Cold and Flu Idioms"). Sea sickness occurred mostly in bad weather, when waters were rough and ships rocked violently.

Another common weather metaphor is being “snowed under”, as in having too much work to do all at the same time. On the other hand, as I write, many parts of the world are literally getting “snowed under” in harsh winter climate. In the U.S., this could be one of the most terrible winters in history.

If you are a university student resting between semesters, this may be “the calm before the storm” for you. Hopefully, you will have no trouble “breaking the ice” with your new teachers and classmates, and if you are really lucky, and organize your time, your new courses will “be a breeze”. Besides, depending on how much effort you put into your course work, you might end up “on cloud nine”. Don’t go “chasing rainbows” (expecting too much) though if you do not invest time and effort in your work.

 To those who do work hard and do not succeed immediately, one can say , “ Every cloud has a silver lining”. Good luck!

Migrant, Refugee, or Dreamer?

In a highly popular blog post by its English online editor, Al Jazeera last month dropped the word “migrant”, preferring to use “refugee”; the former term has become mainly, and wrongly, associated with economic migrants when others fleeing war and oppression are involved:  “Migrant deaths are not worth as much to the media as the deaths of others - which means that their lives are not. Drowning disasters drop further and further down news bulletins. We rarely talk about the dead as individuals anymore. They are numbers” (“Why Al Jazeera Will Not Say Mediterranean 'Migrants'”). Later, Adam Taylor of the Washington Post asked whether the word “migrant”, amongst other questionable terms, should be avoided in future discussions of refugees, citing the concern over “words that convey an exaggerated sense of threat” as expressed by Alexander Betts, the Director of Oxford’s Refugees Studies Centre (“Is it Time to Ditch the Word ‘Migrant’”?) Taylor points out that the definition of a migrant varies from one organization to another, and that the definition of the Institute of Migration refers to a person who has travelled as a deliberate choice, to improve their prospects or those of their family, in contrast with a refugee, who has generally been forced to flee. Other  inappropriate words Taylor cited include “swarm”, “siege”, “invasion”, “horde”, “war zone”, and “marauding”.

In “The Battle Over the Words Used to Describe Migrants”, the BBC’s Camila Ruz discusses the naming of refugees, citing a study by Oxford’s Migration Observatory. Based on the analysis of 58,000 UK newspaper articles, the Observatory had concluded that “illegal” was the adjective most frequently associated with “immigrant”. Ruz refers to various criticisms of the term “illegal immigrant”, including one about the term’s connoting crime, and those of the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times, both of which modified their style guides in 2013 in such a way as to recommend against using it. Besides, some critics cynically point out that western immigrants are referred to as “expatriates” instead: “There has been some satirical commentary about the differences between the terms,” says Ruz. She adds that “alien”, which is out of currency in the UK, is still used in the US. On a positive note, however, she points out that the Obama administration has proposed the label “Dreamer” for “undocumented young people who met the conditions of the Dream act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors)”.

The well-known linguist and philosopher Steven Pinker indicates in his “euphemism treadmill” metaphor that changing minds is more important than changing words. As long as people’s views of others are negative, using different words to describe them will not help; the negative connotations might become associated with the new words, in an endless vicious circle.

 

 

"Mx" Replacing "Mr" etc.

When the title “Ms.” was invented, it was meant to replace “Mrs.” and “Miss”. This alternative was promoted by feminists and others who believed that a woman’s marital status should not be a matter of public concern. The logic was that if “Mr.” is enough for men, why shouldn’t “Ms.” be enough for women? The new title was ironically introduced as a third choice for women on forms etc., instead of replacing the other two terms altogether. Men did not have so many choices, yet they were not bothered. More recently, however, some men – and women – have become annoyed with all these old titles. For them, not only is marital status not to be revealed, but gender itself. “Mx” is the title now beginning to replace the conventional titles, including “Ms”.

Transgender people, and some who do not identify with either gender, are promoting the use of “Mx”, to the extent that it is now accepted by government departments in the UK, as well as banks and some universities, such as Birmingham, Cambridge, and Oxford; the Oxford English Dictionary is also on its way to incorporating it (“Mr, Mrs, Miss... and Mx: Transgender People Will be Able to Use New Title on Official Documents”).

