Now pay attention. This is not important.

The first line of an essay should usually be what we call a "hook," which is a line to get the reader's attention and make them want to know more. I always give my students various options for what a hook could be. For example, they could use a surprising statistic: "More than half of the people on Earth live on less than $2 a day." Another option would be a short anecdote. These aren't the only options of course, but they're very good and always neglected by my students. Nevertheless, they generally seem to ignore my suggestions and go for their old reliable formula, which goes something like "[whatever the topic is] is an important issue nowadays."

Of course, this doesn't really meet the criteria I was asking for. I like to point out to students that simply saying that something is important doesn't really make it important. More so, if a teacher or parent says to them, "Now pay attention. This is important," chances are they're not going to listen or think the upcoming is message is actually important. I tell them that good writers show instead of tell (like by using a statistic, or an anecdote, like I've been saying all along).

Still, other students have another strategy that still doesn't really work: they use the superlative. If saying "Fast food is an important thing in people's lives" is a weak hook and doesn't get the reader's attention, then certainly saying, "Fast food is the most important thing in people's lives," will. At least, I imagine this is what their thought process is. The problem is that this doesn't remotely make their writing stronger because it's clearly an exaggeration. The note I usually make when someone writes this is, "Really?!? More important than family? Than your religion? Than breathing?" This usually drives the point home. I then remind them of what I've been saying from the beginning, that they should use some sort of statistic or anecdote. For example, they could talk about how there's an intersection here in Doha that locals refer to as cholesterol corner because there are several American fast food chains on all sides of it, or they could also talk about how this city has the highest number of Hardee's restaurants per capita of any city in the world. I'm not sure that last one is actually true, but it feels like it. Seriously, there are an absurd number of Hardee's here.

Language Learning for Better Dental Hygeine

While brushing my four-year old's teeth we've started reviewing how to count to ten in a few different languages. The way it works is this. I divide his mouth into six sections: bottom back left, bottom back right, bottom back front, and then the same for the top of his mouth. As he brushes each section, I count to ten in a different language of his choice. Once I get to ten we move on to a different part of his mouth, and I count to ten in a new language.

So for instance, we usually start in English, so we count to ten while doing the bottom back left section. I ask him what he wants to do next. It might be Spanish, so I say "uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, siete, ocho, nueve, diez" while he brushes the next part. Then we continue maybe in Hungarian, "egy, kettő, három, négy, őt, hat, hét, nyolc, kilenc, tíz." Next might be German, "eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht, neun, zehn." We might continue with Slovak, "jeden, dva, tri, štyri, päť, šesť, sedem, osem, deväť, desať," and finish in Danish, "en, to, tre, fire, fem, seks, syv, otte, ni, ti."

The other day we were doing this, and I was counting in Slovak. I paused for a moment after saying the number three, and my son immediately jumped in and said "štyri," which I thought was very cool. It showed that he was paying attention and learning.

My wife points out that we should probably be brushing a little bit longer and should count to fifteen. I suppose that means I need to learn how to count higher than ten in Slovak and Danish.

Counting by Twenty

I recently reviewed how to count in Danish, and it uses a fairly unique system. In pretty much every language I've learned, multiples of ten are usually based on the other factor. That is, 2 times 10 is twenty, which is clearly based on the number "two." In Spanish, 4 x 10 is cuarenta, which is clearly based on the number "cuatro," and so on. Danish is unique in that numbers starting with fifty are based on multiples of 20, not 10.

20 tyve
50 halvtreds
60 tres
70 halvfjerds
80 firs
90 halvfems

Starting with 50, "halvtreds" is an abbreviation for "halv tred sinds tyve," where "halv tred" means 2.5 (though literally "half three", or one half less than three), "sinds" means "times" (as in to multiply), and "tyve" is twenty. So the number 50, instead of being based on 5 * 10 is actually based on 2.5 * 20.

