By Danton Remoto The Business Mirror Front Page www.businessmirror.com.ph This series of columns has been commissioned by the Britisi insurer, Pru-Life, for its Planet English project to promote the use of English and to encourage English writing in the Philippines. *** THE Philippines is still the third-largest English-speaking country in the world. But more and more, we have to qualify this statement. Does it mean a deep knowledge of English, or functional English just enough to get by? And what does this statement mean—that there is only one kind of English in the world? Linguists and language specialists have concluded that there is nothing wrong with code-switching, i.e., using English and Tagalog, when discussing difficult concepts in subjects like science and math. Moreover, they found out that students in their early years (Grades 1 to 2) learn concepts better when they are taught in their native languages. In short, one’s first tongue—or the language one has imbibed like mot...

The Business Mirror www.businessmirror.com.ph Front Page This article forms part of a series on the importance of English language and writing commissioned by the British insurer Pru-Life UK. The series is published every Monday on the front page of Business Mirror. *** In her introduction to Stories, Kerima Polotan said: “Life scars the writer but he is not without weapons of vengeance. The art [of writing] is a prism that he can use to refract human experience. That one can write about something gives him courage to endure it; that he has written about it gives him, if not deeper understanding, some kind of peace. In other words, the writer is first a human being before he is anything else, prone, like much of mankind, to fits of joy and pain. What happens to those around him – and yes, to him – is legitimate material, but only if he is able to illumine it with a special insight.” I enrolled at the Ateneo for a Management degree, but my heart was not in it. Every day I went to the Ri...