Answering Students-I

Posted on March 18, 2017 by

One of my recent activities with students has been to communicate in emails. I assigned one student from each class to send  me three questions, and answered them in detail. Presented here are two of the questions and their answers.

1.  What are the crucial points to be considered in assessing a text critically?

Being critical has two dimensions. The first has to do with criticizing — showing shortcomings, disagreeing with certain aspects, indicating overstatements and understatements, or questioning the text. This is what you do in Critical Thinking while practicing the four levels of interacting with a text. In this respect, when you write criticism, you use negative remarks and questions such as: “Rushdie’s ideas may not be accepted even by Hindu fundamentalists,” or “Is it good to generalize that faith in gods and authority is a major deterrent to progress?”. The second dimension of being critical has a wider scope than just digging into questionable points. It has to do with showing more than what appears on the surface. You look for both closer and more distant connections of the themes, arguments, and characters. If you say, “In a deeper level of her narratives, Serena Nanda presents her belief that arranged marriages are more binding and permanent,” you are thinking critically. For yet another example of criticality, you can take this remark: “A Nepali reader would find Nanda’s narratives as reflections of the practices in Nepali society.”

A critical thinker tries to examine both implications and associations. Your knowledge of the context to which the text belongs enables you to find more contextual meanings. I want to remind you of two of my examples in the class. I told you that your familiarity with the story of the Mahabharata would shape your understanding of “Yudhisthira’s Wisdom,” and that you were likely to read it being based on your earlier knowledge on the characters of the Pandava brothers. I also told you that I did additional readings of half a dozen different convocation speeches in order to understand Rushdie’s text, and that this helped me see how he departed from the common graduation rituals.

2. What is your favourite novel and who is your favourite writer?

Thanks. Well, it’s tricky. I don’t cherish favourites and idols/ideals. Long back I read a novel by a Belorussian writer in Hindi adaptation, titled Pyar aur Patthar. I can guess its English translation to be “Love and Rock,” but this does not seem to carry the worth. I loved it so much even with my beginner’s Hindi. It was in 1990. I would love to read the novel again, but I have never gotten hold of it despite my searches. Thus, my favourite would be one which leaves me this passion for rereading. I read Lil Bahadur Chhetri’s Brahmaputraka Chheuchhau with the same passion. You may be wondering why I have not mentioned any English novel being an English teacher. I don’t in fact have any language-based preferences. I have loved most of the nineteenth century English novels like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter, The Mill on the Floss, Far from the Madding Crowd, Sons and Lovers…. I have read and read literary works of merit.

My favorite writer? Well, the above answer might define. But let me give more than one name: Laxmi Prasad Devkota, Lekhnath Paudyal, Premchand, Leo Tolstoy, D. H. Lawrence and Chinua Achebe. There are many more, though.

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Answering the Students-II

Posted on March 17, 2017 by

From a class three years ago. Outcomes of an interactive email assignment. Not irrelevant yet.

In what quality was Yudhisthira different from his brothers?

Yudhisthira could wait/pause to study the situation he was in. He was rational, reasonable in this sense. This capacity to wait despite the physical urge for water, which is shown absent in his brothers, distinguishes him from them. Also, he is calm and composed towards Yakshya’s warning about the fate of his brothers. His brothers got enraged at this life-threatening challenge, while he got ready to accept the challenge. Foremost, he lived up to his sensibility and carefulness by tactfully answering Yakshya’s queries, the qualities we can hardly expect his brothers to show in a condition of extreme thirst, tiredness and irritation.

You can think of other similar aspects.

Why do we need technical writing?

Simple. You need it to be able to communicate your works to a professional community. This also means being able to understand the language and content of the works of a broad circle of experts and specialists. If you go by the contents of your text book, you study TW to ensure clarity, conciseness, accuracy, organization and ethics of professional communication.

Why do we need to prepare a journal?

A simple purpose is to keep record of all the important activities you and your instructor do in the ENGT 101 course. It  includes both curricular and extracurricular works. In fact, the journal is intended to give you a satisfaction of doing at least one major assignment integrating a variety of plain, critical and creative tasks you accomplish as an undergraduate student of Kathmandu University.

