Word of the Year 2021

While the 2020 dictionary words of the year revolved around the problem of Covid-19, including pandemic, lockdown, superspreader, and quarantine, the 2021 words of the year are more focused on the solution, vaccination, at least in some dictionaries, while others are unrelated to the subject.

The Merriam Webster top lookup was vaccine. Similarly, the Oxford Dictionary’s highest scorer was vax, looked up 72 times more often than in the preceding year, having been used in expressions such as vax sites, vax cards, getting vaxxed, and so on. Other vaccination related expressions cited by Oxford include shot, jab (Scottish jag) and new blends such as inoculati, halfcinated, fullcinated, vaxinista, in more than one sense, and vaxdar (after gaydar, from radar). A humorous new coinage, vaxxie (a selfie taken while being vaccinated) is also cited by Oxford.

The Cambridge Dictionary, which is a learners’ dictionary, cited perseverance as its top look up. According to the dictionary’s publishing manager, there was a spike in lookups for the word in February after NASA’s Perseverance Rover landed on Mars, and some look ups could have been linked to Covid: “Just as it takes perseverance to land a rover on Mars, it takes perseverance to face the challenges and disruption to our lives from Covid-19, climate disasters, political instability and conflict” (Nichols).

Other Dictionaries have cited completely different words as their word of the year. Collins’ top ten include three Covid related terms (double-vaxxed, pingdemic – related to the tracing app- and hybrid working), and three technology related terms, of which NFT comes first (non-fungible token, a digital identifier). Metaverse and crypto are the other two on that list.

Dictionary.com chose allyship, a new entry in that dictionary, as the word of the year because of the way it was linked to people’s everyday lives during the hardships of the past year. Though not new in the language, its use had been rising steadily since 2011, peaking in the last two years.

Here is the definition of the term in its latest, most widely used sense:

allyship (noun): the status or role of a person who advocates and actively works for the inclusion of a marginalized or politicized group in all areas of society, not as a member of that group but in solidarity with its struggle and point of view and under its leadership.

An interesting definition, though "under its leadership" may be questionable.

While the dictionary editors distinguish real allyship from performative allyship, which may be temporary or superficial, they state that the term summarises the work of their lexicographers this past year while updating their dictionary. They were aiming to better reflect the evolving language of identity and social justice. For example, they have focused on terms relating to disability, accessibility (as in screen reader and alt text), homelessness, minoritized religions, and non-native speakers (e.g. translanguaging replacing code-switching).

Happy new words for a better, happier world hopefully. Allyship, I would say, is the most important concept of all for Lebanon these days, whether internal or external.

Post-Pandemic Teaching & Learning

 If you google teaching post Covid, you will probably find more articles dated 2020 than 2021. A year ago, teachers and administrators were planning for after the pandemic, thinking it would be soon. A year later, the pandemic is still with us. With widespread vaccination, however, most people are back in class. In that sense only, teaching is now “post-pandemic”. To some people, this means a return to the old ways after unwanted disruptions. To others, as expressed by Zhaou and Walterson in the Journal of Educational Change, “the pandemic has created a unique opportunity for educational changes that have been proposed before COVID-19 but were never fully realized.” Important among these in the authors’ view are personalized education, practical student-centred teaching, and blending synchronous with asynchronous learning.

One can hardly disagree with Zhaou and Walterson that educators should use this “crisis-driven opportunity” to transform education, not just in terms of what we teach and how, but also where and when we teach. Flexibility is key. On a global scale, it is clear that there is a need for more investment in technology, according to the UN: in some parts of the world, education shifted to radio, television, or traditional snail mail during the pandemic, emphasizing the digital divide. This digital divide (better seen as a spectrum) is evident even where computers and the internet are available. Differences will always exist, but narrowing the gap is important. Even in advanced countries, like the U.K., the long-term vision seems to show investment swaying away from campuses into the cloud as reported by Weale and Adams in The Guardian newspaper this summer: while universities acknowledge that some students felt “short-changed” by the sudden shift online, the general atmosphere signals a revolution in education, or at least clear evolution. The authors add that Covid has been a catalyst in giving the universities global reach, along with a big push online. One Vice Chancellor is cited as saying, “What we are experimenting with now are things like virtual reality and augmented reality for students, particularly in healthcare and nursing. We were going down this route anyway, but Covid has been a big catalyst.”

Interestingly, while students all over the world have complained of boring online lectures, whether recorded or live, there has been less fuss among learners, it seems, over the alternative assessment methods used: open book tests, take home exams, projects, and so on, replacing traditional face-to-face exams. Greater emphasis on formative assessment, as in ungraded self-tests, peer reviews, and other low-stakes activities seems here to stay. Students should have cause to celebrate this change – something to look forward to as 2022 approaches. If you disagree, let me know by posting a comment.