Have you been studying a certain language online for a very long time but still haven’t seen great improvement yet in your pronunciation and overall language proficiency? There are many factors that may be affecting your language learning. One of those factors might just be your teacher or the kind of lesson you are taking. To help you choose a better language school or teacher, here are some few points you can check in spotting a good language teacher:
1. Ask your teacher the difference between the L and R sounds. A good teacher would be able to explain to you where the sounds are produced, and the difference in tongue positions between each and every sound in a certain language. If your teacher keeps asking you to repeat the same sounds or words over and over again without explaining to you how and where the sounds are produced, then you are probably better off exposing yourself to the language you are trying to learn and learn it the most natural way (language acquisition) than pay someone to teach you the language but can’t explain how it works. 2. If you are an English learner, ask your teacher the difference between British, American and Australian English. Your teacher should answer that they are dialects, which is a variety of a certain language ─ in this case, English. Afterward, ask your teacher the difference between language and dialect. A good teacher who has knowledge in language teaching and learning will be able to tell you how they are different. If not, then the teacher might be using a teaching material that is in mixed dialects which will make the learning process more difficult. This is the main reason why you should always ask which specific standard of language you are learning; it may be American or British English if you are an English learner. 3. Here, you will have to observe how your teacher corrects you. But, before that, you have to ask your teacher in your class whether the lesson focuses more on accuracy or fluency. If your teacher answers accuracy, then you should expect that the teacher will immediately correct you when you make a mistake. But, if the teacher answers fluency, then he/she should wait for you to finish expressing your entire thought before correcting your mistake or wait till the later part of the lesson before pointing out your mistakes. Language classes normally have extra time to correct students’ mistakes even if it’s an online lesson with prepared material. 4. Finally, a good teacher should be able to admit a mistake and correct it. As you go on with your lessons, it will come to a point where you will need to ask a complicated question. If you notice that the teacher is struggling to answer the question, expect that the teacher will tell you to hold on to your question so he/she can check on the most appropriate way to answer it. If the teacher insists on answering the question and you feel unsure about the answer, try searching for the answer yourself or ask other teachers because chances are, your teacher might just be making up stories so he/she doesn’t look questionable. However, please remember that not all teachers are perfectly knowledgeable. No matter how good your teacher is, there will always be a few inconsistency. What you need to watch out for is how often these inconsistencies happen. The more often the mistakes happen, the less reliable the teacher’s knowledge. That is why it is important to also do your own research to verify the information you have learned. If your language instructor doesn’t pass at least 3 out of those 4 criteria, there is a big chance that you are paying for someone who can only speak the language well (if the teacher sounds well) but doesn’t know how to teach. I suggest you ask these primary questions before choosing the language company/ lessons:
If the language institution or teacher is able to answer those questions well, then that it might just be worth spending. If not, I suggest you search for other options before deciding on taking on the lessons. You don’t want to waste time and money where you can’t achieve optimal learning.
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In the past few years, celebrities are becoming more open to expressing their support and opinions on social issues. They use their influence to express political dismay and social activism. While they have the right to speak about issues that affect everyone as a citizen of a country and this world, celebrities often use the entertainment platform to push through their causes which create more division in the population.
