THE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION INAUGURAL - A REPORT

The Activities of the English Association for the academic year 2010 - 11, were inaugurated today by Dr.Ms.Deepika Subramanian, Head, Marketing and Training, BEC-India, British Council, Chennai, in the presence of our Principal Dr.Alexandar Jesudasan.

Dr.Felix Moses speaks

The programme began with a nice poetic prayer by Dr.Franklin Daniel, followed by the Head Dr.Felix Moses, who welcomed the gathering, and observed that, 'Today marks the beginning of a new initiative - the training programme to be offered by the Dept of English, in association with the British Council. We hope to make a lot of progress in this direction. Two of our staff members have been trained for this purpose by the British Council, Chennai," he added.

Dr.Alexander Jesudasan speaks

The Principal, in his inaugural address, talked on the importance of the English language in communication today, and emphasized the importance of the BEC Exams for better employability. He noted that, "Our mother tongue is not English but what happens eventually is that, we try to learn English to communicate with people. Neither are we confident in our mother tongue, nor in our target language - English." He said it was amazing to see the extraordinary demand among students, to join a course in BA/MA English Literature over the past few years." 

He added that, "The Cambridge Business English Certificate, is being offered by Cambridge University, and that the University is 801 years old. It is the second oldest in England and the seventh oldest in the world. BEC, he said serves to "complement" the student's fundamental knowledge of literature. Today, we are moving into a world where communication is of great importance. Our students are picked up like hot cakes in the job market, for the simple reason that their communication skills are exemplary and it makes sense too. The start of the BEC programme is one more feather in the cap of the Dept of English. To scale up our performance, this BEC is a soliciting exercise. In the past two decades many rural students joined our college without any initiation into communication skills, but soon became masters of communication, and rose up to occupy prestigious posts at the national and at the international level.

Dr.K.Ganesh speaks

Dr.K.Ganesh, President of the English Association, then proceeded to introduce the Chief Guest , and also introduced the Chairperson and the Secretary of the Department for this current academic year.

  

"A few words about the Chief Guest: Ms.Deepika studied at Ethiraj College, and completed an MBA in Strategic Management in the UK and holds a PhD from the US. She has worked in the UK, USA and France for 12 years and returned to India in 2005. At the British Council, she heads Exams - Marketing & Training. Her role involves extensive travel across India, understanding the educational needs across regions. Currently, she manages the largest project, The South East Asia's British Council IELTS Scholarship - 20 scholarships on offer across six countries."

The Chief Guest of the day, Ms.Deepika observed: 'I used to absolutely envy this wonderful place - the environs, professors, students, as i used to be a part of the drama troupe of Prof.Rajani, the legendary theatre personality, and then Professor of English, MCC. Talking about the yawning gap between employability and communication skills, she said that the industry has been trying to bridge this gap. With the growth of the IT sector, the demand has only fuelled the need further. British Council's key project - "Project English" provides quality English language teaching and training, from primary learners to advanced corporate users, which is at the heart of what we do in India and Sri Lanka," she said.

 

Chief Guest of the Day Ms.Deepika speaks

Expanding on the current projects being done by the British Council, she spoke on "Project English" which was launched in the year 2007 with the aim of reaching millions of teachers and learners of English in India and Sri Lanka with the aim of providing them with access to the best educational resources from the UK. Under the project, we are currently working with partners to develop English language teaching and improve communication skills of young people connecting industry and education sectors so as to facilitate a better understanding of each other's needs and priorities," she added, while stressing on the need to address this big gap. "The reason for IELTS Test's popularity today is because it is skill based - on how you understand, assimilate, process and produce it. How you and I fit into the social fabric of an English speaking country. This exam is primarily focused on outbound students. Unlike BEC, which is primarily an English Communication skill which equips you with a lot of confidence. It just gives you additional confidence and the recognition factor, and an uniform platform for employees to assess you. China is racing ahead of us - the government there has stepped in to impart communication skills to all its citizens, - Spoken English, which is quantifiable," she said. Ms.Deepika also had a word of praise for the Literary Activities of the English Association, and said that even the British Council frequently conducts similar Creative Workshops." She ended her speech with a plea to the students to make use of the resources of the British Council to the fullest."

I BSc Pbt/Zoo I CIA Marks - Reg.:

Dear Students of I BSc Pbt/Zoo(Reg),

Your I CIA Answer Sheets will be distributed to you personally, in the S-220 Classroom, at 8.30 am on Friday, 17 September 2010.

A copy of the same will also be displayed, on this, our academic blog on the same day.

Clarifications, if any, can be made to me, personally or by email on or before Friday, 24 September 2010.