Likewise, "tres" which is 60 is an abbreviation for "tre sinds tyve," which we've already established means 3 * 20.

The number four in Danish is "fire," and "halvfjerds" (70) is an abbreviation for "halv fire sinds tyve", or one half less than four (3.5) times 20, or simply 3.5 * 20 = 70. The number 80 is then simply "fire sinds tyve," or 4 * 20.

Finally, five is "fem." We should all see the pattern by now. One half less than five (halv fem) is four and a half. Multiply that times 20 and we get 90.

I was curious to see if this system of counting occurred in the other North Germanic, or Scandinavian languages. You can see what I found in Table 1.

Table 1. Comparison of numbers in Scandinavian languages

   
So clearly, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic all use the system where they multiple by ten. Faroese, the language spoken in the Faroe Islands which are a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, appears to use both systems. It also has the fewest speakers of all the North Germanic languages, making it hard to find a lot of written information on why it has two sets of numbers and when each are used.

If anyone is interested, I found this article on mentalfloss.com which discusses some other unique counting systems.

Eurovision 2013 Edition

An enjoyable way to learn a language is through music. When a song is catchy, you'll want to listen to it more than once which enables repetition for learning. If you learn the lyrics and sing along, then you'll again be repeating correct grammar and structures which help you practice the language. But finding music, let alone good music, can be difficult, especially if you're new to learning the language.

For those who want to learn a European language (or the language of a country that is close to Europe), the 58th edition of the annual Eurovision competition can be a good place to find music in multiple languages. Well, to a degree I suppose. Since countries aren't allowed to vote for themselves in the competition, there is the tendency for the music to be in English so that it appeals to the largest audience possible. In the last twenty years, the winning song has been entirely in English sixteen times. Still, each year plenty of songs enter the competition in other languages. In fact, my first exposure to Eurovision was when I was learning Hebrew in college and we learned the words to the 1979 winner, the incredibly catchy and upbeat הללויה (Hallelujah). Here is a list of all of this years' entries that are not in English, including links to lyrics to help with your language learning. If you click on the artist's name and profile, you'll get sent to their official link which includes the lyrics in the original language, English, and sometimes French. 

Didn't qualify for the final

Country: Croatia, Language: Croatian
Artist: Klapa s Mora, Song: Mižerja (Misery)

Country: Montenegro, Language: Montenegrin
Artist: Who See, Song: Игранка (Igranka, The Party)

Country: Cyprus, Language: Greek
Artist: Despina Olympiou, Song: Aν με θυμάσαι (An me thimasai, If You Remember Me)

Country: Serbia, Language: Serbian
Artist: Moje 3, Song: Љубав је свуда (Ljubav je svuda, Love is everywhere)

Country: San Marino, Language: Italian
Artist: Valentina Monetta, Song: Crisalide (Vola), (Chrysalis (Fly))

Valentina Monetta also represented San Marino in last year's contest where she sang a ridiculous song about Facebook. In fact, whenever someone mentions Facebook, I sing a little bit of the chorus to myself as a joke that only I get. This year, she's back with far more serious fare. I kind of liked this song, so I'm a little disappointed that it didn't go through to the final.

Country: Macedonia, Language: Macedonian, Romani
Artist: Esma and Lozano, Song: Пред да се раздени (Pred da se razdeni, Before the Sunrise)

Country: Bulgaria, Language: Bulgarian
Artist: Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov, Song: Само шампиони (Samo shampioni, Only Champions)

Here's another one I'm disappointed didn't qualify for the final. I like the combination of heavy percussion and Bulgarian folk music (including bagpipes) mixed with modern pop/rock.


