A moment of clarity

I know it has featured prominently on BBC News, though I can't let this news story slip into the archives without celebrating it here. Thanks to cochlear implants inserted a month ago and activated earlier this week, Jo Milne, a 39-year-old woman from Gateshead in the UK, is now able to hear for the first time in her life. Many other profoundly deaf people have this procedure and it is just as significant to them, as borne out by the many videos posted on YouTube. But thanks to Milne's mother, who filmed the moment on her smartphone, and the fact that the footage was picked up by BBC News, it has become a deeply moving event for us all.

In an earlier edit of the video, aside from her delight at hearing everyday sounds (light switches, running water, a ticking clock), Milne also shows us something very interesting about language. She was able to hear children's voices for the first time and, she was also able to hear what the Geordie accent sounds like. She seemed comforted by the fact that in her immediate vicinity, people sound the same when everyone else sounds so different. I'm intrigued to know how her own speech already has a slight Geordie twang. Do we really model our speech and accent based on the speech of others that quickly?

As a fan of all things to do with phonetics, I'd love to know what phonemes or aspects the speech therapists focus on first in this case. Is it the plosives (/p/ and /b/) and the other bilabial (/m/) – phonemes all formed with the lips but with different attributes (voiceless, voiced, nasal, respectively). Presumably from lip-reading and watching others, these would surely be examples of sounds that a deaf person would know where to produce (place of articulation), without knowing how to produce them (manner of articulation). Would experts then move on to minimal pairs and consonant clusters?

More broadly, in Milne's case especially, we can only speculate on just how, socially and psychologically a person adjusts to a new life of hearing, listening and responding, given that these functions have always been absent for them. It's no wonder that the first voice she heard seemed loud, initially. Any sound at all must seem loud in comparison to almost 40 years of silence.

Jo Milne's experience provides a moment of clarity – literally for her, and also for those of us watching the video with the gift of hearing. We recognise that we are privileged to be able to share in one woman's joy at something most of us take for granted.

Frankie says relax, don't do evil!

Thirty years ago, when Frankie Goes To Hollywood were storming the pop charts with their huge singles Relax, Two Tribes, and The Power Of Love; you couldn't move for a series of t-shirts emblazoned with 'FRANKIE SAY ...' slogans, and inspired by designer Katharine Hamnett. The bold slogans themselves have largely been forgotten, possibly because there were so many of them.

However, I was reminded of the craze when I read about the address of Pope Francis as he attended the annual vigil for the innocent victims killed by the mafia since 1893. I wondered whether his words would similarly be forgotten as quickly. His message was unequivocal, namely that those responsible for the murders faced a stark choice: "repent, or go to hell". So compare the headline chosen in Germany's Die Welt newspaper (translated as: 'Pope Francis warns mafia of the tortures of hell') with the choice of BBC News: 'Pope denounces 'evil, blood-stained' mafia'. My initial reaction at the BBC stance had me picturing His Holiness as a latter-day comic-book superhero – Captain Vatican, if you will.

According to The Guardian, he went on: "You have had a father and a mother. Think of them. Cry a little and convert." But however you word it, and whatever conscience you appeal to; calling for the renunciation of criminality – not to mention the power, control and vast sums of money involved – is as bold as it is idealistic. Nonetheless, the Pope's clear stance against these crimes, along with a show of solidarity with grieving families, is to be welcomed. Though where the perpetrators are concerned, I fear that Frankie, my dear, they don't give a damn.

Echo and the funnyman

Besides learning how to teach, if there's one thing that completing the CELTA course has revealed to me; it's how I approach what I do – how I try and engage students. My go-to English teaching handbook, a well-thumbed copy of Scrivener (2011:14)* warns against 'entertainer teaching' – the practice of a language teacher regularly regaling students with hilarious anecdotes. Now, unlike 'teacher' Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society, for instance; I cannot bring a glittering career in stand-up comedy into the classroom. Where appropriate, however, I can recall a relevant, funny event to keep students engaged, provoke discussion or bring some 'real-world' relevance to the content under discussion.