Can you give a note on ethics? (Technical writing)

The concept of ethics in TW mainly refers to the ‘goodness’ of communication. Goodness takes a lot of important aspects ranging from morality, legality, credibility, acceptability, usability/usefulness etc. of formal writings and speeches. Moreover, it has to do with the correctness in information and appropriateness in etiquette and validity in follow-up and action. In simplest terms, ethics is about passing right message to right persons in right language and format.

In four levels, what are the things we have to write in assimilation?

I would particularly focus on what aspects of the text actually touched me, after reading it a number of times. I would try to be very frank about what I liked in the story/essay/poem/novel. I would say — “I never knew that American teenagers are so liberal about living together and having children without getting married. I can’t really imagine such independence to be helpful in my society. But I appreciate the priority they give to individualism, which is literally necessary to allow people to learn to face the difficult challenges of a highly commercialized society. The essay has been a window to understand the contemporary social life in America.”

Thus, you can try to state what you learn, know, understand, realize, think — to the level of being able to experience change in your attitudes, behaviours and plans of your life.

How can I give a better presentation? (As I get nervous easily.)

You must practice frequently after conscious preparation. In general independent presentations, speak what you know, and what you like to know. Try to know and speak what you enjoy knowing and sharing. In specific situations like formal presentations, work to know more than you need to speak. Get ready with necessary aids and back-ups. I am sure you can do best presentations. Nervousness is useful to the extent it makes you aware of the task. It is a problem if it dominates your expressions and acts. But ensuring a degree of familiarity in content and with the audience helps reduce nervousness to a large extent.

I’m very keen to learn English grammatically and fluently soon. How can I achieve success in this aspect?

There is no any sure-fire recipe for learning English but to practice speaking, writing, reading and listening regularly with commitment to update yourself every moment. What is the most interesting subject you want to read? What do you like to write (about) most? What kind of people you want to speak with and about what? What is the best time and method for you to communicate in English? Who is the person who appreciates your efforts to learn English? Do reflect these questions and look for the right book, method, person and time to start practicing. Come to me if you think I can be of any help, even beyond class hours. You should be benefited for being in KU and studying communication skills.

Technical Writing text book is okay for we engineering students, but why do we have to studyFlax-Golden Tales?

The Communication Skills course (ENGT) demands integration of four fundamental aspects of communication — Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing (LSRW). Flax-Golden Tales includes all these skills, while Technical Writing focuses on Writing and Speaking. This shows the significance of Flax-Golden Tales. So, what will you read for pleasure, and to get sense of the best use of English without literary texts? What will motivate you to think about  the world and human beings but stories/essays/poems/dramas? What happens to you when you read a touching story, understand a haunting argument and listen a mesmerizing music? The answer is there — you get touched, haunted and mesmerized. You become a thinking and feeling creature. That is why we teach Flax-Golden Tales — to bring you back to the world of feelings and emotions, at least once a week and a few minutes in between!

I think this post from a blog I manage answers your question — http://kufit.wordpress.com/2013/08/19/dealing-with-the-thinking/ .

How can we develop good personality?

Grooming for what you are and can be. Try to make yourself a more knowledgeable, dynamic and respectable person each day. What are the ways of doing this? Well, not all of us are born with good personalities, but there may be enough opportunities to acquire desired/desirable qualities in us.You are in the University which, I believe, is ‘dominated’ by positive attitude. You need to wait but make sure to assimilate all the good things done by good people during your four-year stay. Or, see if you will be in the condition to ask me this question after a year. I will come up with more concrete ‘personality development’ recipe.

With the ever-growing influence of informality in writing, is it still very important to focus on all the complexities of technicalities and grammar of English language?

If you mean formal communication, I will tell you YES. Most of our writings, still, are read and used by a generation born and brought up with rules on decency and manners in communication. So long as you communicate with them, and know that you will be in a danger of tickling their sense of propriety, be on your guard. Put aside the urge for informality and ease, and write by keeping the frowns of the grey-mustached oldies in mind. After all, they  never intended to turn our fine world of communication into ashes by setting some strict linguistic and technical parameters. Perhaps, we are claiming to enjoy more anarchy in the name of ease and ‘workability’ of what we write.