Country: Israel, Language: Hebrew
Artist: Moran Mozar, Song: רק בשבילו (Rak bishvilo, Only for him)

Country: Albania, Language: Albanian
Artist: Adrian Lulgjuraj and Bledar Sejko, Song: Identitet (Identity)

Qualified for Final

Country: Estonia, Language: Estonian
Artist: Birgit, Song: Et uus saaks alguse (So there can be a new beginning)

Country: Moldova, Language: Romanian
Artist: Aliona Moon, Song: O mie (A thousand)

Country: Iceland, Language: Icelandic
Artist: Eythor Ingi, Song: Ég á líf (I am alive)

Country: Greece, Language: Greek
Artist: Koza Mostra feat. Agathon Iakovidis, Song: Alcohol is Free

This is a somewhat odd combination of traditional rebetiko music and essentially ska. I think it kind of works though.

Country: Hungary, Language: Hungarian
Artist: ByeAlex, Song: Kedvesem (My darling)

From the little bit I've followed this in the Hungarian press, it seems like Hungarians are proud to have a song in the final, but disappointed that it's sung by someone they see as a hipster dufus. I actually like this song quite well. It's very simple and sweet, and I love when the timpani kicks in during the chorus.

Country: France, Language: French
Artist: Amandine Bourgeois, Song: L'enfer et moi

I like the thundering beat of the chorus and the video filled with memento mori, but is there anyway she can keep her dress straps up? It seems like in every shot of this video they're falling down to the point where it just seems comical.


Country: Spain, Language: Spanish
Artist: ESDM, Song: Contigo hasta el final (With you until the end)

If this is from Spain, why does it sound like it's from Ireland? Also, once the white horse appears it just makes me think of the Father Ted parody of Eurovision titled "My lovely horse." I guess this means this song didn't do much for me, since all I could think of the entire time were jokes.

Country: Italy, Language: Italian
Artist: Marco Mengoni, Song: L'essenziale (The essential)

Of course, as I already mentioned, this post only includes those entries that are not in English. There are nine other songs (all in English) that will be competing in the final. Personally, I put my money on either Malta's entry for just how cheerful it is (and because the guy is a full-time doctor, part-time singer. How cool is that?) or on Norway's I Feed You My Love, but that's probably because I'm a sucker for European electropop. You all should be able to tune in to find out for yourselves. The final airs starting at 9pm Central European Standard Time this Saturday and can be streamed online at Eurovision's website.

Writing Effective Essay Prompts

Purpose of Writing Prompts

I'd like to begin by making two important points about what the purpose of an essay prompt is. First, the ultimate goal of academic writing is for students to be able to identify their own topics and research questions. Since they probably can't do this to begin with, we provide them with writing prompts. This means that essay prompts are essentially scaffolding. That is, they ideally provide support for students to accomplish something they cannot currently do while also building the framework for skills they'll be able to use independently in the future. 

In addition, prompts in a writing class should have a different function than in a content class. In a content class, like say biology or history, an essay topic is often assigned to a student so that they can demonstrate knowledge of what they have learned. If the class just finished a unit on World War II, for instance, an appropriate prompt might be for them to write on the effects of the war on the German economy. In a writing class, however, the content is writing itself. So unless we want to assign some sort of bizarre meta-writing assignments (e.g., "What is the correct way to organize the essay you're currently writing?"), we need to consider some other options.

Besides demonstrating knowledge essays can also be written to create original knowledge. That is, instead of simply regurgitating what they learned from the unit, they can create a unique and original work based on their own ideas. What both of these points bring me to is critical thinking. When writing an essay prompt, I'm trying to prepare the students to be able to identify issues and create their own research questions. In addition, I want them to be able to write using new ideas instead of just repeating ones they've already learned.

Negotiable Curriculum

To accomplish this, I start with what is termed a negotiable curriculum (Mirembe, 2002). The original article where I read this from is about how a teacher in Uganda who had to to teach a sex education class, but instead of using the standard curriculum, elicited ideas from the students and built the syllabus around that. I figure if it's good enough for sex education, then it's good enough for my writing class. About a week before beginning an essay, I have an informal discussion with the students where we try to generate ideas for topics together. For instance, we recently worked on argumentative essays, and before that I gave the students the following task. I wrote on the board:

For each of the following categories, write which improvements you'd like to make.

