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SHORTLY before the Holy Week, a reader, Roquito Lorenzo, forwarded
to me YouTube links and a transcript of the much-talked-about
fumbling response of beauty contest aspirant Janina San Miguel in
the interview portion of the recent Binibining Pilipinas contest.
His e-mail came with the following question:
“As an advocate of the English language, what
can you say about it, sir?
“I find it really disgusting, and I believe
it’s the result of our country’s shift from English to Pilipino
as the medium of instruction. I think we need to go back to the use
of English as a medium of instruction in all school levels.”
Here’s my open reply to Roquito:
What really happened
Like many other Filipinos, I share your
disappointment that Ms. San Miguel’s remarks in English fell far
below what we expect from someone aspiring for international
recognition. But before we condemn her and before we generalize on
her performance as a reflection of our declining English proficiency
as a people, let us pause for a while and examine what really
happened during that interview from a language standpoint.
As we can see from the YouTube footage, one of
the beauty contest judges, Ms. Vivienne Tan, posed this question to
Ms. San Miguel based on a script: “The question is, what role did
your family play to you as candidate to Binibining Pilipinas?”
Now, as one who had managed the development of
hundreds of English-language proficiency tests for many years, I can
tell you that that this question is terribly flawed both
grammatically and semantically. Worse, it’s a highly unfocused
question calling for an abstract answer—one that’s guaranteed
not to elicit a quick, lucid, and straightforward response no matter
how intelligent, alert and fluent in English the respondent might
be.
Ano daw?
Try some role-playing and imagine yourself in
Ms. San Miguel’s shoes being asked that same question: “What
role did your family play to you as candidate to Binibining
Pilipinas?” I would imagine that if you are a nonnative English
speaker like me, you’d first try to make sense of its fractured
grammar by translating it into Tagalog like, say, “Anong papel ang
nilaro ng pamilya mo sa iyo bilang kandidato sa Binibining Pilipinas?”
That doesn’t seem to make much sense either,
so in panic, you’d probably try to mentally correct the grammar of
the original question to make it more amenable to a decent answer.
If you are lucky to be rhetorically capable in English, you’d
probably end up with this grammar-perfect question: “What role did
your family play in your quest for the Binibining Pilipinas
crown?”
Even if the question is expressed this clearly,
however, it still wouldn’t admit simple particulars for an
answer—only abstract ones or tags. After so many agonizing
seconds, the best you’d probably come up with are lame,
unconvincing answers that play on the word “role” in the context
of movies and movie stars. In your heart, of course, you’d know
that you won’t sound convincing with answers like those, for the
simple reason that normal people—whether gunning for a beauty
crown or just applying for a much-coveted entry-level job—don’t
talk in that highfalutin way.
Janina was stumped
I thus have this feeling that Ms. San Miguel was
stumped not so much because of English inadequacy or the jitters,
but because the question she was asked was so badly phrased and was
too vague, too abstract, and too difficult to answer. Answering that
question would require a very strong rhetorical flair that normally
couldn’t be expected from a 17-year-old nonnative speaker of
English. Indeed, I challenge readers disgusted by her performance to
role-play for exactly 60 seconds—never mind changing to a
one-piece bathing suit or swimming trunks or imagining yourselves on
camera for a nationwide audience—and come up with a sensible
answer to that question.
I’d be delighted to take up the three most
convincing answers in the next column.
j8carillo@yahoo.com
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