What salient aspects of an Asian university and the students that attend do you see as a contradiction?
(1600 Words)
Abstract
‘Manners maketh the man’ (William of Wykeham, 1350). Whether you are in the street, in a restaurant or for this case in an Asian university certain etiquette prevails. My observations were done to draw attention to the value of etiquette and also to show the extent of contradiction to normally accepted good manners there are in the university in question. The results showed that the philosophy lecture room in this seat of learning far from being a quiet room of studious individuals was, in fact, a myriad of factors void of study ethics. The conclusion is, that when it comes to study, there is not a universal ideal as the acceptable method.
Introduction
Etiquette is not a new idea and is changing all the time, as we see nowadays with the development of the smart telephone, but propriety still holds to essential tenets. There are unspoken rules about daily etiquette such as talking loud, jumping queues and generally being aware of others. There certainly can be a lot of daily life that breaches social manners. In a recent survey, 90% of people thought it would be rude to receive a telephone call at a church which goes to say certain arenas are faux par for telephone use. It is a fact barriers are being crossed.
In a social minefield for new students to their university, one business has recognized what many would not think was needed for learning, and as such, CLM Business Etiquette Consulting in Austin Texas has advised how students should invest in their courses to get them through their time at university. CLM’s study courses highlight factors such as establishing meaningful relationships with your professors and other students to ascertain a co-operative experience.
My observations will show that new students in this certain Asian university need to be shown, taught, and given rules as to how to behave in a lecture room whilst having a clear understanding of other fellow peers’ feelings and education.
Methods
Participants
In general, classes consisted of up to 60 to 70 people but due to lateness and students deciding not to come or come back from lunch break, numbers fluctuated.
Instruments
Observations were done using a tally system where marks were put onto a written table in the notebook .
Procedures
As most of my pre-research knowledge so far had been through watching I thought it would be the right transition to do my research using observations. So, my first thought was to think of categories for my research which were the aspects of study I had found strange.
- Telephone ringing – students don’t put their phone on vibrate. So the lecture room has many ring tones going off.
- Telephone SMS – although not as bad as ringing it still has a high pitch sound
- Coming late – the lesson is supposed to start at 9am although it does not actually start till 9.30am so this gives even later than late students time to arrive.
- Going in and out of class – it is generally presumed that you have prepared for a lecture so you would not need to go out of the lecture room before the next break.
- Lecturer making students quiet – this tags with students talking excessively. It is generally excepted than university is not a school.
- Playing computer (games) – even though this seems strange, it was added because students were observed playing fighting games and using facebook.
- Listening to music – as above, it was observed on the computer and shown from wire coming from student’s ears.
- Sleeping – be it at the start of the morning or the start of the afternoon period, students find they need to sleep more.
- Dress code – Thailand being a hot country does mean people get hotter with more clothes but some decorum still has to be kept. Also, the fact that students think that that university is like a fashion show and they must look their best.
- Acting inappropriately – this goes along with the example above, with regard to playing with university equipment, but also to generally being not interested in the lecture thus doing something different.
- Food/snacks – again everything is okay if kept within reason but excessive snacks is not really needed.
So, it was now time to set up my observation times. It seemed obvious to set up an observation in the morning on the first class. I generally had the rule that once the lecturer says ‘good morning’ he expects the students to be quiet, listening and generally be ready for study. This was always around 9.30am so I made this the start time. We normally had a break at 10.30am so this worked well to have a 1 hour observation time. I thought it would be best to observe in the afternoon too, to see how students reacted to having a lunch break and seeing as they had been studying since 9am and it was an all day lecture what their endurance level was. There was also the case of how many hours I would observe so with the philosophy course, which I was observing, being only a month I had 3 lectures to observe. This meant I would observe 3 mornings and 3 afternoons. In total a period of 3 hours for morning and afternoon lectures. I then wrote up a tally sheet as to help me keep a record of the times students and the lecturer performed anyone of the categories I had suggested.