• Personal
• Community
• University
• Country

Students would then have 5-10 minutes to write their answers (anonymously, of course) and then submit them to me. After class, I would go through all of the students' responses and see which ones had a high frequency. For instance, my students frequently talk about how they wish they had better time management skills under the personal category, or how they'd like to improve traffic in their community. Based on the high frequency interests that the class shares, I would then create prompts for the students to write on. In this way, I'm providing scaffolding for students by putting them on the path to identifying issues, but not yet having them create the actual research questions themselves.

A Few Rules

For creating the actual questions, I have a few rules that I try and follow. First, it should generally be a topic I know something about. This is simply because I have to make comments on the content of the essays and don't have time to look information up. A few semesters back I made the mistake of giving students the topic of "Which smartphone is better for students: iPhone or Blackberry." The problem is that I have never used a Blackberry, so whenever students said something about it, I had absolutely no idea if it was accurate or not.

Similar to this idea, my next rule is that it should be a topic the students already know something about. The first-year writing course I teach is not a research course, but even if it were I'd want to follow this rule. One reason for this is time since it would take the students more time than we have to research a completely new topic and then write about it. The other reason is that I again want them to create something original based on their own ideas, and if they have no previous knowledge of the topic, then this will be unlikely.

My next rule for topics is that it has to be something I actually want to read. Part of this is because there are certain topics that I've already read hundreds of times and don't want to read again. My university is gender-segregated with separate campuses for men and women. As such, students always want to write about having mixed gender classes, but I really don't feel like reading about it again. The other reason is that if I want them to write something unique and original, it should be about something where I actually want to know their opinions. Students frequently get asked to write about global warming, but to be honest, I really don't care what a 20-year old Qatari girl's opinion about global warming is. I recognize that it is important for my students to learn about and form responsible opinions about environmental issues, but if I didn't have to mark their assignments, I wouldn't have any interest in reading their opinion. There are, on the other hand, plenty of topics about my students' lives that I would like to know more about, since I otherwise only get to see small glimpses of their lives and culture. 

 Forcing Them to Think Critically

That isn't to say that I wouldn't use global warming as a topic. I try to write the questions in a way that usually involves some sort of synthesis in order to force them to think critically and make connections. So I would never give them something as simple as "What are the effects of global warming?", but I might give them "In what ways does global warming affect families in Qatar?"

Sometimes I come up with how to make a topic more specific based on follow-up questions I might have. For instance, a common topic that seems to float around our program is "Why is fast food popular?" which I don't find terribly interesting. Students usually respond with something about how inexpensive it is, which I think is kind of a ridiculous answer in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. So one semester I came up with this:

Inexpensive fast food is generally popular among the lower-class, yet it is extremely popular in Qatar, which is one of the wealthiest nations in the world. Address this paradox by writing about the causes of the popularity of fast food restaurants in Qatar.

While they could answer the prompt, "Why is fast food popular?" without having to give it much thought, it is basically impossible to answer this second prompt without some level of critical thinking.

Similar to this, I try to write prompts that don't involve a lot of extremes. For instance, my students are very used to answering prompts where they have to argue for or against banning something, like cellphones in the classroom, or fast food on campus. In these essays, their arguments end up being that the topic being discussed is either completely good (so it should be kept) or completely terrible (so it should be banned). I try to use language that doesn't force them to one extreme or the other, like asking whether something should be limited or restricted, but not outright banned. This again forces them to think critically and in degrees instead of simply arguing that something is entirely good or entirely bad.
 
I think that sums up my thoughts pretty well. Oh, and I'll even cite the source I used here.

