The Teacher

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."

~ William Arthur Ward (1921-1994)

Teachers should avoid clutter- keep the audience in mind. The audience is nobody else but your students. the class is about them and only them. No artist would dare place all of his painting's elements on one side of the painting and hence no teacher shoukd prepare a lesson thinking only about curricullum without analyzing the needs of the students, be it IQ or EQ.

Balance the contents so that the audience has a feeling of interest; just imagine yourself as being one of them. Would you really come to see yourself teach.... . Build up different parts of the class set, and when students moves to a different 'level' of interest or boredom, you will have the right move in your set ready to tackle them. If done subtly and prepared to the best of one's ability, the audience would not notice the shift, class will go on, they and you will enjoy it and you might just be the one that inspires others through teaching.

Trying and Living

I will try
I will do
I will win and I will lose
hoping always.. for continous win
plannning and at times scheming
I will try and I will do
I will do and I will try
and I will rectify and I will fly
sometimes... and cry the unseen tears
as i will try and try and do and do
as that is life, you try and do as the tryings and doings are waht life is all about
happy will you be if there are mostly smiles at te end of your endeavours
as happy folks will smile and smile whatever the outcome of their ventures.

What is Parliamentary Debate

Debate, is understood to be the most demanding type of persuasive speech. A debate can be an informal discussion over disagreeing opinions or a formal contest between two or more teams. Hooke & Philips (1994) stated that the very basis of debate is the ability to communicate orally. They went on to explain that in debate, in order to be an effective speaker, one will be trained to vary his / her tone, speed, volume, fluency and body language as well as possessing relevant data. Freely (1986) stated that a debate consists of arguments for and against a given proposition. The UPD form adheres to all of these characters with additional explicit rules and regulations that however, may vary slightly in interpretation. UPD has specific contexts that need to be followed religiously, especially in competitive UPD set ups such as the World Debating Championship, Australasian Debating Championship and Worlds Universities Peace Invitational Debate.

The debate associations govern these competitions through holding debate seminars and training, aiding in competition organization and management, and also through their close alumni network with other debate associations which clearly resembles the features of a CoP. Messages and information on competitions and other activities would be posted on associations’ websites or through the world debate yahoo messenger group. Opinions on dates of competition, motions, venues and critical issues like the nomination of Chief Adjudicator and their deputies would be posted and discussed here and the opinions received are very influential towards the actual decision. Thus it can be said that debate as in University Parliamentary Debate is a shared activity of discourse that is govern by members of the society in terms of rules, roles and convention. Well, sometimes even the menu for dinners are controlled or at least influenced by the members of the UPD community.

The Art of Presenting and Learning to Present

There would be many pointers and reminders to ensure that the ‘art’ and ‘professionalism’ in presenting are clearly understood. By the virtue of being in public and presenting, makes presentation a type of performing art. Since it is an art, it cannot be learned like other factual subjects. The speaker must find the good and bad (in relation with speaking in public) qualities in himself or herself. The person must look at and listen to examples, read and research on it, practice, imagine and lastly but most importantly, suit all these understandings in accordance to his or her style. The reason as to why listening and speaking are usually taught together is on the fact that good listeners would almost always be effective speakers.
It is understood that some speakers are powerful and loud, some are analytical, some are psychological, some are soft, some are humorous and all of them can succeed or fail at achieving the goals of their speech. How do we ensure success? There are many ways and all of them, have you, the speaker at the center.
Some speakers do not even care to view or follow other speakers or acquire pointers in lectures or books. Some speakers would emulate others or their styles but great ones would come out with their own styles and ways that are best suited for their character, voice and abilities. Therefore, all the pointers and reminders that anyone could give or find should be used in accordance to the person’s character, voice and ability. If you are not the humorous type than do not try to be and if you are not psychological in manner than do not try to be since you could end up being badly misunderstood. Use your strengths and find pointers, guides or reminders that will enable you to bring out the best in you.

In ‘Rambo III’ Richard Crenna(Col. Trautman) mentioned to Sylvester Stallone (Rambo) on the fact that he did dot make Rambo the way he is ( the perfect killing machine). He was just a good teacher as well as Rambo was a good student. Richard’s character in the movie mentioned that Rambo was like a beautiful statue in solid granite. The statue was already in existence and as a good teacher; he just pulled out the chips that would enable the statue to translate itself into being.
We should be like Rambo and his teacher and help loosen ourselves to bring out the statue of the greatest speaker ever, from within ourselves. We must learn to recognize the problematic chips( fear, intonation, structure, language and etc.) to bring out, how big is the chip and also how to bring it out. It is not impossible and nobody can do it better than the person, himself or herself, since the chips are within the person. Next, once you are willing to be a good student like Rambo, find your Richard Crenna(teacher) and with his/her guide, take out the chips to let the statue out. How far will you have go to get the necessary chips out? Here is where professionalism comes in. If you view yourself as professionals, than you will only see the goals and make a solid plan to achieve them. This module and the whole course are but guides. All the texts are guides. YOU must plan on how to use it, the pointers, facts and reminders to your advantage.

