austraLasia 1346
Owning Our Other Tongue: new resource, new system
ROME: 4th December 2005 -- Owning Our Other Tongue is a set of resources for the study of English, especially geared for Salesians who are taking up such a study... in Houses of Formation, in a missionary context, or because they have decided that an improved knowledge of English is to their benefit. It is also an ideal set of resources for those teaching English to anyone for whom the language is 'an other tongue'. It is best consulted by someone with at least a threshold knowledge of English - a vocabulary of approximately 1,000 words. The text has been checked out to conform broadly with that. As a book it would have 130 pages, but here is the good news: you can receive it as a CD, and the CD edition contains many more resources of a digital kind which obviously cannot be included in a book. If you want to have both sides of the coin, then the CD version also offers the book in PDF format. There are something like 200Mb of contents on the CD edition. Such an edition costs only the postage.
Coming from within the Social Communications Department, OOOT (to give it its easier acronym) trials a new system that may help us reduce costs enormously. In the knowledge that the computer is ubiquitous these days, a work of the magnitude of OOOT can be produced on CD at almost no cost. It opens automatically, presents the viewer/reader with a virtual book (the opening screen even looks like a book), and a search mechanism which enables quick location of any term or phrase - two or more words are automatically recognised as a phrase. The entire item opens up in a web browser. We trialled this approach with the recent World Salesian Bulletin Editors meeting. Each participant eventually received a CD with all the contents of the meeting in a variety of formats - text, presentation, image... It would appear that this was well-received. And in places where a book tends to be rendered useless by climatic conditions in a short period of time, the CD is a boon. It can also be easily copied in its entirety - as many copies as one wishes to make. Hopefully other Departments in the Congregation will consider a similar approach where the circumstances indicate that a CD would be better than a book.
As for OOOT's contents, it contains several chapters explaining language features in general, but with an emphasis on the kinds of English one finds in 'other tongue' contexts, be they African, Indian, Pacific, so-called 'Chinglish', 'Taglish', 'Finglish' and so on. The point made in these chapters is the important reality that people living and working in these contexts have developed local forms of English. English is 'owned' by 750 million speakers plus, many of whom are not native speakers. It is often better to speak of local standards than of 'correctness' as if there is only one English standard. The version now accepted as 'the Queen's English' (but even she has shifted her style!) was once looked down upon as a rough country dialect. We need a sense of history, also in our attitudes to language. But OOOT does recommend a Standard Written English.
OOOT offers an important chapter on methods for learning English, followed by application to the key areas of speaking, listening, reading, writing. An emphasis is placed on the importance of vocabulary and on ways of learning vocabulary, indeed on the value of 'word grammar'. In doing so it draws on recent insights in second language learning (or third, or fourth...). Each chapter is followed by exercise frameworks, meaning that they offer productive ways of exercising the material which the learner or teacher can develop further. One chapter is devoted to cross-cultural language issues and another to the interface between Italian and English in a Salesian context. The CD also contains two sub-webs, one being SELECT, the full version of Salesian Etymology and Lect (or in other words the Salesian glossary and thesaurus), the other being ESP, English for Salesian Purposes. This is a set of resources developed for those who have Italian as either a mother tongue or well-established other tongue. There are additional digital resources - useful software, word lists, including the most recent version of Wordnet.
If you would like a copy, email me directly and indicate a mailing address. The cost, for anyone requesting this before 8th December, is one Hail Mary!
JBF
VOCABULARY
ubiquitous: everywhere
________________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
Owning Our Other Tongue: new resource, new system
ROME: 4th December 2005 -- Owning Our Other Tongue is a set of resources for the study of English, especially geared for Salesians who are taking up such a study... in Houses of Formation, in a missionary context, or because they have decided that an improved knowledge of English is to their benefit. It is also an ideal set of resources for those teaching English to anyone for whom the language is 'an other tongue'. It is best consulted by someone with at least a threshold knowledge of English - a vocabulary of approximately 1,000 words. The text has been checked out to conform broadly with that. As a book it would have 130 pages, but here is the good news: you can receive it as a CD, and the CD edition contains many more resources of a digital kind which obviously cannot be included in a book. If you want to have both sides of the coin, then the CD version also offers the book in PDF format. There are something like 200Mb of contents on the CD edition. Such an edition costs only the postage.
Coming from within the Social Communications Department, OOOT (to give it its easier acronym) trials a new system that may help us reduce costs enormously. In the knowledge that the computer is ubiquitous these days, a work of the magnitude of OOOT can be produced on CD at almost no cost. It opens automatically, presents the viewer/reader with a virtual book (the opening screen even looks like a book), and a search mechanism which enables quick location of any term or phrase - two or more words are automatically recognised as a phrase. The entire item opens up in a web browser. We trialled this approach with the recent World Salesian Bulletin Editors meeting. Each participant eventually received a CD with all the contents of the meeting in a variety of formats - text, presentation, image... It would appear that this was well-received. And in places where a book tends to be rendered useless by climatic conditions in a short period of time, the CD is a boon. It can also be easily copied in its entirety - as many copies as one wishes to make. Hopefully other Departments in the Congregation will consider a similar approach where the circumstances indicate that a CD would be better than a book.
As for OOOT's contents, it contains several chapters explaining language features in general, but with an emphasis on the kinds of English one finds in 'other tongue' contexts, be they African, Indian, Pacific, so-called 'Chinglish', 'Taglish', 'Finglish' and so on. The point made in these chapters is the important reality that people living and working in these contexts have developed local forms of English. English is 'owned' by 750 million speakers plus, many of whom are not native speakers. It is often better to speak of local standards than of 'correctness' as if there is only one English standard. The version now accepted as 'the Queen's English' (but even she has shifted her style!) was once looked down upon as a rough country dialect. We need a sense of history, also in our attitudes to language. But OOOT does recommend a Standard Written English.
OOOT offers an important chapter on methods for learning English, followed by application to the key areas of speaking, listening, reading, writing. An emphasis is placed on the importance of vocabulary and on ways of learning vocabulary, indeed on the value of 'word grammar'. In doing so it draws on recent insights in second language learning (or third, or fourth...). Each chapter is followed by exercise frameworks, meaning that they offer productive ways of exercising the material which the learner or teacher can develop further. One chapter is devoted to cross-cultural language issues and another to the interface between Italian and English in a Salesian context. The CD also contains two sub-webs, one being SELECT, the full version of Salesian Etymology and Lect (or in other words the Salesian glossary and thesaurus), the other being ESP, English for Salesian Purposes. This is a set of resources developed for those who have Italian as either a mother tongue or well-established other tongue. There are additional digital resources - useful software, word lists, including the most recent version of Wordnet.
If you would like a copy, email me directly and indicate a mailing address. The cost, for anyone requesting this before 8th December, is one Hail Mary!
JBF
VOCABULARY
ubiquitous: everywhere
________________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
