Tagalog Essays

[Gabby Dreher]

WilliamHenry Scott's book, Looking for the Hispanic Filipino and Other Essays in Philippine History, is practically a collection of essays that deals with various topics regarding the prehistory of the Philippines. The book is composed of eleven (11) essays each being either a study previously published in various journals or chapters of edited books. Each essay deals with specific themes but all have one common denominator: correcting errors and misconceptions that have been written in history books and being taught to every Filipino who has ever gone to school.

Scott utilized the documentations found in the Spanish archives and the very same resources that previous historians used and he was able to provide new perspectives on the issue of Philippine prehistory. Scott was likewise able to provide evidences that disproves various misconceptions about our pre-colonial past as well as provide new interpretations to specific "truths" that have long been accepted in the discussion of Philippine history.

There is only one premise for the book: there is always the need to re-read the historical documents that historians have previously utilized to tell the story of the Filipino people and to pore over translated documents to arrive at new conclusions and interpretations. Historians often take for granted sources that have been utilized by other scholars, thinking that there is "nothing new to see in there" (as what Ambeth Ocampo was told when he tried to re-read Rizal's novels from the National Library. This philosophy and practice creates inaccuracies because sources that have been interpreted are not re-interpreted and validated using cross-references from other sources that may have potential links to the source in question. However, based from what Scott and Ocampo both discovered, there is always a "new story" in these old story books.

As you read on, you will not only learn Tagalog but also realize just how easy it is to write essays in Tagalog. After this, your Tagalog writing and overall communication skills should improve a lot!

After completing your research and answering the questions you have in your mind, you can now proceed to drafting (pagbabalangkas) your essay. This process is so important because it gives you time to organize your thoughts and ideas into a concise structure. If you skip this step, your essay is sure to come out disorganized, with different topics all jumbled up in each other.

Incorporating these words and phrases into your Tagalog essays will not only improve the quality of your writing but also demonstrate a higher level of language proficiency. Remember, the key to effectively using advanced vocabulary is understanding the context in which each word or phrase is most appropriately used.

The bulk of the essays first saw print in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Reading them now, fifty years later, is like encountering a trove of snapshots from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Things that we now take for granted were not always there from the beginning, and things we thought would be with us forever have now disappeared.

The Spanish word for gang is pandilla; but when we preferred to adapt barkada, which means boatload, were we unconsciously moved by the memory of a time when being together in a boat made people not simply co-passengers but near-kinsmen, almost brothers, pledged to live and work together, to fight and die for each other? That was the idea of the barangay; and our young folk have expressed, in a Spanish word, an ancient Malay concept.

During the debut days of the sandwich in the 1930s, hostesses, following the American custom, inserted a lettuce leaf in each sandwich; the guests, mystified by that wilted leaf in the bread, surreptitiously pulled it out and threw it away. The great Filipino horror of greens proved stronger than even the fear of starvation during the war years, when Manila mothers at the markets could be heard wailing in chorus that, even though there was nothing to eat, their children refused to eat gulay!

This magic lantern of a book, with its vivid slide shows of Philippine fads and fashions, reveals the important role that the thoughts and actions of ordinary, anonymous Filipinos play in making and remaking Philippine history and society.

This is an intermediate class with emphasis on the four basic skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The course uses the functional-situational approach in learning a language.The students will learn four necessary skills in the effective use of Filipino: paglalahad (defining and explaining); paglalarawan (describing a person, place, or feelings); pagsasalaysay (narrating a story); and pangangatwiran (arguing). The vocabulary of the student is expanded through sample dialogues and short essays. Each lesson shall have several components: reading a text to increase vocabulary and study grammatical structures; engaging in role-play; listening and writing a short dialogue (eight lines) or a short paragraph (four to five sentences). Other classroom techniques are games, songs, and pair work.

3a8082e126