Regards and all best wishes,

Rufus
A Note on Valuation Methodology Used:
I look for clarity of expression, presentation and development of your argument in a logical manner, and also for proper sentence structure.
Over-writing has been penalised, yet minimally.
Observation of Word limit criterion has also been looked into.
Grammatical accuracy has been given weightage.
Relevant illustrations, [examples] have been awarded generously.
[Accurate] Quotes and [precise] dates have been appreciated.
Coherence, which makes your sentences hold together, and clarity of thought [clear language]  have been fairly rewarded.
Neatness gives you an additional bonus of one mark.
Remember, symbols like '&' should be avoided at all costs in the examinations, as they can never substitute for the word they seem to represent.!
Last but not the least, numbering all your pages makes my work less complicated!

Well, A bird is known by his note, the man by his words and a student, by his performance.
And that's what i expect from you... dear students...!
Regards and all best wishes,
Rufus

POSTMODERNISM - Excerpts from the Lecture..:

Excerpts from the Lecture on Postmodernism, by Dr.ASD Pillai on 04 September 2010.

Most of the societies in the United States have entered the Post industrial stage. First, there was the Pre-industrial, then the Industrial stage, and then the Post-industrial times.

In the Industrial age, we depended on the machines. Now highly developed societies have entered the post industrial age. The chief occupation of man is to process information and knowledge. Now you find less and less industries, and more and more people working on computers. Machine technology has now been replaced by Industrial technology. During Industrial times, industrialised nations were characterised by availability of raw materials and cheap labour. Today in the Post-industrial age our raw material is information and knowledge, and this has transformed the nature of knowledge.

What is produced, sold and bought is not goods but knowledge. [Like you buy soap and powder]. That is why the Postmodern society is also called knowledge society or information society. Today knowledge has become a commodity, which you can buy or sell, and that has greatly affected education today.

Formerly, nations were fighting for territory. Now they fight for data banks. Hereafter databanks must not be stolen. So, there is a need to protect and govern knowledge. So, knowledge and governance go together.

There are two kinds of knowledge:

1. Traditional knowledge from our own folk tales, epics, puranas, which are otherwise called as narrated knowledge.

2. Scientific knowledge - which always insists on proving whether your knowledge is correct or not. In the former, nobody wants to prove it, but in scientific knowledge, you've got to prove your point. Scientific knowledge is characterised by verification. "The savage mind is equal to the civilised mind", says Claude Levi-Strauss.

So scientific knowledge considered itself superior to narrative knowledge and the Westerners brought scientific knowledge. So the West considered themselves superior to the Non-West. That is how their domination over the East was born.

Postmodernism signifies the fall of science and the fall of Western society and its cultural institutions. Whether there is a fall or not, there is a rethinking.

Science itself has changed somewhere in the 1960s. Virginia Woolf said that human nature changed in 1910. But human nature changed originally in the 1960s. because it was at this time that all these great things were happening in science. Somewhere in the 1960s, science underwent a great crisis because of certain books - by J.F.Lyotard, T.Kuhn and Feyerabend.

You can look at the Postmodern condition from various dimensions. My friend said that MCC has got four gates. Well, Postmodernism has got 14 gates..!!! Architecture being one of the firsts among them. Malcolm Bradbury introduced me to the agony and the ecstasy of Postmodernism.

T.Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Paul Feyerabend's Against Method (1975), these two books, they did science in. We all think that scientific knowledge is accurate. For the first time they proved that it is not possible to prove anything accurately in this world. How did they do it? through the field of Microphysics. "Can you completely describe the cowness of a cow?"

The very presence of man disturbed the structure. Can you give a 100% accurate census of Madras city? Absolutely not. This whole scenario was brought out beautifully by

Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle - Structuralism took over from this point. The perceiver alters the perceived object at least in a minimal way. If this is true of science, what about social science? - where there's less accuracy. Light - we are not sure whether it is a particle. Normally, as accuracy increases, uncertainty, indeterminacy decreases. But, John Bered argued that when accuracy increases, uncertainty also increases. So, there's no such thing as determinacy in science. Contrary to what we think, scientists are also exchanging ideas about nature, like philosophers and social thinkers do.

Thomas Kuhn talks about "Paradigm Shift". The phrase that's commonly used whenever you study Postmodernism. The phrase "Paradigm Shift" is taken from science. Scientific discovery, scientific growth is continuous. It is not addictive. It is discontinuous, catastrophic, paradoxical.

What is a Paradigm Shift? At one point of time, one scientific theory rules the whole world. Many experiments will be conducted in the light of this theory. But still, certain questions remain unanswered. Then a new theory comes. Before Copernican theory came, there was a Ptolemic theory.

"This world is beyond all your philosophies put together" - Hamlet.

Newton's theory was replaced by Einstein's. Hence, all scientific theories are additive. "Science is producing not the known, but the unknown. It goes on creating new mysteries", says T.Kuhn in Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

This is the first, of a five-part series on Postmodernism, delivered by Dr.ASD Pillai at MCC. The rest will follow soon...!