Thinking and thoughts

I have a friend who is a despatch rider for another friend's company. He seems to be a polite hardworking boy. i would treat him to a teh tarik or roti canai sometimes. I was thiking aloud to the owner of the company on whether this boy could be given more responsibility as he is nice and hardworking.

The answer from my friend was straight and funnily blunt. He can't think. He has no ability to think more than the sendings and receivings, the plasterings and minor repairings of printed materials, looking at and polishing his bike and other similar things and tasks that require very little of the brain. I looked at my friend and we both gave an acknowledging smile. We understood, we are better than him not because we are nicer or work harder but because we suuround ourselves (well sometimes by default), with tasks and activites that require thinking. Our despacth friend however is surounded by brainless activites that require only simple identification of facts and minor understanding which are the lowest two in Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking.

Last week, our despatch friend lost his bike and due to that wanted to quit his job. My friend was kind enough to explain to him that the bike or the lost of it has very little to do with the job. He kept his job but the boss wil continue to do te thinking for him. Luckily, the boss is a nice man. Stop thinking long enough and maybe a loony bad guy will manipulate you. THUS, think and surround yourself with thinking tasks.

Good times in UPM

It has been a great fifteen years of teaching and 6 years of studying in this unbelievable university. I came here way back in 1989 to do my matriculation studies. I got into the degree program in 91 and graduated in 95. I got my masters in 2002 and and have submitted my Phd at te age of 39. So if you do the maths, I have been in UPM for 21 years. As in any place you spend a long time at, there were some fantastic memories and some glum ones.

Amond the grand fantastic ones as we should not dwell in the negatives are:

1. winning the inter college debate championship in 91 and 92

2. getting to the intervarsity (Battle of Wits) debate competetion in 94

3. Going to the first Asia Intervarsity Debate Championship in 94 (my team was ranked 14th in Asia)

4. Winning the intercollege rugby championship in 94

5. Scoring two tries in the Jonah Jones 7 a side tournament (in the quarter finals)

Well, a lot of good stuff if you want to think about them, a lot of good stuff would have happened in anybody's life. Remember the good ones and you'll be a wee bit happier. Throw away the bad ugly memoris as they will not do you any good nor will it inspire others to do better.

My Relationships with the Fairer Sex

I never considered myself hot or attractive during my uni years. I could accept myself as being called cute but that would be about it. For all that really matters in life a cute rugby player would never realyy cut it among dog ugly brutes who pl;ayed rugby with or agianst me.

Thus, I never really had any relationship to talk about. I got into liking several gals but never really enough to make the first move and was never gut wrenching enough to make me change my belief that girls would be better than rugby balls.

Advantageous of Rugby balls:

1. You can literally throw it, kick it and hold it and it will still give the same response
2. You can drop it in mud
3. You can use it as a huggy pillow
4. You can throw it at the face of an enemy

Reasons, reasons, many a reason for simply not having the guts to go on a date during my uni years. However, looking at my lovely wife and four kids now, I am eternally glad that I chose the rugby balls.

Cues and Relevancy in Communication

People who communicate will always have problems in the process of communicating. These problems in communicating can also lead to various other social based problems. People who had communication based social problems would generally be facing problems in at least one of three different areas of nonverbal communication: reading nonverbal cues; understanding their social meaning; and coming up with options for resolving a social conflict, according to Clark McKown of the Rush Neurobehavioral Center in Chicago.

A person especially a child or a youth who are not quite familiar with society's cues and gestures for example, simply may not notice a person's scowl of impatience or understand what a tapped foot means. He or she may even have trouble reconciling the desires of a friend with her own or what cues would fit into what message in terms of appropriacy. That is why it is relevant to analyze the 'Relevance Theory' (no pun intended) put forth by Sperber adn Wilson(1995). This is due to the fact that the theory fowards a simple but hugely significant notion that people would only put focus on what is relevant to them. Thus, if we want to communicate better, we should make a huge effoprt in sensing what is relevant to our receiver.

