The Magic Juice and the Art of Tooth Extraction

When I read the story " Ay! May Bukbok ang Ngipin ni Ani! (Ani has a bad tooth) to Mabie, she was scheduled to go to the dentist that afternoon. So I had to be very careful in pointing out several facts that the story reveals about dentists and the experience of having ones teeth extracted. It was good that she was very interested with the story. But to be honest, when she browsed the pages of the book, she told me that I'll be tired reading that since it was too long (at least for her). I told her that even thought I had just recovered from sore throat, I can manage to finish reading the story aloud. She was then eager to listen to the story and she was so curious about the part when the dentist was trying to explain how he will pull out Ani's teeth, as if it will be a delightful experience. Mabie saw the drawing of the injection so she became anxious about her scheduled appointment with the dentist. She asked if what the story says about the bad tooth being caused to sleep by the magic juice (aka anaesthesia) was true. Of course, I had to keep in mind that it is not proper for me to give an explanation that will change the schema of Mabie (about the injection and the bad tooth) in a negative way. She really had to go to the dentist and the story that I read to her should encourage her not to be afraid of having her teeth extracted. Fortunately, the writer of the book was sensitive and creative to explain medical processes in such an imaginative way.

"Ate! Mag-read na tayo ng story!"

In the days that I had read to Mabie, I've came to realize how fond my cousin is of code-switching. She tend to code-switch at any chance that she got. She often use the Filipino verb tense morphemes "nag-" and "mag" like "nagbrubrush ng teeth" and "magreread ng story" . I tried to do some readings on code-switching and I found out that the way my cousin code-switches falls under the mechanism called nonce borrowing where in she would use English words together with tagalog affixes. This comes from the framework of Poplack ad Sakoff (1988). Their theory included 3 other mechanisms, which, however, were not exhibited in the speech of Mabie. The other mechanisms involved a greater control of both the two languages, for instance, the mechanism of smooth switching where in one may code-switch between syntactic boundaries which occur in both languages. (Poplack and Sankoff, 1988). Since Mabie still needs a longer period and more efforts before she fully acquires English as her second language, it is not surprising that she is able to codeswithch only by borrowing a grammatical unit or a word. Nevertheless, I was astounded by the fact that the way this young girl speaks is so similar with the way other college girls speak. I intentionally asked Mabie why she said things like "magreread" instead of "magbabasa", and all I got from her were utterances showing that she was either clueless or hesitant to answer my question. Code-switching seems to be one deeply-rooted linguistic habits among Filipinos, to the point that my young cousin is also employing code-switching as her communication strategy (if we try to look at it at the positive side.) However, there are chances that code-switching makes someone sound as if he or she needs to polish on his or her diction. In the case of my cousin, since all of the code-switching that she did involved a switch between a Filipino morpheme to an English verb, it can be concluded that at the time that she spoke those words, the English word first came to her mind (we can assume that she knew the Filipino word for "read", etc.) thus it was more convenient or easier for her just to say "mag-reread" instead of "magbabasa". Thus, Mabie may be employing a mechanism of code-switching in order to more easily express herself.

Poplack, Shana and David Sankoff. (1988). "Code-switching". In Ulrich Ammon, Norbert Dittmar, and Klaus Mattheier, eds., Sociolinguistics: An international handbook of the science of language and society, second vol., 1173-1180. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

"Tumaba Ang Puso"

I was faced with a difficulty on how to explain the Filipino idiomatic expression "tumaba ang puso" to Mabie. She quickly pointed out that it was one of the expressions she couldn't understand in the story Filemon Mamon (which I soon found out that it was actually a story for kids 9-10, so it had been really difficult for Mabie to fully understand it). She first attempted to explain to me the way she understood the expression. "Di ba kapag kumain ng madaming taba at matamis, tataba yung puso at aatakihin sa puso?", she curiously inquired. (She has a concept of heart attack because our 12 years old cousin died of it as a result of being born a blue baby.) I had to explain to her that the expression 'tumaba ang puso' mean something like "became very happy, and touched because you realized that people love you". Of course, there is more to that expression than my reductive explication of it. So I decided to give some typical situations where in people actually experience the feeling of "tumaba ang puso". I cited the way we feel whenever our best friends give us a special gift, or when our family cheer for us when we are performing in stage. After that, Mabie said that she got the meaning of the expression but at the latter part of the reading session, she insisted again that Filemon, the main character, must not eat the 'yema' that seemed to haunt him at night because they would cause him to have a "matabang puso" which may lead to heart attack. (here we go again T*T) I had to explain what the expression means the second time..^^ After a few days, I asked her if she remembers what the expression mean, and surprisingly she gave me a pretty good situation in which she may actually feel "pagtaba ng puso". She told me that if I give her one of the Rapunzel Barbie series for her coming birthday, which will add to the nine Barbie dolls that she already have, she will surely feel happy and touched enough to say that she experienced the feeling of "tumaba ang puso" I'm not sure if she is just giving me a hint of what she wants to receive on her birthday or she really understood the idiomatic expression. ^^