Results
I actually ended up with only 7 categories.
- Telephone ringing
- Telephone SMS
- Coming late
- Going in and out of class
- Lecturer making students quiet
- Sleeping
- Acting inappropriately
I think this was mostly due to the lecturer advising students not to do certain. It was also due to the lecturer being professional and knowing his subject matter. I had a feeling of respect due to the professionalism of the lecturer and felt that other students did too, thus they were less interested turning to other means of interest.
For the morning results, I was amazed how many times the lecturer had to make the students quiet. In the space of 3 hours the lecturer had to tell the students 22 times to be quiet. That works out at once every 8 minutes. It has to be noted that there was a genuine disrespect for the lecturer, not only his lecturing but also the years of study he had completed to become so knowledgeable and competent in his job. I was also surprised by how many students needed to go out even though they had time before the class and also the break after the lecture to do anything they needed. I recognized that the telephone problem had already been talked about several times and students had heeded the lecturer’s warnings. I had a little bit of confusion as to why students still turned up late when the lecturer started 30 minutes late. I felt that if he started 1 hour late they still would be late because they knew when the lecture started they would arrive sometime after.
For the afternoon session, I always immediately noticed big groups of students missing. I was not sure if they just came to sign in and thought that was good enough. The rate of people going in and out of the class worked out at one every 3 minutes during a 3 hours period. Some students actually arrived late and then left. This actually created two points on the tally card, one for late and one for going in and out. Again I was confounded by the amount of times the lecturer needed to tell the students to be quiet, even to the extent of asking one group ‘what did I just say?’ as to question them if they were listening. This was done two times over a space of 10 minutes and was met by laughter and a general nonchalance to the lecturer job in hand.
Conclusion
It is recognized that in some countries certain etiquette is not thought about and study ethics is laughed at. Some students although being new to university still adopt old ways of studying so even though they have reached adulthood they still adopt a child like attitude to learning. They feel that it is the lecturer job to keep them quiet and not their own personal position to be individuals who think. The overriding factor that has been shown through this observation has been some student’s lack of awareness of others and their general detachment from other people who are at the university for the purpose of learning. You get the feeling that they deride people that show a willingness to learn. Students gets distracted easily so even someone going outside creates noise and a quick glance. I also amazed because the attitude of the lecturer in this study who has a PHD who has shown to be the epitome of a university lecturer was scorned by many who felt the need to go in and out of the class and talk.
References
William of Wykeham, Motto of Winchester College and New College, Oxford
(1324 – 1404)
Patricia Lee MA (Oxon), MA (QUB) holds qualifications from the British Psychological Society and in teaching adult literacy. She has been a school governor, sat on the working party for the Jigsaw Visitors’ Centre at Armley Prison and made 1933-style shorts for the Leeds Metropolitan University Gymnastics Squad.
RED – Retired Extremely Dangerous
RED – Retired Extremely Dangerous
So, what would you expect from an American action film? CIA operatives, Russians, car chases/crashes, political figures, lots of shooting and killing, of course, this happens. All these factors will get an audience, and with Bruce Willis as our bad-ass occasionally killing lots of people, the movie punters will take notice.
The plot is passable but lightweight and plods along, but the narrative is a bit confusing. Our problem starts straight away as we wonder why the hard revered retired ex-CIA agent would take along a dizzy lady, who is a telephone operator, on his road trip. So initially, we are faced a bit of a bemused tone. This stretches the story’s base. It is compounded with the music and sound which actually evokes a comical angle to the film that continues with spouts of dance music in the background as certain objects get blown up. This notwithstanding being perpetuated with rock ‘n’ roll during fist fights, it all lends an ear or irony.
The dialogue is light-hearted although we have much carnage which purports to comic book style. You have to let reality escape you at times as you watch one guy shoot a gun whose bullet hits an oncoming rocket and explodes killing the lady who fired the rocket as much as the ex-CIA agent, actress Helen Mirren, who keeps watch on a house which is also being watched by many CIA surrounding the house and they do not notice her.