Stan Carey says that the term “Mx”, which has been around since the 1970s, is a gender neutral alternative. The Macmillan Dictionary has already added the term, after it was submitted to its crowdsourced dictionary (“ ‘Mx’—A New Gender Neutral Title”). The web site “Nonbinary.org” , “arguing for equal access to employment, services and medical treatment for those who don't fit the gender binary”, encourages the use of various gender neutral titles, including “Mx”; among these are “Ind” (for individual), “M”, “Misc”, and “Msr”.

Apparently, the new title has been well received in Australia, according to ABC News, yet language expert Professor Roland Sussex believes it sounds awkward, and Lisa Sinclair of Genderqueer Australia rightly notes that changing a word will not necessarily change mentalities: “As an international idea it might work, but it's going to take a bit more than a gender-neutral pronoun to overcome the very gendered societies we have in the West and around the world. Having a gender-neutral pronoun is very nice, but there's much more to having acceptance of gender-neutral people than just a word" ("Mx Flagged as Possible Title for Transgender and Other Gender Neutral People, According to Oxford English Dictionary”). On the other hand, Merriam-Webster is still watching the new term, uncertain whether it will catch on in the US or whether it might take decades for it to be accepted, like “Ms” (“A Gender-Neutral Honorific”). Whatever the outcome, flirting with such new terms is merely another example of language evolution in line with perceived political correctness.

Politically Correct Language

When David Cameron was recently criticised for using the word “swarm” to describe illegal immigrants entering Britain, a fuss followed. For many, the use of the term is politically incorrect while for others it is neutral. Cameron had told ITV News that the immigration problem had worsened because “… you have got a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean, seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain because Britain has got jobs, it’s got a growing economy, it’s an incredible place to live”.

Human rights groups, including the Refugee Council, were the first to object, referring to the language used as “dehumanizing” and “extremely inflammatory”;  Labour leadership candidates described the usage as “disgraceful” and “not prime ministerial”; and Labour’s interim leader remarked that Cameron should remember “he is talking about people, not insects”. On the other hand, some people, such as Brian Maloney, citing the Merriam-Webster dictionary, found the term neutral, commenting that the incident was used to “fan the flames of anti-Conservative Party anger”. To back his claim, he cited examples of usage from the dictionary, which were not necessarily derogatory, such as “swarms of sightseers” and “a swarm of tourists” (“David Cameron Under Fire for Using ‘Swarm’ to Describe Illegal Immigrants’”).

Jeremy Butterfield, a lexicographer, has questioned the usage of “swarm” to describe immigrants, on both his personal blog and that of the Oxford Dictionaries. He notes that while many dictionaries do not indicate a pejorative sense for the word, the OED does (“A very large or dense body or collection; a crowd, throng, multitude. (Often contemptuous)”). Butterfield concludes that the connotations of the word are as follows:

 ■a large group;

 ■a compact group;

 ■a group in energetic motion;

 ■(perhaps optionally) confused motion; and

 ■ the group is undesirable.

 

Butterfield finds the critics’ reactions understandable though, to him, the possibility that Cameron did not mean the word in the pejorative, inflammatory sense is plausible. In any case, the example shows the importance of word choice in the public sphere, the language of politics, while illustrating the politics of language, especially in critics’ reactions.

Experience Is a Jewel

Shakespeare once said, through a character in The Merry Wives of Windsor, that experience is a jewel, and it had need be so, for it is often purchased at an infinite rate.

As teachers with experience to share, my blogger colleagues and I value each other’s teaching experience and share our reflections unreservedly. In April, we offered a workshop to share our vision and experience with regard to blogging. Entitled “Blog for Blog’s Sake”, the workshop was so well received that we are already planning another one for next year. Before that, in February, three of us had given a conference presentation entitled “Teacher Blogging as Social Constructivism”. Sharing our ideas and experience is so important to us that we aim at expanding our blogging community by encouraging others.

Students also need experience, of course, to get ahead: work experience, writing experience, and so forth. Everyone can learn from their own trials and errors, as well as those of others. Here are some more quotations on the importance of practical experience in life:

· Information's pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience. Clarence Day

· Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. John Keats

· Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience. Paulo Coelho

 Oscar Wilde once cynically claimed that experience is simply the name we give our mistakes – yet to Albert Einstein, “the only source of knowledge is experience”. One cannot help agreeing more with the latter.

