TV English, my anc blog starts 17 june
===============================
Even before Tim was in "big school" I used to buy workbooks, both imported and local ones, to see how English, in particular, was taught to little kids. I was appalled by what was being published locally. The workbooks would have drawings to illustrate the use of prepositions. One example was of a book on top of a table with accompanying text that read "The book is over the table." In fact, in the early 80s I wrote an article in Mr. & Ms. Magazine (it was still a pretty sensible magazine then) about such workbooks.
When I began teaching English to freshmen and sophomore college students I wondered why they had developed such bad habits in grammar. Most of my students had come from private high schools, where I expect they teach good English. These are students from Miriam and LSGH, Xavier, Ica, Poveda, St. Scho, among others. What was happening? It was not their pronunciation or diction I cared about, but their grammar and sentence construction.
One of the exercises I would do in class was to have them cut out news stories from the dailies and feature stories from magazines, and in class we would go through them and look for the errors. Or i would come armed with quotations from TV shows and ask them to tell me if there was anything amiss in the sentences.
In the years since I started teaching, I have noticed that the problem has gotten worse. And while I can attribute some of the lack of fluency or correctness to kids apparently reading less good literature (and i don’t mean just literary pieces, but material that is published and is longer than a cellphone LCD or a Facebook post), I think it is also because of what they hear and see. The role models on TV is one such bad example.
In the 80s, I was mesmerized by the long sentences and deep vocabulary of Loren on that talk show of hers. Mesmerized because quite often the sentences just didn’t make any sense.
My profession being what it is, it is inevitable that when reading just about anything, I spot typos right off. Some of my colleagues call me eagle eyes. (Of course my own typing is terrible and probably filled with typos.) More often than not, when watching a TV show, or a powerpoint presentation during lectures or meetings, I am silently proofreading while listening to the content.
So why ANC? Because I love news and talk shows, and I flip-flop from CNN, BBC, and ANC on Sky. News channels always make for good background noise, like radio in my high school days, but this has the added feature of visuals when you want to look up from the computer. And ANC is the supposedly intelligent local channel, the upper-end of local news, the face that the country brings to the world with The Filipino Channel.
So from 11 pm to around 5 am I am tuned to ANC. Yes, I even listen to TEXT TEXT TEXT (or whatever the show of Alvin Elchico (Z-man2) and Sheryl Cosim is called. In a later entry I will tell you why Alvin is Zman2. David Celdran is Z-man1.
Don’t get me wrong though. I have nothing against ANC. In fact, as I said, I watch it all the time.
But children beware, some of their English may be dangerous to your health.
Come back often, as I post the latest quotes, and maybe you can also keep watch and send me some of your own!