Mirembe, R. (2002). AIDS and democratic education in Uganda. Comparative Education, 38(3), 291-302. doi:10.1080/0305006022000014151    

Children's Television: Die Sendung mit der Maus

Since 1971, German children and adults alike have been enjoying the fantastic program Die Sendung mit der Maus (The Show with the Mouse) on the station Das Erste (available here), and I think you should too, especially if you're studying German (but honestly, even if you're not). I've already talked a little bit about the benefits of using children's television as a language learning tool here, and this show does many of those points very well.

Each episode consists of generally three short segments with animated shorts in between that natürlich feature the titular mouse and his sidekick elephant. The introduction of each show introduces all of the episode's segments, with the announcer previewing each in German. But then the introduction starts up again, only this time in a different language that changes each week. One week it might be Japanese, and the next Irish. At the end of the sequence, the announcer says "Das war..." (That was...) and tells you what the language of the week was. So already right there, it's earning points with me because it exposes the viewer to multiple languages.

The first segment usually seems to be some sort of educational video, often showing how something is made or how things work. Some of them are genuinely interesting, even for adults. Last week, for instance, they demonstrated the prototype of technology that could be placed on top of a cellphone and would be able to tell exactly what you're saying based solely on the movement of your face muscles (you can imagine the applications for this if you had to be quiet in the library, were at a loud rock concert, or had to say something secretive like a PIN code). If you look at the site now (meaning May 8th) you can see other ones that demonstrate how wind turbines work, or what it's like to have diabetes. Again, since the segments rely so heavily on visuals, it is fairly easy to follow even without knowing German. For those are trying to learn it though, the language is simple enough for young children, so it's a good place for beginners. (And if you don't believe me that watching children's television is easier, try watching another one of the programs on the site's player, like the nightly news or a soap opera like Sturm die Liebe and see how well you do). 

The rest of the segments seem to be geared more toward a younger audience, like Ringelgasse 19 where the children who have imaginative fantasies, or the giant blue bear Käpt'n Blaubär. There's sometimes even an episode of Shaun das Schaf (Shawn the Sheep), which is exactly the same as in English in that it contains no dialogue.

What I particularly like about watching the show online is that new episodes frequently have the option to watch them with subtitles, or untertitel (abbreviated "UT" on the player). These subtitles are of course in German, not in English. This allows me to try and watch a segment once and try and figure everything out. Then I go back with the subtitles and find words I don't know in a dictionary (the online Wörterbuch from Beolingus is excellent). After studying the words, I can go back and watch it again, and see how much better I can understand it without the subtitles. (It should be noted that the archive contains individual clips from previous shows, but none of them are subtitled).

Of course, this is all especially great if you have young children and want to expose them to different languages. My four-year old knows a couple of words from German now because of it. Of course, here refers to the main character not as "Die Maus" but as "Mitder Maus" (as though "mitder" were his first name).

Die Sendung mit der Maus is available for free and without the need of a VPN from Das Erste's website (here is the link one more time). New episodes are uploaded on Sundays. Subtitles are usually added a few days after. The show also has an interactive website that children might enjoy, found here.

What Makes a Language Useful

A few years ago, my wife informed me that her nephew was going to start studying a foreign language in middle school. He had wanted to study French, but his mother made him study Spanish instead, insisting that the language was more useful. Now admittedly, where their family lives, like most of the United States, has a much larger Spanish-speaking population than French, yet this still set off the usual rant I give whenever someone claims that one language is more important or more useful than another. Personally, I believe that different languages are like different tools in a toolbox, and that it is just as absurd to insist that a hammer is objectively more useful than a saw as it is to claim that one language is more important than another. Like the tools in my metaphor, it really depends on what your purpose is. If you're trying to cut wood in half, for instance, a hammer is going to be useless compared with a saw. Likewise, what makes a language useful depends wholly on what purpose you plan on using it for.