The Mind and Perception: Generation Gaps

We are prone to blame others for misbehaving or not doing things right. However, this is usually viewed or judged from our point of view and the way we want to see things. It is quite rare would we be willing to look into how others would view things and their accepted world view. For the much renown Gen Y for example, some people argued that their attitudes and behavior is a result of how their parents raised them. This is of course similar with religious doctrins that views the parents as the real architect in their children's characteristics and life as a whole. If this assumption or mayhaps even hypothesis is true than if we want to deal with Gen X, Y or Z, we should study on how they were raised by their parents.

In general it can be said that as the planned products of parents who have protected and treasured them, most of the time, they are supported by the family and have been treated as individuals from a young age. Because of this, it can be said that they adopt a care free attitude and together with the extra close connectivity with friends due to the wide accessibility to the internet, handphones and other gadgets. Study them, evaluate them and act. Do not assume as it may puit you in a shaky platform.

Life Ever After

The good thing about life which is unfathomable to a lot of people is simply to go on living. Some people stop to live and decidedly would go hell bent into solving the problems that they encountered.

Sure, we got to solve these problems but they are not the only things in life. There are other beautiful captivating things, items, birds, children, friends, spouses, yada yada yada that would bring you happiness and joy if you but look at them take a deep breath and smile.

I, I try to make it a point to find these items, people or animal once or twice a day to remind me that theings of beaty in life is reciprocal in nature, feed with care and attention and it will come back to you ten folds.

So smile, go on living and keep on searching for the 'items'.

Amazing life at Uni

A typical day in the diary of an average student would start the night before or in realtime, slightly moving into the beginning hours of the next day. The plan usually starts with the venue and time of the classes for the day, which ones to skip, what to do during skippings and then to the more important issues of direct selling of Aloe Vera juice and cream to current and potential clients.

In an average week there will be at least two days where the plans would include some ventures that were expected to yield competent returns academically and super ones in terms of direct selling income. These super actions usually involved me pitching my ideas of getting people's hard earned money into my pocket through a clever mixed of academic inquiries, exciting smile and weight lost creams. These beautifully sculpted ventures usually involved my wonderful lecturers. Once or twice a week, I would go to them academically but left them a satisfied businessman with most of the time, a satisfied client.

Universal Debating Concept

Debate is simply another genre in communication. Hence in any communicative situation there would be people who are the senders and receivers as well as other people who influence the views, ideas and the choice of words of the senders as well as the receivers. Thus I would like to discuss a bit on the peripheral influence of networking influence in debate.

It is always helpful if you know the person when it comes to communicating. Thus in debating, this person or groups of persons, will represent a lot more than mere knowing. You need to know:
1. the kind of structures they like in the speech (inclusive of all the debate speech segments i.e rebuttals and POI's)

2. the kind of model they like for the argument framing,

3. the number of acceptable claims speakers should have and

4. the issues that a debater should know.

However, a community being a community, these networking knowledge would also logically include:

1. If someone knows on first name basis, (tough to tell someone you know they lose, especially in a close one)

2. Your drink preference (liquor or plain water)

3. The outfit you prance around in,

4. Sexual orientation,

5. Many-many more.

It is tough to be objective with these networking grapevine rules. Even in the court of law where attire is controlled, even in the British Parliament when curses must be hidden with farts and even in kindergarden where rules of networking is at its infancy, these rules do take place, they are influential, powerful and dangerous if the intent of the holderf of these information is even slightly less than noble. Thus, get all your plans working, get all the infos but like the Prince of Persia.

Managing Aspiration

I am specifically refering to aspiration in a university debate context. I have come accross many potential debaters who have the thinking ability to dissect issues, counter proposals and follow the conventions of parliamentary debate to the tee. However, after seeing them perform for a year or two, the only sharpening that they were able to do were essentially the issues I mentioned earlier (dissect issues, etc) which were before thought to be enough or event a marquee set of skills. However, as all structures, the foundation needs to be solid for the it to sufficient.

The foundation, simple though it may be, is still language. Good language plus all the debating skills and know how would make you a much better debater. The problem that debaters are facing are the arrogance or the ignorance that language also needs to be learned, terms acquired if needs be and of course practiced. Unfortunately, we have no room for language in our debate trainings and hence, at least in Malaysia, our debaters will come up short against the best in the world who have the neccessary language skills like the Aussies, the Brits and the Americans.

The Knee Issues

Setting: Green Green Grass of UPM Rugby Field

Rising Action: Touch Rugby, older man throwing dummy and breaking line at ease

Climax: Older Man dummying and scoring a try with an outstrecthed hand, older man laughing, older man not laughing anymore, feeling left knee, left knee slight off, feeling right knee, right knee is off, smart older man left the field contemplating rugby career.

Falling action: Older man having problems with both knees, still contemplating on sporting life.

Ending: Older man playing football happily and hurting the same knee, older man, wiser and smarter, conned the brain into believeing that he will be quiting.

