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Friday, November 18, 2005
Malilong: Enhancing our proficiency in English
By Frank Malilong
The Other Side
NOT so long ago, when I was teaching business law, I asked my students the following question: Pedro killed Juan because Maria promised to pay him P10,000. Can he collect from her?
One student wrote this answer in her examination notebook: “Yes sir by hook or by croak, Pedro will collect to Maria coz a promise is a promise not ment to be broken. If for example only (sample only sir ha) I will promised to loved you if you pass me in this subject, I will loved you even if you are already in the position of your wife.”
I remembered her answer after Rep. Eduardo Gullas told me that his proposal to purchase English instruction materials for use in public schools has been thumbed down by the House legal staff because it is unconstitutional.
I have seen neither Eddiegul’s bill nor the legal opinion so I wouldn’t know how a simple move to enhance our proficiency with the English language could offend the constitution. What I do know is that while our Asian neighbors have been trying to learn the language, we have just as consciously sought to discard it in the name of nationalism.
The irony of it all is that these foreigners, notably the Koreans and the Japanese, are learning the language here from us. In Cebu alone, there are a number of special schools that teach English to foreigners. One of them is located in a former hotel building along M.J. Cuenco Avenue.
Kim spoke in halting English when I first met her two years ago. When she dropped by the office last month, she spoke as if the language was her native tongue. Pretty soon, it will be girls like her who will be manning the call centers.
Us? Unless we do something drastic and arrest the decline in our proficiency with the English language, we could end up writing the way my student did not long ago or worse the way a student of a local university (according to an e-mail I received from a reader) supposedly wrote her boyfriend’s former girl, thus:
“I am not surprise or wander why Dennis left you.
“Why?
“What reason can you think about but you’re very fat body. I thought before that Dennis only use me to his toy but sooner and later, I’m realize that he really can’t beared or stomached to be with you anymore.
“Because at first Dennis say he could not stand your habit of making pakialam all his walks (lakad) and always calling to their house what time he go or this or that and then he say he get ashame to met either in school or in his family and then asking you to exercise you’re very very fat body. But you hate it. Thought you’re the most prettiest girl he knows about.
“Shame to you’re body that is to a Buding. You can’t not blame Dennis for exchanging you to me because I am the more sexier than you when you look to us in the mirror.”
(fmmalilong@yahoo.com)
(November 18, 2005 issue)
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