Be A Better Writer: Three Considerations - An Exclusive Guest Post for our Blog.:

As a composition teacher, I discovered that my students were most frustrated by assignments that failed to give them some sort of context in which to situate their own writing. Too often they felt that academic writing was isolated and irrelevant. As a result, they had been writing rather uninspired essays in order to simply earn a mark. Certainly they had a solid understanding of writing; however, that solid understanding had also somewhat limited their potential to grow into better writers.

What follows are the three considerations I often shared with my students in order to help them better relate academic writing to the greater activity of their lives. I hope these considerations may be of some use to you as well.

1 Consider Your Purpose

Of course, you write in order to earn academic credit, but that’s not the only reason you write. You must also keep in mind that you write in order to explore an idea, to communicate an idea to an audience, or to persuade someone that your idea is worthwhile. If your professor asks you to analyze a speech, then your purpose is to show him that you understand specific rhetorical techniques and can explain how those techniques operate by using textual evidence. If your instructor asks you why grammar is important to the study of language, then you must compose an argument and support that argument with reasons and evidence.

Each prompt requires a certain task, and your writing must match that task with a certain purpose. Think of your purpose as a student: to improve as a critical thinker. Writing aids you in that purpose.

2 Consider Your Audience

As you complete your assignments, try to think of the audience for whom you write. Try to think of an audience that’s more specific than a general academic audience. For instance, your professor makes up part of your audience. As do your classmates. These people participate in a learning community, of which you are an active member, so thinking of them as an audience makes sense.

The knowledge that these people--with whom you often interact--will read your essay should help you write honestly and carefully. And such awareness will help you in the future when you put your communication skills to use in your career.

3 Consider Your Genre

While many genres of academic essays share similar characteristics, you’ll still want to consider how genre affects your writing. Return to the examples I suggested earlier. Both a rhetorical analysis of a speech and a persuasive essay on the importance of grammar make arguments in some way; however, how they do so--what expectations of genre they meet--will vary. A rhetorical analysis will heavily rely upon extensive quoting and interpretation of textual evidence, while a persuasive essay might use many kinds of evidence in order to appeal to an audience. If you turn in a rhetorical analysis with few quotations excerpted, most likely you have not done enough to achieve your essay’s purpose.

This guest post is contributed by Olivia Coleman, who writes on the topics of online colleges and universities. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: olivia.coleman33 @gmail.com.

Teachers' Day - Special Wish for all our Teachers..:

5th September - The day that commemorates the birthday of the greatest alumnus of Madras Christian College - Dr Sarvepalli Radhakhrishnan, a philosopher and a teacher par excellence, who studied in our great and invincible College for five long years - which, as he has later acknowledges, had laid the strong foundations for his future dynamism as the leader of this great country, and for his immense contribution to the Indian education system.

Dr Radhakhrishnan believed that "teachers should be the best minds in the country". On this great day, we gratefully remember this, our great educationist, apart from honoring all the teachers who have made our lives much more brighter and enlightened in all facets of our life.

Thank you dear Teachers! It is impossible to imagine our lives without you! You are the cornerstone of our future. We can never thank you enough, dear teachers, for your immense love, dedication and encouragement in our lives. Today, it is our duty to celebrate and show our acknowledgement and recognition of the hard work put in by you - towards our development. Thank you dear Teachers.

Dr.ASD Pillai being welcomed by Dr.K.Ganesh for the Guest Lecture Series..:

Dr.K.Ganesh, extending a warm welcome to Dr.ASD Pillai

Dr.ASD Pillai in the first session...

Dr.ASD Pillai giving a thought-provoking, enlightening and absorbing lecture on Postmodernism at Martin Hall Auditorium, MCC, Saturday, 04 September 2010

Actor Nassar Interacting with Students @ Selaiyur Hall [03 Sep]

Actor-Director-Writer Nassar @ Selaiyur Hall, MCC

Guest Lecture for Students of English Literature...:

Dear Students of English Literature,

We invite you for the third in a series of Guest Lectures by eminent Academicians.

Dr.ASD Pillai, a world-renowned exponent of Postmodernism, and an illustrious student of the influential British literary critic F.R.Leavis, is giving a special lecture on Postmodernism, as part of your preparations for the UGC-NET Exams.

Venue: Martin Hall Auditorium

Date: Saturday, 04 September 2010

Time: 9:30 - 12:30 pm (3 hrs)

The session will be inaugurated at 9:30 am by Dr.K.Ganesh, Reader in English, & President of our English Association.

There will be a refreshment break midway, and also a time for personal interaction and discussion.

All of you are invited...! Be there!

Regards, Rufus