January 23, 2015 · Posted in: General, i Report Features, In the News, Youth and Education
No English, no brain?
Or Marian Rivera’s rant about English and intelligence
IT WAS not only her wedding to fellow celebrity Dingdong Dantes that hogged the headlines last year. What also made it to the news was her lament about the nasty criticisms over her lack of proficiency in the English language.
“Hindi ko alam kung paano ko bubuksan ‘yung mga pag-iisip ng ibang tao… Kapag hindi ka magaling mag-English, kahit nakatapos ka ng college mo, kahit mabait kang tao, kahit mapagmahal ka sa pamilya mo, kahit matulungin ka sa kapwa mo, feeling nila bobo ka (I don’t know how to open the minds of other people… They think you’re stupid if you’re not proficient in English even if you have finished college, even if you’re kind-hearted, even if you love your family or even if you help others),” Rivera said last year in an interview over GMA’s “Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho.”
MARIAN RIVERA AND DINGDONG DANTES | Photo from The Official Dongyanatic’s Facebook page
She went on to say that intelligence must not be measured only by how one knows how to speak English.
[Read the full article on the GMA News website].
It was during the 2010 campaign of President Aquino (who was a special guest during her wedding) when the Marian English-watch was triggered. Rushing to the defense of Aquino amid allegations over his mental health, Rivera was quoted as saying that she was a “psychology” and found nothing wrong with the president’s state of mind.
Referring to her degree, Rivera said, “Isa po akong psychology at nakikita ko na wala naman siyang (Aquino) diperensya.”
[Read the full article Marian: Kapag hindi magaling mag-English, bobo na? on the ABS-CBN News website]
Marian Rivera’s comment could be dismissed as fluff emerging from her fairytale wedding to Dantes. But is it? Or is she right after all that the mastery of English should not be the sole measurement for one’s intelligence?
THE WEDDING | Photo from the Official Dongyanatic’s Facebook page
To begin with, why should one master, or at the very least, learn English?
The website english-tonight listed nine reasons why people should learn English. Among them is the need to communicate with more people especially amid the increased connectivity because of the Worldwide Web.
[Read the full article here Why do people learn English? Nine most common reasons on the english-tonight website]
In 2007, Professor Juan Miguel Luz wrote an article for the iReport of the PCIJ. He defined in his article “A nation of nonreaders” the difference between “simple literacy” and “functional literacy.”
Simple literacy is the ability of a person to read and write with understanding a simple message in any language or dialect.
Functional literacy, meanwhile, is a significantly higher level of literacy that includes not only reading and writing skills, but also numeracy (the ‘rithmetic that completes the ‘three Rs’), which leads to a higher order of thinking that allows persons to participate more meaningfully in life situations requiring a reasonable capacity to communicate in a written language.
The simplest, most direct measure of functional literacy is the ability to follow a written set of instructions for even basic tasks. Thus, functional literacy is the more important indicator of competence when it comes to adults in the workforce.
[Read full article PH: World’s best country in business English on the Yahoo website]
But are Filipinos really good in speaking English?
In 2008, the Social Weather Stations reported that there was an “improved” English proficiency among Filipino adults, a development that surprised some.
Compared to the March 2006 survey, only two-thirds (65 percent) of the respondents said they could read English; about half (48 percent) said they could write English; almost a third (32 percent) said they could speak English; a fourth (27 percent) said they could think in English; while 14 percent said they were not competent in any way when it came to the English language.
The latest survey also showed that more Filipinos are fully using the English language, from five percent in March 2006 to eigt percent in April 2007 while those who say they make “fair use” of the English language also increased a bit, from 35 percent to 39 percent in the same period.
[Read full article Improved English proficiency among Filipino adults ‘surprising’ on the PCIJ website]
3 Responses to No English, no brain?
janna
January 24th, 2015 at 7:55 am
how about POPE FRANCIS who apologies his POOR ENGLISH??? No English, No Brain din ???
myrna
January 29th, 2015 at 12:16 pm
I think everybody is missing the point here. English is taught in the Phil as a second language. It is not our mother tongue so it is understandable that people may speak in taglish. However, intelligence cannot be measured only in being able to speak english as there are so may people here who have a hard time speaking a foreign language such as english but who have been successful in life. If anybody cares to listen carefully, Heart Evangelista who speaks english has wrong grammar. Even Lovi Poe speaks english but then its so elementary and has wrong grammar. Carla Avellana who flaunts that she graduated with honors from Dela Salle University Taft cannot even distinguished “rumor” from “rumour”. Even Government Officials and Teachers cannot speak english correctly as their grammar is so awful!. I believe the bashers of Marian River cannot likewise speak straight grammatical english why? because they don”t speak english as their native tongue. So tantanan na si Marian Rivera!
mighty thor
January 29th, 2015 at 2:49 pm
That’s not what Marian meant. She finished college, so, of course she is literate. She can read and comprehend english. What she is not used to is to communicate in straight english the way some socialites do. But it doesn’t mean she cannot speak in english. And about Marian’s point, english is really not the measure of one’s intelligence. Most Japanese have difficulty in communicating in english, but they are very intelligent, as a country, on average, they are arguably the most intelligent people in the world. In most European countries, they expect you to communicate with them in their own native tongue, instead of english, when you sojourn to their country. In China, english has no bearing in conducting their business. There are even some chinese merchants who will communicate with you by means of a simple, ordinary calculator. I work for a financing company whose President, a graduate of accounting and law, is very rich, highly respected in the office, but he has dificulty in talking to his 7yr old grandson who speaks only english. Does that mean he is not intelligent? He owns an entire building of condominiums, owns houses in QC, Makati, Cavite, Tagaytay, and Baguio, has a fleet of cars, and owns stocks that he and the rest of his family need not work a day in their lives and they will still live very comfortably. Is he less intelligent than someone who works as a call center agent, with their memorized english phrases and marginally higher salary than what a sales rep earns? Of course not! The problem with most Filipinos is that we put too much premium in speaking english. When in reality, socialites sometimes use speaking in english to mask their lack of intelligence. Remember what Jose Rizal said about not valuing one’s own language. Tsk-tsk.