Politics and entertainment It has been known throughout the years that politics and entertainment have different purpose despite both platforms having to serve the population. The importance of separating the two is paramount in order to keep the two professions distant from each other and not meddling with each other’s business. While politics deal more with law and order and social issues using public funds, infrastructure, and facilities, the entertainment industry– may it be movies, television, comedy shows, music, and other forms of media—serve the public by selling a brand and it will always be tied to private sectors. While it is acceptable for celebrities to jump in and out of politics, a celebrity must know when to put aside political views and opinions in the entertainment platform the same way that they have to be careful speaking as an entertainer in a political platform. Celebrities earn a living by entertaining people and selling products and brands to the population, expanding their influence and therefore, their margin of income. People pay for and are interested in these products to get emotional gratification. A lot of moviegoers watch movies to be entertained or to support their favorite stars and fictional characters. Some watch TV shows to laugh and to substantiate imaginations and feel satisfied. The media and entertainment industry often focus on the general audience as their target market because their purpose is to serve everyone that they can reach for a profitable cause. This makes the celebrities become tied deeply to private businesses and sectors. Celebrities and the audience When celebrities start to become political, often times they tend to exclude a big portion of the population because of their political opinions. Perhaps it is acceptable for celebrities to become political in their own private lives but when they start using the entertainment platform to attack and exclude a number of the population in order to push a certain cause, this creates problems. Celebrities become famous because of the audience. The audience recognizes celebrities through their face and their name and they are the main reason why celebrities are earning their living. Excluding a part of the audience by making political statements and pushing social and political activism can easily be seen as a form of arrogance and ungratefulness to the people who practically gave the celebrity the platform to be seen and heard. Celebrities and their opinions We often hear celebrities talk about social issues that are generally moral and correct. Empowering women, creating more jobs for individuals, helping those who are in need, education on certain health problems and even talks about saving the environment by recycling, planting trees and proper waste disposal are just a few examples of social issues that are generally moral. These kind of topic of discussions in the public domain are acceptable because it doesn’t exclude any of the audience. Nowadays, celebrities are discussing territorial disputes, gender issues, political leaders, abortion, immigration and certain laws they don’t like. This kind of critical issues often create disputes between political parties and supporters considering that these topics are very much debatable. Because the general audience is the reason why celebrities are famous and earning money, they have every right to criticize the celebrity that dismisses their opinion. This creates a backlash and more arguments between political parties and celebrity supporters. Some celebrities talk with sense while others are just justifying their opinions. In most cases, celebrities talking about political issues are not helping resolve these problems. Instead, they make it worse by taking sides. The main reason why celebrities make mistakes of stepping into political discussions is because they often think of themselves as private individuals. They often forget that being famous makes them a public figure. Despite having private lives, everything they say in front of a camera and microphone is considered as public domain and alienating the people who gave celebrities the platform can easily be seen as very disrespectful. Humans, like any other creature in this planet, have the urge to procreate and pass on their genetic materials to their offspring as a form of a legacy. We have this innate desire to protect the young ones, which gives us this ultimate strength to achieve impossible tasks of parenthood. We have been blessed with unique abilities in order to carry an inherited task of taking care of the next generation. Among the gifts that women have ever received is the ability to nurture a child from her own body. The nutrients that a woman produces for her child is the fundamental building block of the child’s immune development. In the womb, babies are protected by the mother’s immune system together with amniotic sac and the placenta. According to AmericanPrenancy.org, the sac prevents the mother’s blood from mixing the baby’s blood. The reason for this is because an adult’s blood is filled with nasty cells that developing babies can’t repel. The placenta serves as a barrier between the two bloodstreams (the mother’s and the baby’s) which is connected to the umbilical cord. The cord serves as a tube for incoming nutrients and outgoing wastes. Once the baby is out of the womb, the baby will have to rely on its teeny-tiny immune system and the nutrients it gets from its mother. The first 2 weeks of a mother’s breast milk is crucial to the overall development of the child’s immune system. A substance called the colostrum that can be found in the first milk of a mother after pregnancy is responsible for boosting the fragile immune system of a newborn baby. The colostrum carries special antigens that help newborn babies fight off common infections. They serve as a manual for the body to learn how to combat some foreign microbes that the baby acquires now that it is exposed to the environment. Having a manual gives some newborn babies a head start in building the immune system. Those who didn’t receive the manual will have to