The teaching manuals and TEFL tomes also rail against the practice of echoing, where the language teacher repeats the target language that has been correctly provided by the student. At various points in my teaching practice on the CELTA course, I was guilty of this. However, my qualification is geared towards teaching adults. Some recent discussions with the children I currently teach finally revealed to me why I was previously oblivious to my penchant for echoing. Consider the following interaction between myself and a pupil (speaking German) on a day spent in the great outdoors:

Teacher: So, what did you see in the cave?
Pupil: Spinnen, ganz viele! (Translation: Spiders, lots of them!)
Teacher: Wow, you saw lots of spiders! Were they big? ...

As far as possible at the school where I teach, pupils are required to converse with me only in English. For my part, I am required to speak to all students individually and often, and at a level of difficulty close to their ability. But whereas with adult learners, who would no doubt feel patronised by me echoing their correct English utterance; the example above sees me translating a child's response as confirmation that they have correctly understood my initial question. It is merely their own command of English that prevents them – for the time being – from responding in the same language.

It should also be noted that I teach in an environment where learning in individualised and student-led. As such, teacher-led, time-bound conventional classroom teaching is rare. Teacher input serves primarily as a means of stimulating learners and providing them with the tools to discover and implement knowledge (including language) for themselves. Consequently learning opportunities arise in both formal and informal settings: within school, outdoors, in breaks during games of basketball or table tennis, as we cook and eat meals together, on the bus to and from school, as well as at public events.

So I'm becoming increasingly aware of different methods of teaching and learning – and their respective merits. It is obvious that group-based lessons with conventional, group-based outcomes are only applicable to a limited extent in environments where learning and progress are deliberately individualised. In such a setting, echoing may continue in specific cases. Whether my English anecdotes make me an entertainer or even a funnyman is not something I can judge.

* Scrivener, Jim (2011) ‘Learning Teaching: The Essential Guide To English Language Teaching’, Third Edition, Macmillan Education, Oxford

Languages in a lamentable state

Yet again we read in The Guardian that UK applications to study languages are falling. Quelle surprise! We read of the confusing picture of the growing commercial need for businesses to have polyglots on the staff, against the inevitable consequence of modern foreign languages being completely optional rather than compulsory school subjects since 2004.

Que faire? What should we do? Well, clearly no-one is worried enough to actually do very much at all, it seems. University language departments are being allowed to be closed or merged in response to the falling demand for specific languages. Are those businesses requiring languages actually going into schools to 'sell' that desperate need to the nation's first and second-year high school pupils? Probably not. Perhaps if a company director were to change their own mindset and explain to young people how languages are an essential requirement (rather than a handy, exotic add-on), we might see some progress. How many bosses are polyglots themselves? How can they inspire people when the UK's attitude towards jobs for linguists rarely extends beyond the stultifying world of multilingual customer service? As a new graduate with no professional teaching or translation experience, selling stuff in another language was the only option available to me.

Learning foreign languages is also a lifelong process. It does not sit well with the culture of instant gratification the UK demands and expects. The game of gaining qualifications in the UK is characterised by relatively short bursts of intensive study (two years for GCSEs, another two years for A Levels, three years minimum for a degree). When students' parents here in Switzerland ask me how long I've been learning German, my honest answer is now: "About 25 years". I'm still learning. I will never stop learning. It is impossible to completely master the linguistic and cultural totality of a language that is not one's mother tongue. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try!

Sign o' the times

Having read an article on BBC News, it is believed that the sign language interpreter employed to convey the content of tributes at the Nelson Mandela memorial was – in one viewer's words – "signing rubbish". We are told that the signing conventions required differ from those of any spoken language. So as someone who has always been interested in sign language but can only fingerspell in British Sign Language, I can hardly comment on the accuracy of the video's content.

Though as the news article suggests, repeated signs used to represent completely different words should surely have aroused suspicion from the outset. If the signer can be shown to have been inept, then we can only speculate as to how a seemingly incompetent individual was able to work at such a significant event and stand in front of hundreds of world leader and dignitaries and a global audience of millions. The article quotes a blog editor, Charlie Swinbourne, thus:

"If the accusations that the man was a "fake" turn out to be true, "on a day when the world saluted a man who fought oppression, a guy stood on stage and effectively oppressed another minority - deaf people."