There is a plot in the movie and other lofty talents appear to help as ex-CIA agents, John Malkovich and Morgan Freeman. We end up with a Hollywood type movie that lends itself to movie clichés and rehashed action that ends up like what Kick Ass did for superheroes. But don’t let this stop you as this could be all that you love in a movie!!
(Words 309)
Language Families
There are groups or “families” of languages that linguists have established over the years. Linguist face many problems when it comes to the retracing of history of language. The biggest problem for them is the fact that, unlike many other forms of scientific history, there is very little in the way of solid evidence of the languages that existed thousands of years ago. Linguists tend to agree that the languages that exist today come from a root or ancestral tree of language development and evolution.
They cite the Latin or Italic language that was dominant during the Roman Empire’s heyday. As the Empire itself crumbled the connections between the different states did also, and this led to a fragmentation of the Latin language into many different forms. Among these variations of the Italic language are Spanish, French and Italian, which have come to be known as the Romantic languages. Therefore, according to linguists Latin is the ancestor language of these mentioned modern day languages. Another example is that of the Gothic or Germanic languages, primarily in the northern reaches of Europe the descendants include English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.
The methodology of comparison is the linguist tool in the implementation of their research. Linguists will generally take samples of scripts that have comparable and then try to develop links between them. This process is described as being time consuming and at times problematic, in the sense that the more examples the linguist finds, the further away they may get from proving a theory. There are many examples of such misnomers in language and research.
Do we really do that?
Unconscious acts
It’s all well and good teaching language in conversation, but have you ever noticed you open your mouth when you are about to ask a question, or raise your eyebrows when surprised or expecting a question, or even rapidly inhale when you are ready to speak? It all adds to the flavour of practicing conversation and students’ non-verbal actions.
Action Research: “If you want it done right, do it yourself.”
(411 Words)
‘If you want it done right, do it yourself’ is a seeming generalised way of introducing the subject of Action Research, this may succinctly give an idea of what it is, although as this piece of writing on action research continues I will delve a little deeper into how this research process relates to what the teacher can do to enhance a holistic experience within their classroom. This ‘teacher can do’ approach is echoed by British educational thinker Lawrence Stenhouse who said ‘curriculum research and development ought to belong to the teacher’ (Stenhouse, 1975 p. 142). Stenhouse proposed that the teacher’s work should not be studied; they themselves should be the ones studying it.
Additionally, Wilfred Carr, a Professor of Philosophy of Education, and Stephen Kemiss, Professor of Education, stress ‘since only the practitioner has access to commitment and practical theories which inform praxis, only the practitioner can study praxis. When teaching is looked at from an outside perspective, it can be seen to be difficult. Action Research as a study of praxis must thus be research into one’s own practice (Carr & Kemmis (1986: 191). The focus here is on a world of teaching that is constantly changing and the social situations that teachers find themselves in with their teaching where they can make a social and organisational change. The teacher can then be the one who is in charge of the situation for change whilst with the participation of others, namely the stakeholders, striving for everyone’s well-being in education.
Moreover, Action Research is learning by consulting and daily problem solving and what the teacher can do to improve on the situations that surface through their teaching. Thus, within this daily practice, the teacher has to identify a problem, they have experienced, then imagine how they may change this, thus putting a plan of action together to overcome it. Once this plan has been instigated, it is to evaluate how the plan effectively succeeded or not. Action Research does not stop there as the focus is on cyclical research, so in this process, once the evaluation’s results have been collated, the process can start again where the class is modified on the back of the results. This may well end up as an ongoing process as shown in Stephen Kemmis’ diagram. In short, Action Research can be explained as – identifying the problem, then resolving it, then seeing how successful it was, then if you are not satisfied, do it again.