Spreading the Word

As part of our effort to encourage other teachers to blog about their work, my blogger colleagues and I have organized a workshop at AUB for fellow teachers entitled “Blog for Blog’s Sake”. Why not join us? Part I is tomorrow, April 27, and Part II is on Wednesday 29. Here are some details:

Part I Thoughts on Teacher Blogging
Monday, April 27

1.            Objectives and points of reflection (May Mikati)

2.            What we do and why (Jessy Bissal)

3.            Blogaddiction (Amany Al Sayyed)

4.            Dipping your toes (Amin Kurani)

5.            A love hate relationship (Marwa Mehio)

6.            Teacher blogging versus blogging in other contexts (Dania Adra)

 

Part II Getting Started

Wednesday, April 29

This is the hands-on part of the workshop, for those who would like to start a blog now.

 

We hope you can join us!

 

Word of the Year 2014

Every year there are winners. Here are this year’s winning words from various sources:

• Chambers Dictionary – “Overshare”:
The Guardian reported that “‘Overshare’ is Chambers Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2014”. The word refers to excessive disclosure of personal information on social media.

• Collins Dictionary – “Photobomb”:
The Daily Mail reported that “After Receiving Royal Seal of Approval Photobomb Beats Twerk, Tinder, Bakeoff and Normcore to be Named Word of the Year”. The verb refers to the act of appearing in the background of a picture without the subjects’ knowledge. Though the word was first used in 2008, it did not spread till 2012 when a number of photographs that were photobombed went viral on the web. In 2014, the word was linked to many celebrity appearances, including royalty.

• Dictionary.com - “Exposure”:
The choice of this word was justified by linking it to impactful current events: the spread of Ebola, theft of personal information, and violence exposed on the news.

• Oxford Dictionaries – “Vape”:
Having originated as an abbreviation of “vapour” or “vaporize”, the verb refers to inhaling and exhaling the substance given off by an electronic cigarette. Apparently, the use of the word peaked in April when the first “vape café” opened in the UK and New Yorkers protested against a ban on indoor vaping.

• The American Dialect Society - #blacklivesmatter:
Though it does not fit the traditional definition of a word, this hashtag spread like wildfire after the controversial deaths in Missouri and New York recently.

• Global Language Monitor - The heart symbol ♥:
 This ideograph, yet another very unconventional “word”, topped the list as it is used daily by billions of people across the world, in different languages. The popularity of such symbols shows how communication technologies are affecting language, as explained by Paul Payack, President and Chief Word Analyst of the Global Language Monitor: “The English Language is now undergoing a remarkable transformation unlike any in its 1400 year history — its system of writing, the Alphabet, is gaining characters at amazing rate.  These characters are ideographs or pictographs that are called emoji and emoticons.   There are about a thousand emoji characters now officially recognized by Unicode Consortium, the official keepers of coding that forms the basis of the Internet.”

One can never overshare on such topics. What will the 2015 word of the year be?

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Disappearing Punctuation

Punctuation appears to be declining in importance. In the UK, the Cambridge City Council considered removing punctuation from street names recently, in an effort to follow national guidelines aimed at simplification; it had been observed that wrongly punctuated street names would cause confusion and that data services, including emergency services, did not care about punctuation (“Apostrophe Catastrophe as Cambridge City Council Bans Punctuation from New Street Names”). After protests, the Council reversed its decision to ban punctuation, however; in February, The Guardian reported that the Cambridge City Council leader had regretted following “bureaucratic guidelines” to remove punctuation from street signs (“Council Reverses its Ban on Apostrophes”). In the previous year, the Mid Devon council had faced similar opposition:

The move was branded “appalling, disgusting and pointless”, with one critic saying the absence of the marks made her “shudder”.

Some even suggested that it could represent a creeping threat that might even result in the endangerment of those grammatical stalwarts, the comma and the capital letter. (“Council Accused of 'Murdering' Punctuation Mark After Abolishing Apostrophes from Street Names“)

On the other side of the Atlantic, punctuation has also provoked controversy, but Slate magazine has reported that for Professor John McWhorter, the loss of the comma is inconsequential; commas may become obsolete because their removal causes “little loss of clarity” (besides the fact that they are used inconsistently – as in the Oxford comma):

We needn’t look any further than our beloved cellphones and computer screens. We’re dropping commas more than ever because so much of our daily writing now consists of quick text messages and hastily typed emails. We’re also engaging in frequent IM discussions and drafting lots of sub-140-character tweets. Commas don’t thrive in those environs. (“Will We Use Commas in the Future?”)