start from scratch, which means, they have to be exposed to the microbes first before they can make their own manuals. The more microbes invade the baby’s body, the more manuals a baby have to make. Such a small body can only handle so many invasions. Everyone, including adults, makes antigens continuously throughout their entire lifespan – it’s a never-ending process. In some cases, the immune system is not fast or strong enough to make an antigen for some microbes which can result in severe complications. That is why vaccination is important in order for the body to create antigens before the virus could even infect the body. Furthermore, Van den Elsen, et. al. (2019), suggest that the gut microbiota is enhanced in early life because of the exposure of the milk microbiota and some other important factors. The mother’s milk is filled with good bacteria. These good bacteria are important in the body, especially in the digestive system, in order to breakdown food so it can easily absorb the nutrients through the intestine. Having a flourishing gut microbiota helps prevent allergies from developing in the early stages of life. The study of American Pediatrics in 2011, also suggests that 14 months of high breastfeeding greatly supports the mental development of the child. This means that those children who were breastfed have a higher potential in developing better cognitive processes. The wonders of breastfeeding don’t stop there. There are plenty of studies that are still ongoing and being conducted to prove the efficacy of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding has been used by mothers to provide their offspring the nutrition they need even before civilizations have been established. It strengthens the bond that a mother has for her child. Yet, in some parts of the world, breastfeeding is shunned and currently seen as unappealing and disempowering to women by some social groups. As the world evolves to digital consumerism, many of the workforce starting to shift to online jobs. People nowadays are beginning to quit their office jobs and making bigger leaps by taking on jobs that can be done virtually anywhere. Businesses are more encouraged to shift from conventional employment to a virtual relationship with their workers instead of seeing them every day in an office. The shift is causing online language teaching to become more of a profitable income rather than an undustry driven by social purpose. The ever fast changing development in the cyber industry has now advanced to branching out to different income opportunities such as drop shipping, e-commerce, content-based platforms, digital marketing, web development and many more. Business process outsourcing is now one of the biggest industry in the entire world and is mainly composed of individual contractors and outsourcing companies working in different parts of the world. However, not everything is good in this kind of development. There are services that are overly commercialized that are now very much diluted. One of these services is online teaching. Globalization and the shift of economic dominance from west to east has forced various industries to be more linguistically diverse, thus, making the demand for learning a new language higher than it used to be. Learn.org stated, "during the late 1990s, technology improved to handle the increasing demand of Internet users for entertainment and educational devices. The availability of online classes increased substantially during this time, as businesses and organizations recognized the power of multimedia devices coupled with the worldwide presence of the Internet." According to Petersons.com, " at the end of the first decade of the new century, the impact of online learning on education could no longer be denied. The number of students taking online courses jumped a whopping 187%, and there were about 5.5 million students worldwide who were taking at least one class online. Moreover, traditional universities began expanding not only the number of online courses but the number of entire degree programs available online." Furthermore, they also said that "more than three-quarters of CEOs and small business owners stated that they viewed the quality of online education programs to be on par with traditional degree programs, refuting arguments that online courses and programs would not be recognized by employers. Previously a task assigned to adjunct faculty or associate professors, prestigious faculty at traditional universities begin recognizing the opportunity and start teaching online courses." But, this was in 2009. As another decade pass, online teaching has been too concentrated on profitability that when you search for "online lessons" over the internet, thousands of companies and websites pop up on search engines. So, what is wrong with being profitable? Isn't it good that the competition is thriving? Well, yes and no. While it is good that many people are encouraged to communicate in global scale by the need to improve individual's employment opportunities, it has also become so dangerous that nobody is checking in on the tutorial companies. Big industries such as manufacturing businesses are normally regulated by government agencies to conform to a certain standard to protect both the consumers and the environment. Financial businesses are also regulated by law enforcers from committing fraudulence, money laundering and other deceitful acts that protect the consumers, the economy and the business itself. Conventional educational institutions (e.g. universities and primary schools) are also regulated by the government to conform to standards applicable to specific countries. Even associate certifications for various technical and vocational courses are well regulated by government agencies. But, what about online language tutorial companies? Online language tutorial companies are considered as businesses rather than private educational institutions, therefore, their regulations are more on business compliance rather than educational standards, which makes online tutorial companies risky for learners. Vulnerable