What difference does the accent of the non-native English speakers make in spoken English?

It may make some difference in the long-run, in the same way as slang is born, or dialects come to exist.

What difference how you speak English makes to people around you — the non-native English speakers? This is important. I think the native speakers have long ceased thinking how the accents of the likes of you and me influence ‘their’ language. Perhaps, the English you use is meant for your own circle. The effectiveness of your accent matters to this circle. What goes beyond is debatable.

What are the possible banana peels in the 1st year ENGT101 course?

Well, are you thinking, early enough, about slipping?

It depends.The biggest slip will be faced by one who keeps believing that being able to speak and write English makes all the communication skills. The ‘write-as-much-as-you-know’ attitude gives you the first peel. ENGT demands some formula, some priority, some system. I will devote one class about avoiding the falls. There is much to say about people who have not learned to walk, and a few specific tips for those who make strides or take unsteady steps.

But I enjoyed answering the questions. All the best all of you.

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Answering Students-III

Posted on March 15, 2017 by

As a part of learning how to write inquiry emails, I ask students to ask me questions. They can ask me whatever they would like to know about the course and myself. Some of the queries, such as the following, tend to probe into my personal life and convictions. And I try to respond them with openness and sincerity. I hope that the students learn the same extent of openness and sincerity in professional interactions.

At what age did you leave your home and get settled on your own?

I went to college when I was 18 and hardly got an opportunity after that to spend more than a fortnight at home. This does not mean I left home, but was in a process to build one (not house) for myself. I got settled on my own (financially) as soon as I joined teaching in 1994. I have not taken any money and any share of ancestral property from my parents since. I might inherit a small piece of family land along with my three brothers later when Father thinks it is time for us to have our shares. That’s all.

I grew self-dependent outside home. Then one fine day I realized I was too big to expect anything more than love and blessings from my parents.

Being someone from a government school background, what made you choose English as your major?

I hail from a time and place when first division holders were expected to join Science, not necessarily to pursue medicine or engineering, but to be Secondary level science and maths teachers. These people could command respect as smart, intelligent and capable of earning money through busy tuition classes during the send-up and SLC exams. I belonged to that category of youngsters with first division marks in SLC and a potential to go for science. But I chose Arts with English, Maths and Economics instead of Science, for two reasons. First, my father said he would not send me to Biratnagar to study Science because it cost as much as could be spent in the education of three of my siblings. Second, the combination of English and Maths would bring the same status in society as a teacher as would Science. So, remorselessly, I chose English and continued with it to where I am now. No regrets.

What are you most grateful for?

It depends. Grateful in what aspect of my life? I am grateful for having a very understanding better-half and intelligent kids. I am grateful for having some of the world’s most caring and selfless friends. I am grateful for having a competent and cooperative team of faculties to work with. I am also grateful for having a number of inquisitive and aspiring youngsters as students. Above all, I am grateful for the working environment that never allows me to slacken my spirit and to go to disuse too early.

Had you ever thought of being a professor when you were at the undergraduate level? What suggestions would you like to give to those who are really looking to make their future bright?

I knew I was going to be a teacher, or remain one because I was already teaching when I was in the undergraduate level. I knew I would complete my Masters and go headlong into university teaching. I never planned for a public service examination to be a government servant because I hated mugging up stale rules, regulations, laws and names of dead people and irrelevant stuffs which we call general knowledge. I know it was my weakness but I could simply not put up with this compulsion of backtracking rather than meeting new people and learning new things everyday.

My suggestion to those ‘looking to make their future bright’ is that they should keep their eyes, mind, and heart open about that time when they are entering a profession. Your generation cannot gamble with the ‘whatever-comes-my-way’ stake like I did. But it is equally good to remain prepared with a few competencies that help you enter and sustain in the professional world. Time will surely teach you these.

Are you happy so far with what you’ve achieved as being a teacher?

