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?