learners don't usually know what they need in order to have adequate language education. Although there are plenty of qualified teachers out there, many companies focus more on hiring people who have the ability to speak the target language than the ability to teach adequately. Online language tutorial companies often offer open topic conversational classes or monotonous prepared lessons. Some online language teachers don't even know the actual difference between foreign language learning and second language learning. It is always a misconception that you are teaching a foreign language only if the teacher is teaching in a place where the target language is not a common language and second language if the student takes classes on the target language where the target language is commonly used. Although the concept is not wrong, there is a bigger gray area missing in the concept of foreign and second language learning that requires appropriate teaching method and approaches in order for students to fully grasp the target language. In fact, a lot of people in this industry who didn't go through any teacher training don't even know the places and manners of articulation, which are the basics of teaching proper pronunciation. Also, they often don't know the difference between language acquisition and language learning, which is the primary concept of language education. (Please see my article on distinguishing a good language teacher for more information) In an attempt to diversify marketability, online tutorial companies also started to venture in teaching business English lessons which is a form of EOP (English for Occupational Purposes). EOP just like ESP (English for Specific Purposes) requires advanced knowledge in a specific occupational background, not to mention higher knowledge in language structure and use. A number of students often enroll in business English lessons despite their proficiency level in the target language. On top of that, companies don't often asses student's linguistic ability properly (If they asses the student's level at all), and still give the same lesson as everyone else despite teaching a one-on-one lesson. Students from East Asian countries, such as Japan, Korea, and China, are suffering from this kind of practices because many companies lack the awareness of the language learning process and approaches to language teaching. Moreover, online language tutorial companies treat students as customers by giving them what they want to hear and treating them as gentle as possible rather than treating them as language learners, and this greatly impedes language learning processes. Many companies often have complaints from students about the slowness of progress in learning the target language despite the amount of time and money that the students invest in such kind of lessons. This results in students jumping from one language company to another and eventually become less interested in learning the target language. People repeatedly forget the importance of input and output in terms of language education. And although language tutorial companies nowadays are starting to come up with quality assurance standards within their companies, they often treat language education as a product that is consumed rather than taught and learned. This is the main reason why online language teaching is still classified as BPO rather than education. In a world where anything can be offensive, it is important to understand the difference between being discriminating and conforming to decorum. Social standards are set to distinguish different social boundaries. According to Saul McLeod of SimplyPsychology.org, people are expected to behave in certain ways in various situation. Each situation has a set of expected behavior that is considered proper and acceptable. Each and every individual within a social situation plays various social roles in society. For example, you can be a mother, a daughter, a boss, and an employee all at the same time. However, our behavior changes depending on how we interact with the other members of a social group based on the current social role you are playing within a certain social setting. We do not speak to our parents the same way that we speak to our employees, and we cannot wear the same type of clothes we use at home while we are working in an office. These social rules are important in order for people to differentiate their social role in various social situations. The reason for this is so we can avoid conflict with other members of a particular social group. People often misunderstand the real meaning of discrimination and there were many instances that the word discrimination is used as a tool to bend social standards in a way that would favor a person's preference more. Before we realize the difference between discrimination and decorum, it is important that we learn the definition of each word. According to Cambridge dictionary, discrimination refers to "treating a person or particular group of people differently, especially in a worse way from the way in which you treat other people, because of their skin color, sex, sexuality, etc." For example, keeping a member of the LGBTQ group from applying or working in a company because of their gender and sexual preferences is highly discriminating; Stereotyping people with darker skin tone as "ghetto" or presuming that they will do something illegal is also discriminating. Being discriminating can also come in different ways. For instance, a person can be discriminating by using an inappropriate language to a person with lower social status or physical challenges. On the other hand, the Longman Dictionary defines decorum as "behavior that shows respect and is correct for a particular situation, especially a formal occasion." Collins Dictionary describes decorum as "an act or requirement of polite behavior, and the propriety and good taste in behavior, dress, etc.," which also implies "stiffness or formality in rules of conduct or behavior established as suitable to the circumstances." In other words, decorum is the conformity with conventional standards