Intonation Patterns

I was very glad to notice that Mabie knew how to use the proper suprasegmental features while reading a story. She knew the right intonation pattern for a declarative and interrogative sentences and she knew how to exaggerate a sentence in the exclamatory form. For instance, while reading the repeated questions of the main character in the story "The Amazing Hat", Mabie used a rising intonation for the question "Is may hat pretty?" . And she quickly shifted to the proper intonation pattern for declaratives as she read the responses of the other characters. She also read the statement "Charge!, Filemon shouted!" from the story FilemonMamon, with emphasis with the exclamatory sentence, as she made her voice louder and uttered it with a longer period of time, compared to the rest of the sentence. However, there were some inconsistencies with the way Mabie exhibited the use of suprasegmentals. Whenever she couldn't understand the meaning of a sentence, she tend to read in a more or less flat tone when the sentence actually requires either a rising or falling intonation. Because of this, it can be concluded that suprasegmental features can be a factor in checking the reading comprehension of children. Whenever they get the meaning of a statement, they are likely to read it with the expected intonation pattern. Thus when asking a child to read a story, we can check if they are comprehending what they reading not only through a reading comprehension test after they have finished reading but also through listening to the way they read the lines of the characters in the story.

Mabie and the Disney Channel

Mabie, at a vey young age, is able to understand imperatives, questions and simple statements in English, both in oral and written forms. She also has the proficiency to understand most parts of a TV program in English, especially those for children. Her younger brother, Ernest, thous less proficient than Mabie, somehow also shows appreciation of TV shows in English and both of these siblings are fond of repeating lines uttered by their favorite cartoon . And a lot of times, these two youngsters surprise our family by uttering those lines in a more or less proper context. When asked why her children are able to use the funny lines of cartoon characters in a proper situation, my aunt told me that Mabie and Ernest almost do nothing but watch the Disney Channel everyday, especially during summer vacation. I observed that they were really glued to the the TV when they got to see the faces of the Powerpuff girls, The Titans, or Tom and Jerry flashed in the screen. Mabie often copy the lines of Buttercup, while Ernest often humorously imitate the way Johnie Bravo or Spiderman speak. It is observable that these children learn a second langaueg through exposure to it in school and at home, particularly through media. Though they say that books are still the best way for children to develop language and litreacy, it wouldn't hurt to say that TV programs for children may also be a big help for them to improve their phonological skills and widen their vocabu;aries. I can observe that my cousins pick up a lot of vocabularies from these programs. As a wishful thinkng, I do hope that by more exposure to children programs, they will be able to acquire the accents of the characters in the TV shows. But form what I observe, it may actually take a longer time and greater efforts before they acquire an English native-like accent. They still speak English with a Filipino-English accent (just like I do!). Not that I am saying that there's something wrong with that

Focus, Mabie! Focus!!

My aunt, the mother of my cousin Mabie, told me that I'll probably have a difficult time sustaining the attention of Mabie while we are reading. She usually wants to skip pages and just look at the illustrations and go directly to the end of the story. I thought I could find a solution to her "attention-span problem" by using books with interesting and colorful pictures but I was wrong because she did what she normally does. She turned the pages and asked me to go directly to the last page. This was the first time I read to her. I expected that she will be doing the same for the rest of the reading sessions, but surprisingly she didn't. Analyzing why she did that the first time I read to her, I realized that a part of the reason was that the book I used which was titled "The Amazing Hat" involves so much repetition and patterns. these devices, one one aspect, are helpful for children to comprehend a text. But on the other hand, it may be observed in the case of Mabie that once she recognize the patterns, she tend to lose interest. If we look at the story "The Amazing Hat", the characters almost said the same thing to the young girl Mia. "Yes, Mia, but it(the hat) will look lovelier if we put something on it". Then Mia also replied in a similar manner. Mabie may have quickly realized what the plot is, so she was just interested to see what happened in the end. However, the our other reading sessions, when I used books that do not involve a lot of patterns, and books whose plot may have been more exciting for Mabie (just like the story "Ani has a Bad Tooth"), she listened attentively until I have reached the end of the story. She looked at the pictures, and paid attention to my narration, as well. And when asked questions about these stories, she was able to answer more correctly compared to her answers to my questions after I read to her the first time.It was interesting to find out that a more complicated plot interested her more than a plot that involved so much pattern, which seemed to bore her.