Partly happy; partly working ahead to be happier. I am a learner cum teacher. The process never ends, and perfection and satisfaction never meet. If you mean to ask happiness in relation with material gains, it is wise not to bring learning and earning there. Since in my profession learning and teaching are corollary achievements, material satisfaction gets pushed to a secondary position though it comes as we move ahead. To me, happiness is like what an artist or composer feels when his creation reaches an audience in some degree of perfection and acceptability. I want to feel that in being able to help you grow as happy  and successful individuals whom the society of your time remembers for your good deeds.

From your experience in teaching, what qualities do successful students in your courses possess?

I do not want to present here an exhaustive list, which would rather be idealistic than real. A successful student simply has very common qualities. But, at least five have so far seemed pertinent to me. The first is the willingness and courage to consult and confront with teachers, but not simply go around flattering and ‘buttering’ and then disregarding the one-time mentors once the classes and grading are over. Second, such students value class participation, and have high spirit of cooperation with classmates and teachers. Third, they want to present original works but  not copy ready-made mediocre or wrong stuffs from peers and websites. Fourth, they are regular and punctual and give equal priority to all the courses and assignments. Fifth, they are willing and able to accommodate all genuine suggestions and guidelines from teachers. Overall, they are conscious of their duties now and the outcomes of their sincere performances.

Do you think there is life after death?

I am already born in my two sons since both of them share my genes. I live in their faces, their limbs, their walks and their habits. They will carry me up to their progeny. This is my simple belief about life after death. I bet you will recognize this when they grow and you chance to see them without me.

 

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Stories That Unfold

Posted on March 6, 2017 by

A tall, sturdy fellow in oddly fitting school uniform enters my office and asks for audience. He says, “If you don’t mind, Mr. Kafle, may I ask you a favor?” I tell him to go ahead, and he begins in an impressively maintained accent made in America, “In fact, sir, I’m going through a difficult time here. You know, I’m much older than other kids, perhaps as old as you. So, it really tortures me to stand among them, and be noticed and marked inferior at this age. I hope, as a teacher you aren’t inexperienced in matters of handling students, and understand my condition. I mean you know I’d never be willing to join the Intermediate level at a time I should have joined a graduate course. These two years for me with these teenagers are going to be like two decades of imprisonment. Is it OK that I bring my assignments directly to you so that you’ll never have to make me stand up to explain my position in the class, among the kids?”

I tell him I would surely help him if he helped avoid the situation of being ‘noticed’ and ‘marked’. I tell him that I would still try to ensure that the other kids would not think I exempted him from all his responsibilities as a student.

This fellow, according to my senior colleagues who had been a part of the selection team that permitted him admission, had an interesting story. He passed SLC years ago and went to America with his well-off parents. He went on to join there some ‘soft’ courses at his choice and reached as far as he wanted. But his parents saw that this lad of theirs was not going to make any mark in the land of opportunities without being an engineer or a doctor like other kids of their family and family circle. He needed to study science at all costs, no matter how late, and thus was sent back to the homeland to earn a prestigious and highly selling I Sc degree of KU.

—

About five years after his graduation with B. Tech. in Biotechnology, one of my old students sends a friend request on Facebook and wishes to chat with me.

I accept the request, and he writes right away, “Sir, though very late, in fact more than eight years later, I wish to tell you a truth. Do you remember you took my interview for the I Sc admission? I know from that day that you’ve treated me unlike rest of the people in KU. While I moved around directionless, absented from classes and showed fits of irresponsibility, you alone did not scold or threaten me but inquired about me with smiles. Truly, I could never retain the personality with which I came – the happy, optimistic, handsome lad of Biratnagar – but ‘spoiled’ myself in the company I don’t want to blame even now. They still are my good friends and rescuers. Perhaps we all are a spoiled lot but happy to have been so. I’m sure you knew this. And you knew that I was even more dejected during my undergraduate. You taught me there also, and pardoned me for the same fits of irresponsibility. Now I have somehow changed; I am more responsible. When I look back to trace how this little sense of myself persisted, I see you among a few other people who contributed. I thank you for all this.”