 statistics taken from Wikipedia, so take it for what it's worth

The argument then usually goes something like this. The purpose of language is to communicate, and I agree with that just fine, but from there it only follows that the language that allows us to communicate with the highest number of people is the most useful. There are a lot of Hispanics in the area; therefore, Spanish is the most useful. From there, it follows that we should all use the list above to determine which languages are worth learning and which aren't (and I know that Hungarian has no business on this list, but I'm going to use it later to prove a point). However, basing usefulness on the number of speakers is clearly flawed for a number of reasons. The example I share with my students whenever we discuss this is that I speak two foreign languages: Spanish and Hungarian. Spanish has some 400 million speakers whereas Hungarian has roughly 15 million. I then ask them which one they think I use more often, and they all invariably answer Spanish, which is 100% wrong. Spanish, I explain, is something I learned while I was living in Argentina. While I was there, it was incredibly useful, but since leaving there (and especially since moving to Qatar) I have had very little use for it. That is, though there may 400 million people who speak it, I don't really have any reason or occasion to speak with any of them. Hungarian may have fewer native speakers, but it is the language of my ancestry. My grandfather spoke Hungarian. It's a language I want to pass on to my children, so I try to speak it with them everyday. I try to follow the news and keep up my proficiency in the language pretty much everyday. There may not be many Hungarian speakers here in Qatar, but I actively seek out the few there are. The point is that it's not the number of speakers that made the language important to me. I chose to make it an important part of my life, and so it is. Another way I like to put it is that a language is only as important as you make it. There may be several 100 million people who speak a language, but it doesn't mean I'm going to ever have any reason or desire to talk to any of them.

Another argument I sometimes hear, especially in Qatar, is that maybe the number of native speakers isn't what matters, but the language's potential to be used in multiple countries. A year ago, I asked some of students if they had to learn another language in addition to English, which one would it be. I suggested that another language from the Middle East like Turkish or Farsi might be useful because they are also important languages within Islam and their countries shared similar business and political interests as Qatar, but one student disagreed. She said that Turkish wasn't an important language at all because if she learned it she would basically only be able to communicate with people in Turkey. She went on to explain that Dutch would be much more useful because it is spoken in both the Netherlands AND Belgium. (This argument is, of course, flawed even by her own standards, since Turkish is also an official language in Cyprus, and Turks have immigrated to several different countries. For instance, though it is not an official language in Germany, there is a large Turkish population. There is also a large Turkish population right here in Qatar, where she lives). Beyond all that, if she were to travel to either the Netherlands or Belgium, wouldn't she just speak in English, since she already knew that language? Does she need an additional lingua franca? The question I ended up asking her was simply who in the Netherlands or Belgium was she planning on talking to and about what? Or was she planning on traveling there sometime? In other words, I wanted to know what her purpose was. A twenty-something Qatari girl may very well have some valid reasons to communicate with people from the Benelux countries, but if the only reason is because they're there, and they exist, it doesn't seem like the strongest reason. Ultimately though, I couldn't convince her. In her mind, two was greater than one, even if there were more compelling reasons to learn something spoken in only one country. 

Population of Qatar by ethnic group, taken from an interesting article on urban planning in Qatar

To further demonstrate that language usefulness isn't necessarily related to numbers, with this same class I tried to convince them that learning Tagalog, Sinhala, Hindi, Urdu, Nepali, or Malayalam might be useful since immigrant laborers make up the largest percentage of the population of Qatar from India (20%), Nepal (13%), the Philippines (10%), Pakistan (7%), and Sri Lanka (5%). Since they work as housemaids, cooks, and drivers, I'm pretty sure every single one of my students knows someone that speaks one of these languages, yet I could not convince a single student that learning the language of the people that served them would be of any use. The reason they give is one I so often hear: we shouldn't learn their language because they should learn ours. I think this really demonstrates that learning a language is about more than just being able to communicate with different people. It also has to do with the relationship you want to have with the people and the culture that uses that language, and if you want to maintain a hierarchical relationship, you can't very well learn the language of the help.