Shirley Temple- Condolences

“Shirley Temple was the rage then with her golden ringlets and her toothy smile. All the little girls copied her. Our school hung her picture on the wall behind the piano. We had in our class another Shirley. A Scot with pink cheeks and yellow ringlets. When the dignitaries arrived, it was always Shirley who carried up the bouquet.

Once she was asked to read a poem that I had composed and when the visitor asked who wrote it, our principal said, Shirley of course, she is a combination of beauty and brains, and then there was from the Governor’s wife a special kiss. What a bright little moppet, she said.” (From My Story, Kamala Das).

It may be because through Kamala’s use of Shirley’s name to talk about racial discrimination in the school that somehow I developed a negative kind of attitude regarding Shirley Temple, though she didn’t mean any harm in associating the Scot Shirley with the celebrity….

However, when I came to know about the celebrity Shirley Temple, I instantly admired her. Condolences!


Image Courtesy: Google Images

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yea, it is jjjjist like any other day, just a day and night like any other day& night.... but the heart says, no murmurs something... donno know what it is.. The voice is unclear as the brain reminds me it is just a cultural construct, a bourgeoisie trap, a corporate game to exploit the customers… but the heart mourns helplessly...

To all people who misses somebody/something in their life.....

Happy Valentine's Day!


Image courtesy: Neelakaasham Pachakkadal Chuvanna Bhoomi Malayalam Movie

Online Resources for English Language Learning

Online Resources: English Grammar

Learning English now is very easy as there are many reliable resources on the web which will help us any student of English irrespective of their level. Some selected websites has been given here.

www.englishtown.com


Englishtown is a reliable source in learning English professionally. Their trainers will give the students a holistic approach to language learning. They are giving training on Business English, Industry specific courses, TOEFEL& TOEIC.

public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/index.html

The site gives a comprehensive list of common errors in English, which has been taken from Paul Brians' "Common Errors in English Usage." It is a guide where we can see almost all the issues addressed. The highlight is that some other good sources are also mentioned at the end.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl

Anyone who wants to get an overall picture about language and style, I would suggest owl.english.purdue.edu. Along with grammar, the site provides instructions on general writing, research, teaching, ESL etc.

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/

As we know, BBC is an authentic source regarding English language. For anyone who wants to learn Standard English, BBC is a must.


www.tolearnenglish.com/

Contrary to other language sites, what is attractive about this site is that it contains language games, jokes etc. Apart from that there is a discussion forum also.

www.drgrammar.org

The site, as the name shows is a doctor to treat our English diseases. It is maintained by UNI Department of Languages and Literatures.

grammar.quickanddirtytips.com

quickanddirtytips provides a lot of tips to improve English language skills. The site has a podcast version for all its lessons, which will help the learners listen and understand.

yourdictionary.com

yourdictionary.com is an authentic site on English usage. In this particular URL, the site is providing 5 most common errors in English. Correcting these errors will make ones writing perfect.

http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/kids/animals/malefemalechild/

This section of the site would be good for early learners of English, especially children. It is specially designed for kids, so following the link will make learning an entertaining experience.


www.enchantedlearning.com

As the previous site, this also helps the kids to learn some basic ideas in the language.

http://www.eslgold.com/grammar/basic_sentence.html

This link will help the learners to master sentence structure.

www.english-the-easy-way.com

Learning English is always easy as the site promises. It has different sections such as Grammar, Writing Skills, Academic Writing, Punctuation, Speaking English, Proofreading & Editing, Reading, Job Hunting, Writing Resumes, Vocabulary and so on.

www.englishpage.com

englishpage.com is good for understanding almost all topics in English. However, I would suggest this especially to improve tenses. The exercises given are very good to master the basic ideas of tense.

grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar

Referring different topics in different sites is always very monotonous, but if you check grammar.ccc.commnet.edu, then no need of another source at all.

www.world-english.org

If you are looking for activity oriented learning, there is no other best source than this. As they claim, it is "the one-stop resource for the English language and more..."

Teacher- A Facilitator, or a Tuglaq?

Every language teacher will have faced a situation where he/she felt himself/herself as the Great Tuglaq. Muhammd bin Tuglaq was a great ruler in India who made many revolutionary administrative reforms and most of them turned out to be tragic due to poor implementation. He wanted to make his rule more effective and had an eye for future changes, for example, his decision to change the capital to Delhi. However, his reforms did not bring about the desired effects as he was too haste and didn’t think about practical problems. Language teachers who want to make a difference are often face similar problems. As ELT trainers, most of us wanted our students to speak English fluently within a short period of time. This will create a totally reverse situation than we have ever imagined. This is so because language learning requires a longer period of time different from other disciplines. The situation becomes more difficult when the teaching methodology adopted in institutions does not focus on this aspect and give less importance to language learning. In most of the universities in Kerala, now the duration of teaching English is two semesters; in these two semesters, little or no importance is given to developing English language skills.

