I was a Legal Management major who shifted to Interdisciplinary Studies in my third year at the Ateneo. I could not balance the accounting books even if my whole life depended on it. The only thing I wanted to do was to go to the Rizal Library every afternoon, stand in front of the books in the PS 9991 category, and read the books of the best Philippine writers. One day, I told myself, I will also publish my own book. One book would be enough. That semester, I enrolled in a class on Modern Poetry. Our room was on the third floor of Bellarmine Building, 4:30-7:30. The teacher arrived in a brown jacket, his hair tousled by the wind. He was Professor Emmanuel Torres. Before this class, I had read books of essays and fiction, but rarely poetry. I found poems impenetrable. But Professor Torres simply made me see. He had that quality that many English teachers lacked – passion. He was brilliant, of course, but he also had passion for the subject that he was teaching. It was the kind of passi...

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...