I'm a great fan of the Australian comedian Adam Hills, who often employs an interpreter to sign his stand-up shows. I'd even credit him with raising awareness of signing, especially as he raises the subject in a respectful yet light-hearted way. So if he can show such care and attention on a comparatively small scale, why was it not possible to get one of the (few) interpreters in South Africa to effectively 'name their price' and get the job done properly in this case?  It matters. People should care.

Word of mouse

I'm grateful to a good friend for sharing an article on social media that appeared in the Los Angeles Times last week. Its author illustrates the perceived preference of some media outlets to portray the desperate acts of typhoon victims as 'looting'. Yesterday, in a short programme on the BBC called Newswatch (content not available online outside the UK), members of the public also questioned the need for numerous TV anchormen to present the news from the scene of the disaster; thus risking turning a catastrophe into a circus. To its credit, the BBC responded with a justification that several reporters were needed to report developments 24 hours a day. Reluctantly or otherwise, we have all now, collectively, manufactured a need for rolling news. We also learned that BBC staff take their own supplies of food and water, thus not detracting from the relief effort in any way.

But in this culture of constant news updates and the 'newsworthy' narrative created to relay them to us, the simple act of sharing an alternative perspective on social media – word of mouse, if you will – is becoming increasingly important. The L.A. Times article, for example, shows a clear need for us to develop a more critical eye. With so much news content now available, we need to fine-tune our own filters to discern the true facts of the information presented to us.
 

Should children still be seen and not heard?

I read with interest a BBC report of a school in the UK having banned its primary-aged children from talking or writing in their local dialect. The school has adopted a "zero tolerance" approach – presumably in the same way that many of us strive for a zero-tolerance approach to the sloppy grammar and punctuation of some adults who could do better. At the school featured in the report, children have been 'banned' from using dialectal language in the classroom. The head teacher helpfully pointed out that this ruling only related to the classroom. This appears to be a tacit acknowledgement that even he has limited jurisdiction when it comes to policing language use.

Earlier this year, another school launched an identical initiative. But I do not believe that enough attention has been paid to the distinction between written and spoken language. They've simply been lumped together, with seemingly little concern for their very different social and communicative functions. Rather than banning certain language varieties, it is surely much more valuable for children to learn about and understand the co-existence of the different forms of communication elsewhere. Input here would include an appreciation of register, formality, audience, the distinct lack of any widespread 'standard' English accent in the UK, standard grammar and other features of writing, contrasted with other forms permitted in speaking.

Any other approach leads to the criticism that we are stigmatising people's social and regional identity as expressed through their language use. Similar linguistic discrimination existed from the 1840s until well into the 20th century in Wales with the Welsh Not, where schoolchildren were punished for speaking their native Welsh language at school. Children – can cope with multiple language varieties, whether these are dialects or separate languages. Were this not the case, then no-one would ever become bilingual.

As I have no doubt mentioned previously, German-speaking Switzerland, in contrast, positively celebrates its linguistic diversity in schools and in society generally. As the form of standard German used by national newsreaders (and almost no-one else) does not enjoy the prestige of one's local dialect, I was tasked with creating a 'language code' at school, a simple rule for pupils' day-to-day language use. This has nothing to do with banning children from speaking using their own dialect(s). Rather, it has everything to do with a lack of proficiency on my part and that of my other non-Swiss teaching colleague, where our understanding of Swiss German forms is concerned. The rule states that in the presence of us non-Swiss, for our benefit, High German, English or French be used.

'Banning' children from using certain language forms can only be interpreted as disapproval of language forms that have – standard or not – served their communicative needs. Banning them arguably also does children a disservice. Children need to at least be aware of important cultural and linguistic differences if they are to be expected, at some point in later life, to interpret and work with all the language varieties they encounter beyond the school gates.