Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Outline attempt!

I decided to outline this article from the Desert News. It is a column titled, Reasons To Run, by a teammate of mine in her fifth year.

Cecily Lew, starts out with a personal experience from a couple weekends back when the National Track and Field Competitions were being run. She tells of the difficulty she and her husband had trying to locate the races online and the poor quality with which they were broadcast. She compares the experience to the ease of locating and watching a basketball game from home.

After her personal experience she states that she recognizes the limitations of having an entire channel dedicated to running; however, she mentions changes that can be made such as national races being broadcast live with a clear image.

Next Lew, transitions to expressing her frustration to the lack of exposure the running world currently gets. She gives several posed anecdotes and conversations of non-runner/ runner encounters, and common questions asked. In this part of the the article she uses satire, irony, and sarcasm giving the article a comical and casual feel.

She intercedes one of her posed conversations toward the end with a "truth of the matter" statement. She informs her audience of the punchline of her arguments by reiterating that track runs year round and there is a vast running world out there with thousands of exciting/ inspirational stories.

She closes by picking up the posed conversation and ends with a satirical comment displaying apparent frustration at non-runners lack of understanding regarding the running world.
http:www.deseretnews.com

Thursday, March 10, 2011

5 Sources

1) The pros and cons of English as a medium of instruction in African schools
-by W D Adkins
http://www.helium.com/items/1014686-the-pros-and-cons-of-english-as-a-medium-of-instruction-in-african-schoolsWebsite Title

: African & Middle Eastern Culture







2) The pros and cons of English as a medium of instruction in African schools
by- Joshua Kloppers
http://www.helium.com/items/2106483-medium-of-instruction-in-south-africa

3) Researchers, Beware of Your Assumptions! The Unique Case of South African Education
by- Zanelle Buthlezi
http://www.readingonline.org/international/inter_index.asp?HREF=/international/edinburgh/buthelezi/

4) Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa – Highlights from a Project
by-Birgit Brock-Utne, Zubeida Desai, Martha A.S. Qorro and Allan Pitman (Eds.)
https://www.sensepublishers.com/files/9789460912221PR.pdf

5)The Language of Instruction Conundrum in Africa
by-Kwesi Kwaa Prah
http://www.sprakforsvaret.se/sf/fileadmin/PDF/Conundrum.pdf

Friday, March 4, 2011

Issues Thesis say whaaaa?

As our World becomes increasingly more connected, the popularity of using English as the primary learning language in African Schools has become all but standardized. This results in an often hindered progression of those children who are forced to reconcile their mother tongue in pursuit of a globalized education before they've mastered basic concepts requisite for success. 


It's very rough, and definitely needs some refining and more particulars, buuuut having not done much research yet, I'll have to fill those in after the fact when my argument has matured more. 

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

This is really what it's like. Don't let the "Nice" uniforms fool you though.

Issues Paper Topics

What to write on? What to write on? With this being such a big paper and worth so many points, I really want to find a topic that I'm going to be interested in and enjoy. So far I'm considering how Globalization has impacted the language of schooling across the world. I had the opportunity to live in Africa for 5 weeks last summer where I worked in an orphange/school, teaching subjects I was less than qualified to teach. The reason I was able to teach was because in Tanzania all secondary schools (elementary-junior high equivalent) are mandatorily taught in English. This restriction made me, an 18 year old girl, more qualified than at least 5 of the 8 teachers at the school. It was incredibly difficult to teach the children concepts such as geography, math, science, and religion in their second language. For example, teaching kids about pollution, when they don't know what that word means, was almost impossible. Those subjects are hard enough for American's to learn in their first language. Can you imagine being taught them in Spanish, French, or German?

No swahili is allowed to be spoken at the schools there, except for a short fifty minute class, where they learn it each day. This means they can't even ask clarification questions in their other classes. This throws the kids into a sink or swim scenario, where unfortunately 50-70 percent, or more, fail miserably. It is heartbreaking to see how hard the kids work, and their struggles based solely on a language barrier.