I am a bit surprised, a little puzzled. I respond, “I thought even though a teacher’s being good to a student might not be enough to change him after he’s been ‘spoiled’, but surely keep him from going worse from bad. I’m happy to be credited thus, and to know that you’re happy, too. Thank you. Keep in touch.”

—

I receive a Facebook message with a request to be added to my friend list. I accept. It could be anyone of my former students – from Pashupati, Bagh Bhairab, Tahachal, Siddhartha, Sanjeevani, DMI, KU.

I love to be in touch with old students. Friend requests give a sense of being meaningfully remembered.

“Sir, Namaste, this is Y, someone you taught long ago. Remember me?”

I receive this message as soon as I add the fellow. “Hello, what a surprise! How are you, dear?” I write back.

The fellow goes silent, but I can see him writing – Facebook lets you know this. In about ten minutes I receive a long text in Romanized Nepali which would read like as follows in English.

I’m happy to be in your friend list. This gives me a chance to tell you finally I am sorry for what I did with you at school. I did more than what you know. I was probably a part of almost every mischief that you handled as a vice principal during those crazy days. Such as catching the boys with a bottle of water that smelled raksi; getting your office latched from outside while you were inside; hearing complaints from little girls about being pinched repeatedly by a ‘big brother’ and getting attacked for taking action against the same, etc. etc. That was me, sir. The school rusticated me since I deserved it. You might have seen me loitering violently around the school after the rustication. I had no regrets, then. I had no feeling for revenge. It was freedom, just freedom, I wanted to taste because I was not given it. But then I began to see how my parents were suffering because their only child was spoiled, recovered myself, and found a direction. I joined the private SLC and passed it, and went to college up to Bachelors. Those who saw me in those days will not believe that I have become what I am now. I have a shop of electronic goods close to the same school. It is running well. Sir, if you ever came to the town, please give me a call at …….. I would be happy to welcome you.

—

“Ay, sir. You must be punctual.”

“I’m sorry, I was stuck on the way. A public bus is sometimes ridiculous, you know. And I come from Kirtipur.”

“No, you can’t have excuses! See, everyone here comes by a local bus from somewhere as far as that.”

“But, not everyone comes as early and regularly as I do, do they?”

“No, you must be responsible. I have the right to say this. If you can’t be punctual, you can go.”

More….

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Spectacle, Aftermath and Awakening

Posted on January 28, 2017 by

By luck or chance, I am in a condition to speak of three earthquakes, which Nepalis who lived during the last eighty two years narrate with some familiarity and confidence.  As is natural for the people of my generation, the earthquake of 1934 came to my share only as a historical reality. I heard first-hand accounts of it from my grandparents, who lived 103 and 96 years, till a few years ago. But I did not sense much amazement or anguish in their description of the calamity. Their narratives sounded like the mention of a lightning or gush of wind – something that had just come and gone as a rule. The earthquake was one of the numerous ordeals they had undergone in their century-long survivals. It was perhaps less remarkable than other occurrences that had actually shaped their lives: malaria, smallpox, snakebites, falling off trees.

I experienced the earthquake that hit eastern Nepal in 1988. I was preparing for SLC send-up examinations around that time. It was the morning of August 21, when something that sounded like a hailstorm slowly approached our house and shook it from the ground to the roofs. The shouts of Grandfather confirmed that it was it. I had no fear, no revelation about the nature of the disaster until I began to hear stories of houses damaged and lives injured and killed.

Radio Nepal reported extensively about the losses in Udayapur, Sunsari and other neighboring districts. In my own place, the most shocking damage was of a three-story house of one of my classmates. The house had sunk to the ground burying two of my friend’s sisters and nephew. His younger sister was rescued alive. She lived visibly traumatized for a long time in my own neighborhood. After I saw this devastation and the condition of the girl who survived it, and heard of more deaths and damages in the surrounding places, earthquake went into my nerves.

But, like many people of my generation, I lived unawares for twenty seven succeeding years.  It never came to the extent of upsetting my understanding of life as it did early 2015.