Teaching language can be more difficult in most situations as the students may not have the interest to learn the language. When language becomes just one subject, and the focus is given in getting more scores than really mastering the basic concepts, learning process will be the last activity in the classrooms.

ESL activities can be a double-edged weapon in such classrooms. The activities can motivate the students to learn the basic concepts well. Besides, the students will get real-time experience in situational-language learning; whereas this can have an adverse effect if the students are not interested in the activities, or did not understand the basic idea behind the activities, or if the instructor conducts the activities without much planning. In other words, the teachers should not be Tuglaqs.

So, what should be the role of the teacher in the classroom? Should he be a dictator as in the olden times (at least in my student years)? Or a friend who will encourage, motivate the student through friendly gestures? Or should he be both? In one method, teacher is a ‘facilitator’ by which it means “An individual who enables groups and organizations to work more effectively; to collaborate and achieve synergy. He or she is a 'content neutral' party who by not taking sides or expressing or advocating a point of view during the meeting, can advocate for fair, open, and inclusive procedures to accomplish the group's work" – (Doyle, Wikipedia). How far this idea of ‘content neutral’ works in an ESL classroom? Here, being ‘neutral’ doesn’t mean being passive. Like any other place, a classroom also consists of different types of audiences, hostile, critical, uninformed and sympathetic. Here, the facilitator needs to change his teaching strategy according to his audience. In other words, the overall picture is important and also understanding each and every individual in the classroom.

Obama's Gandhi- A Blood Thirsty Devil?

The railway station with its colored bricks and people from various classes seemed as the mirror-image of everything the country was at that time; the white masters, their servants, the zamindars, and so on. An elderly lady was sitting anxiously in one of the compartments. She was alone and she couldn’t find anyone to help her buy some drinking water. Though there were so many other passengers in the same cabin, she couldn’t find any innocent faces there. Then, she saw a young man outside; she called him and gave some money and the bottle she had with her. As she waited for him, the train started moving. The fellow passengers started criticizing her for giving money to a completely strange man. However, she looked so calm. When the train moved a bit, the young man came running and gave her the bottled water and the remaining cash. He waved his hands as the train left. Then, the fellow passengers asked her, “How did you trust that completely stranger so much?” With a smile, she replied, “He was wearing khadi.”

I heard this story in a speech by Prof. Muhammad Ahammad. He was referring the trust people had for the Gandhians during the time of India’s freedom struggle. The people who were named as Gandhians were not just workers of Indian National Congress, but those who follow certain kind of lifestyle such as complete simplicity, vegetarianism, adherents of ahimsa, truthfulness, and always felt that serving fellow beings irrespective of caste, religion, race, nationality and so on is their duty. It was not limited to the followers of Gandhi in India alone, but all those who were influenced by his ideas such as Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Ki and so on. However, in the present day, Gandhians are people who wear khadi, except that nothing is similar with the old values and ideas. Politicians know the market value of Gandhi, but never take any care to follow the footsteps of Gandhi. Though it became a standard practice in India for politicians to wear khadi and conduct special programs on Gandhi Jayanthi, only to woo the people, it became a phenomenon outside India.

Barack Obama, for example, during and after the presidential election, shared how the ideas of Gandhi such as Satygraha influenced his life. Those who observed the way he is running his country will have to find a new meaning for the word “influence.”

The basic principle in which Gandhi built his political philosophy is ‘ahimsa’. Though ‘ahimsa’ is somewhat similar to non-violence, it is not as simple as that. Anyone who is following ‘ahimsa’ as his basic ideology can’t even think of violence. Further, Gandhi maintained the view that ‘both end and means should be pure’, contrary to the long-held view that ‘end justifies the means.’

In other words, in order to fight terrorism, a person influenced by Gandhi won’t send his army to kill people. He will not introduce a motion in the Senate to get permission to attack Syria. In other words, the policies of Obama clearly show that he does not have any respect for Gandhi or the ideas of Gandhi.

It is clear that Obama got elected as the president of the USA by creating an image about him- a black, influence by civil rights movement of Martin Luther King, ideas of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. Of course, the reason for his success is mainly the ‘hope’ he tried to sell to the voters. The point is, if ‘hope’ was the commodity he tried to sell, Gandhi, Mandela, and King were the selling strategies. Later, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Alas, what is the meaning of peace then?

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