of proper or correct behavior, manners, and etc. Now that the definitions have been laid down, we can now discuss the difference between discrimination and decorum. It is important to note that decorum is a social standard that has been laid down as a mutual consensus of the members of the social group and is inherently acquired from other social standards. But how do we know whether a certain social group is discriminating through decorum or not? Very formal contexts, such as corporate settings, are traditionally constrained to male and female standards and haven't considered alternative genders. As freedom of expression is being more exercised in all aspects of social interactions, the traditional social standards are shaken to succumb into the unconventional alternatives. One of the biggest issues corporate companies face nowadays is the implementation of office dress codes. One of the groups that are very adamant in relaxing, if not removing, dress codes in corporate companies is the LGBTQ community. According to some LGBTQ members, they feel discriminated against their gender preferences for not being able to wear clothes that they feel would express their right gender. The feeling of being discriminated because their likes, views, and opinions differ from a certain social group is often confused with actual discrimination. Actual discrimination, as described above, is looking down, being prejudice and behaving indifferently to a certain type of groups because of their certain characteristics. It is understandable that preventing a person from being accepted in a formal situation because of gender preference and skin color is purely discriminating. Moreover, treating a person indifferently based on their gender and race is also a form of discrimination. If a person is not denied of respect and rights as a human being regardless of gender and race but is required to follow standards that conform to the decorum of certain social context, especially in professional situations, it is not considered as discrimination. You might argue that compromising your happiness for the sake of formality doesn't sound appropriate. Happiness can be an option. Before entering into a social situation, you need to evaluate first whether you have the option to be not part of that situation. If the situation requires you to participate in a social context because it is much compromising for you to avoid it, it is important to consider whether you are an outsider to such a social context. Being an outsider to a social context means you will have to conform to the norms of such a social situation in order for you to be accepted into the group. The only time that you can recommend and change a certain standard of behavior and decorum is after you have been accepted by the social group and valued as an important member of that certain social group. For example, when your application for a certain position in a company is accepted, it is expected that you behave in a way that conforms to the norms of the company. If you impose your ideas and preferences that are directly inconsistent with the company's views before you could even start the job, chances are, your application will immediately be dismissed. Being dismissed by a company because of failing to conform to the expected behavior is not discriminating because you weren't denied of the option to be hired and more importantly, you were not treated indifferently because of your specific characteristics. You were dismissed because you failed to conform to the standards that the company has set even before your application. On the other hand, if the company is bias on their decision of dismissing your application because of a construed opinion or belief that any member of the LGBTQ community will never be able to follow the standards they have set or that a certain group of people with particular skin color will do nothing good in their company then that is clearly a form of discrimination. Going back to the issue of dress code in corporate settings, many companies nowadays are becoming more lenient and/or specific with their dress codes in order to avoid being perceived as discriminating without compromising conventional social standards. Some companies still follow standards but depend on the appearance and physical features of a person. For example, a gay man that looks and sounds uncannily like a female person has the option to follow the women's dress code. However, if the gay man has more distinctive physical features of a male, then he must follow the male dress code standards. Again there is nothing discriminatory about these standards because it doesn't prevent a person from working unless non-conformance to the standards nor it is being pejorative to certain genders. Many social justice advocates argue that various standards are discriminatory to certain gender and race. However, we often forget to include in the argument who is part of the social group and who is the outsider. It is normal for an outsider of a certain social group to feel discomfort and hurt for not being accepted easily within the social group but that doesn't mean we have the right to force our individual rights over others, especially if it means trampling over others' rights. In most cases, people have the option to stay away from uncomfortable situations. If it comes to a point that you have no other choice but enter an uncomfortable social situation, you need to consider who needs the other more. This doesn't mean you are dismissing your importance as a person, it only means you are putting aside your ego over your needs. Discrimination and derogatory comments will always and forever be unacceptable to any form of society, but we should also avoid weaponizing it to force others to conform to our beliefs and preferences. As an old saying goes, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." |
Badj JohnTypically opinionated but very much reasonable. A language enthusiast with a taste for fun and adventure. Life is full of wonders and the world has a lot to offer. Archives
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