daronloo

Recently, I wrote a response  to an article urging English teachers in Malaysia to teach only in English.  Aside from my response there were at least one other who wrote a very well thought-through  piece .   An English-only approach was a common sentiment you would find in language pedagogic textbooks and manuals published decades ago.  With the expansion of applied linguistics, the current community of language educators and scholars acknowledge that the language learning process involves more than just picking up new language knowledge and abilities through immersion.  Gone are the days when language is just considered a cognitive exercise.  These days, we have other affective variables to consider such as anxiety, stress, motivation, and the list goes on.  This was the idea that I had hoped my write-up would convey.  How wrong I was.  Not only did nobody understand what I wrote, I got a few interesting comments as well.  I doubt that anyone who had read my article, or the one th

Every semester, my teaching load would include at least one writing course. Teaching in a classroom where you have students who do not share a similar English writing background is downright challenging.  For some of my students, their writing experience is confined to a sentence, but there are also those who come with paragraph- or essay-writing experiences.   What do you do when you have students with differing writing abilities?  Obviously, expecting everyone to be at the same page, and at the same pace, would be silly.  Another aspect that you may want to think of is how they had learned writing.  Some of my students memorized essays in high school.  Some of them just copied off from a 'model essay book'.  Some actually have a discussion or debate about what to write about before actually writing.  This is a problem for me too as I have grown accustomed to having the freedom and liberty to discuss anything under the sun.  However, for many of my students, discussion

I am sure this list will expand in the coming months and years, but these are three things that I have realized recently.  Beats me why it took me so long to realize them. 1.  No matter how thorough you think your conceptual framework is, there will always be something out there that could debunk your whole research. 2.  When you organize your articles (soft copies) on your computer, forget APA referencing style, start off with the title and leave the authors to the very end. 3.  Don't wait till you have accumulated piles of files in your download or documents folder before organizing.  Organizing can be a pain in the behind when you wait too long.

This morning my supervisor emailed me asking me if I would be interested to participate in our Faculty's conference later this week.  I was feeling like an opportunist today, so I said yes. I only got to work on the poster this evening and spent about an hour working on it.  I was not quite sure how I am supposed to design the poster, but I would imagine something with important catch phrases and keywords with minimal texts.  That's what I did.  As I was creating this poster, I got to thinking, am I on the right track?  My train of thought while making the poster was quite direct, with very little interruption.  It felt like I had a direction to go.  This encourages me but at the same time scares me.  How would I know that the direction I'm taking is not too simplistic?  Is it so uncritical that I am able to go from point A to point B without much interference? I reckon that despite having a seemingly simple research design, the depth of analysis would be great and guid

I really thought the Lonely Island was the one who coined "YOLO".  Boy was I wrong.  It was Drake. Yes, I have been silent for the past few months.  It really is difficult to find time to write, when I am exerting so much energy in writing up stuff for the office and for studies.  A little piece of advice for those out there who are thinking of graduate studies.  Don't do it with a full time job.  Look for scholarships.  But we know that scholarships in the field of humanities are hard to come by. If you're thinking of doing a PhD in humanities or social sciences perhaps you should read this .  I did not quite read through the blog, but I think it is along the lines of a PhD student realizing towards the end that the PhD he/she was working on might not be really what he/she wants.  Nonetheless, he/she assures us that if we realize that PhD is not for us just before we defend our dissertation, we don't need to be alarmed.  There is still hope for us. My PhD jo

I've played the piano for many weddings.  I play for at least one wedding a year.  This year, I was scheduled to play for two weddings. Last Sunday's wedding was the second wedding for the year.  I was flanked by two violinists, and we made fabulous wedding accompaniment for the now, husband and wife. Weddings are never perfect, at rehearsals and at the actual event.  There are always glitches, or last minute changes.  There are always people who come late.  Sometimes something explodes and catches fire (seriously this happened once). But I will not talk about non-music related incidents.  Since I think I'm a resident pianist, I will share interesting innuendos about wedding music. #1 - It's always the pianist's fault This happened at one of the weddings I played for in my earlier years in Thailand.  There was this lady, a fellow Sabahan, or Sabahanian, whatever you like to call us, who was assigned to sing a special number for the reception.  Now this lady