Old man smiled while looking at new rugby boots.

Discourse and Coherence

A discourse is a coherent stretch of language (Cook 1994). A good discourse is more than just the sense of coherence and is always fascinating to be in or near to one. Discourse would encompass the full range of language in the participants’ attempts to get message across as well as to understand them. This fascination lead to the belief that an analysis on discourse can be done in some extensions, areas and ideas that could really add to the large body of work that are already in existence. The naked words glistening in mid air would possess some other secrets that could be unlocked and viewed objectively to aid the messenger and the messages not forgetting of course the receiver.
Scott and Kamp (1999) forwarded a satisfactory analysis of dialogue when they claim that it requires in general both semantic and pragmatic representation:
i. Representation of the content of what the different participants are saying,
ii. Pragmatic information - what kinds of speech acts they are performing
(are they asking a question, answering a question that has just been asked, asking a question for clarification of what was just said, making a proposal, etc.?), what information is available to each of the participants and what information does she want; and, more generally, what is the purpose behind their various utterances or even behind their entering upon the dialogue in the first place.

Debaters, thus, before cliaming to be successful need to be familiar with the speech acts in the debate dialogue or risk misrepresentation in responding to them.

Meaning and Context

Many applied linguistics researches have sought to explain the relationships between meaning and the situations in which it is produced. Approaches such as ethnomethodology in sociolinguistics, have dealt with situation, or context in various ways in showing some relationship between context and meaning. Pragmatics also focuses on language meaning in context and how context affects the meaning of utterances. Meaning in pragmatics is considered dynamic as context and utterances are both dependent on and resulting from each other (Levinson 1983). The theoretical construct that language meaning is dependent on the context in which it was produced makes the link between meaning and context or variables that influence context, an important focus for a discourse investigation. Therefore, in trying to caoch new debaters, we must not only focus on the points and general manner of sepaking but also various peripheral variables that can be influential in the context of the discourse. Contextual understanding can help in forwarding clear meaning and failure to grasp the context can leave you a wee bit embarrased.

The Yawn

The yawn was created by God to show that you're sleepy and also to help those with inferiority complex to have some kind of response against natural confident winners or even your average dudes. The yawn is simple to do, acts as both attack and defense mechanism with minimum intent. You canot be accused of not doing anything or doing too much with a yawn.

No bully, except Mike Tyson and Hitler, would punch the daylight out of you because you yawned. The yawner also would not be so bullish in declaring that he did so in the face of the bully, evil boss, develish customer, etc. The yawn is just that, an act which is just enough. Enough to say that you know and you're not particularly enjoying it.

Thus, we should coach yawning to those who are having inferiority complex, lacking in confidence, in an environment surrounded by trolls and orges as resident bullies and those living in North Korea and most parts of Afghanistan. Yawn, a bit, maybe a bit more.It will tell you that you're still human and would like to be treated as one. Next time you see people yawning, check if they are being bullied or surrounded by bullies, if you can help them, go ahead but if not, yawn a reconition yawn.

History and Community

In ancient Greece and up to the nineteenth century thought about literature is generally identified with thought about poetry. There is a clear concept of poetry, but there is not a concept of literature in the present-day sense of the word. Lyric poetry, of course, was sung; and epic poetry was often chanted to musical accompaniment. These activities were common in those communities. they have their special convention, roles and tasks. In order to be part of the community an indivudal must adhere to all these conventions, roles and tasks. Then they must learn when and how to do what in the community which is something that can only be done if you are constantly involved in the activities of the community. Thus if you want to be good in a particular issue or tasks, you must be in the midst of the activities.

Music was also a main feature in drama: Greek tragedies must have been closer to operas than to modern tragedies in this sense. Thus, since Greek was a great culture and they listen to music in appreciation of their cutural activities, we should listen to music too.

Count you blessings

Inherently, life is fantastically beautiful and sunny, if and its a very big 'if' you want it to be. I could be one of the saddest frustrated person in my department. I was overlooked for promotion 5 times in a space of 6 years. I have no inkling of the reasons other than perhaps they did not want to promote a good looking guy with irresistable charm.

I was angry for a few times and for a few days but thanks to Allah Allmighty, that was about it. Each time I was angry and frustrated, I needed only to remind myself of the blessings that were bestowed upon me. I got me, with my wife of course, 4 beautiful healthy kids (2 more than Tiger Woods), a beautiful house, 2 cars, a magnificent wife and loving family from both side of the fence and that's just for starters.

If you count your blessings and you should do it regularly, you will find that you're not really a bargain but Allah nonetheless has bestowed many miracles upon you. Just stop, and start counting ... 1, 2, 3...