Is Wikipedia reliable enough as source material for college textbooks?
Jose Carillo
September 5, 2009
Dear Fellow Communicators in English,
Is Wikipedia reliable enough as source material for college textbooks?
This question was raised by a Davao City-based student-writer as the very first posting in o ur special “Open Forum on the State of Education and Teaching in the Philippines .” Six initial postings in all kicked off the special forum to a lively start, and among the earliest postings were that of a university professor observing that teachers of English in the Philippines have such a weak command of English themselves, a retired marine biologist proposing that improving research performance is essential to real academic reform, and a Forum member who believes that grade-school pupils in the 1960s were brainwashed to think that the national language was Pilipino and that their own regional languages were mere dialects.
Now that the special forum is off and running, do feel free to respond anytime to particular postings that interest you or to post a new topic for discussion yourself. Of course, after your visit to the special forum, don’t miss reading the rest of the exciting package of features and readings that we’ve come up for you this week
THIS WEEK IN THE FORUM (September 5–11 , 2009): · Special Forum: The State of Education and Teaching in the Philippines (A good cross-section of the Forum membership get the discussions to a lively start) · You Asked Me This Question: Should Lawyers Casually Say “Plea of Guilty” and “Plea of Innocent”? (I say “No,” they aren’t exempt from the rules when it comes to grammar) · Essays by Jose Carillo: The Nature of True Idioms (The practice of some newspaper reporters to fiddle with idioms is misguided, to say the least) · Advice and Dissent: Critic Says Google’s Book Search “A Disaster for Scholars” (Its metadata are a train wreck and a real mess, he says) · Going Deeper into English: Fighting the Good Fight Against Bad English (Online wordsmiths do battle with irritating cliches, awful grammar, and bad spelling) · News and Commentary: Web Social Networks Making Students More Narcissistic, Study Indicates (But this strong attention-seeking may not be all that bad, others say) · Time Out from English Grammar: Twin Vexations: Cryptomnesia and Poor Face-to-Face Communication Skills (Plagiarism is on the rise and sensitivity to nonverbal cues plunges in our increasingly web- and text-dependent world) · Social Advocacy: “Television Shows Have Blurred the Line Between Tasteful, Distasteful Language” (Should blabbermouths be role models for the way to speak?) · Media Release: Jose Carillo’s “Give Your English The Winning Edge” Now Available (You deserve that edge after working long and hard to master English)
See you at the Forum!
With my best wishes,
Joe Carillo We e-mail this free update to regular readers of Jose Carillo’s English Forum. If you’re on our mailing list by mistake or don’t want to continue receiving this update, simply e-mail a note to us with the word “Unsubscribe.” Thank you. Where do you want to go today?
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