McWhorter adds, however, that formal writing, including academic writing, probably will not be affected as people will know what is appropriate for different contexts, especially older students and others; young students may struggle slightly, but they will eventually get the hang of it.

The debate continues on both sides of the Atlantic. Among the groups involved are The American Apostrophe Association, the Apostrophe Protection Society and the AAAA (Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostrophe).

National Punctuation Day, started in the US in 2004 to celebrate the correct use of punctuation, reflects its continuing importance for some – so take care with your punctuation!

Empty Libraries

As part of their course reflection once, my students were meant to describe how they had used the library, and one of them wrote that they had met with other team members at the University Library to discuss their class project. Had the student deliberately bypassed my question I wondered? Does no one use library resources any more, not even for locating online material?

Whether the student had gone there physically was besides the point. In fact, some libraries are bookless, so it is unlikely for people to want to be there often. A recent Guardian article reported on Florida Polytechnic University's new digital library; the article “Bookless Library Opened by New US University” explains that the building harbours “not a single physical book”! All available material is digital, including books. The sad news, as Tara Barbazon notes in her book “The University of Google: Education in a (Post) Information Age” is that popular culture has overtaken proper academic culture. Students (and others) find the world wide web much more attractive than libraries though the quality of information accessed on the wider web is often doubtful in comparison. Libraries are not only physically empty in some cases: their resources are under-utilized – and the phenomenon appears global.

The Mexico News Daily recently described the situation in “Something Needs to be Done About Empty Libraries”; while Mexico has the largest public library system in Latin America, “they’re not very useful when empty” - compared with European libraries, their resources are wasted. Similarly, the Brunei Times claims that libraries across the country are “underutilized” (“Library Resources Underused”), prompting those in charge to find solutions, including better promotion of the resources.

In the UK, the Literacy Trust has reported that “many school libraries are underutilised resources that do not fulfil their potential to improve literacy levels and support pupil learning and attainment”, highlighting the need for schools, local authorities and Government to make sure school libraries are properly exploited (“School Libraries Are a Wasted Resource”). Likewise, in the University of Southern California’s Daily Trojan, Rebecca Gao describes the situation at USC: “Often, students only frequent the libraries for a quiet place to study, to use a computer or to print. USC appears to be well aware of the evolution toward online resources and has continually updated its subscriptions to educational databases or purchased additional e-resources to encourage student research. Whether students use these resources, however, is another case” (Digital Libraries Wasted”).

It is puzzling and unfortunate that so few students use the resources that university libraries make such an effort to secure and invest in.

Language Learning for a Globalized World

In my previous blog post on motivation in language learning, I indicated that I would be following up on the subject.

An opinion piece by Jocelyn Wyburd in Times Higher Education stresses the need for UK policies to encourage language learning at all levels of education. Entitled “Give Languages a Fair Shout”, the article reminds native speakers of English that the status of English as a lingua franca should not be an excuse for ignoring other languages. Being the Director of the Cambridge Language Centre, Wyburd’s opinion clearly carries weight.

Wyburd adds her voice to others decrying the decline of foreign languages in UK education, reminding readers that language learning not only enhances communication: “a gateway to understanding the world through the words, thoughts and cultures of others”; it has educational, cognitive and cultural value. To her, losing languages means losing “international insight”. She contrasts the situation with that of the rest of Europe, now including Scotland, where educational policy aims at equipping students with two foreign languages while in the rest of the UK only elite schools appear to mandate a foreign language. On a more positive note, Wyburd notes that employment pressures and research needs have motivated some students to pay attention to languages, yet she refers to this as “instrumental” as opposed to “the deeper, more specialist study of languages, cultures and societies, and the accompanying linguistic and intercultural competence.”

Finally, Wyburd supports the efforts of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Languages, with its recently released Manifesto for Languages. The manifesto starts with the following strong statement: “English is an important world language, but the latest cutting-edge research shows that, in the 21st century, speaking only English is as much of a disadvantage as speaking no English.”

So which other languages are important to learn? A BBC article on the “ ‘Alarming Shortage’ of Foreign Language Skills” cites the British Council’s Top 10 Languages, among which Arabic ranks second, after Spanish, followed by French, Mandarin Chinese, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish and Japanese (Languages for the Future). Teachers of Arabic may definitely be happy with this news.