Spectacle

April 25, 2015, was not a very good day, from the morning. It was misty and unusually cold, and unappealing by all measures. A Saturday of this type is a day wasted, for working people. My wife, who considered as ever that Saturday was her day with me, had from the morning expressed some discomfort. She knew that in such atmosphere of gloom it would be difficult for her to coax me into leaving home for some kind of family trip around Dhulikhel. Some instinct induced me to remind her that her mood resembled the atmosphere outside, and both indicated a sinister.

That day I was invited to join a hymn-singing troupe at the Naimisharanya shrine, which stood on the hilltop about one and half kilometers north from the Kathmandu University (KU) premises, my workplace and residence. My people were willing to join me in the walk uphill to participate in the singing and to take their time further uphill up to the tower. But going to the shrine was by no standards a tempting idea for me, and I was groping for a plea to avoid walking.

I proposed a new idea, which was to visit the residence of a colleague and friend who had kept his ailing nephew for treatment for some time.

The quake started just as we had finished sipping tea. It started like a light quiver that you feel when a child hops on the upper floor of a wooden house. It was unlike the ones that had come intermittently sometimes, because it intensified and lasted much longer. It reminded me at once of the message of earthquake-related programs and posters that had been in vogue in the recent years. I forgot for half a second that my wife was in the other room and the kids were with me. The safety instructions heard from the said programs and posters, which I had never cared to internalize, had vanished from my memory long ago and did not return when they were most needed now.

I tried in vain to open the door to the porch with a vague idea of escaping the house. I did not find the latch, for good. If I had, I would have jumped down with my boys and hurt or kill all of us in frenzy. So, I gathered the children in my arms and squatted by the sofa feigning to be able to hide our heads.  I constantly stared at the ceiling and the beam praying to God, for the first time in my life, that they would not crack and crash upon us.

My older boy was only a bit bewildered but carefully poised on my right. The younger chuckled under my left arm at the sudden joy of being shaken with the whole house. When I saw their faces in their bowed heads seconds later, there was no fear, no sense of death. There was just a confused smile. The innocence amid this sudden outbreak was somehow revealing and relieving. I wished I was as innocent.

The quake subsided and we rushed out. Only when all of us came to the open we realized it was a disaster far bigger. The house, because it had managed to stand unmolested, did not allow us to know how big the misfortune had been.

Out in the open more than a dozen people had already chanced to arrive and chant names of their respective gods. Two young females were taking turns to fall unconscious and get their senses back. Then aftershocks of various magnitudes shook the ground and crackled the RCT buildings of the neighborhood, giving the frightened ladies more reasons to scream and show fits of oblivion. A couple of students of medical sciences, who stayed at a hostel to the west-end of the opening, attended these untimely patients with water and good words.

I again valued the innocence that my boys had borne a couple of minutes before, which the spectacles outside were now causing to dwindle slowly.

The effect became intense outside. We could not move an inch for about half an hour. The rattling in adjacent houses made me anticipate that my own apartment could have turned into rubbles because the building where we lived was occasionally lampooned as the most poorly built among all of KU structures in Dhulikhel. I prayed if anything should remain untainted, it should be my laptop because it carried my life’s works.  What a wish!

Right then a youngster shouted in dismay that the Bhimsen tower in Kathmandu had fallen. Since it had fallen on Saturday, it meant a big calamity. There must have been several hundred climbers on and inside it and fallen flat to the ground with the falling structure.

A police officer jogged past the place warning us not to enter our houses without inspecting them sufficiently from outside. Suspense began to accumulate. But our apartment was about three hundred meters away through half a dozen houses that might crash on us if we dared to walk past.

The hilltop with the shrine, which we did not visit that day, was regarded by some myth-makers one of the epicenters of a soon-to-come earthquake. So, if my wife had remained adamant about walking uphill, we could have got an opportunity to behold one of those grotesque spectacles of trees swaying and houses quivering, crackling and falling to the ground. Then the myth could be confirmed for a reality, at least for some time.  Maybe my reflections on the disaster would lead a different perspective. [….]

FULL TEXT

[Published in Nepali Journal of Contemporary Studies, 15. 1-2 (Jan.-Dec 2015). 23-31]

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