Tuesday, February 19, 2019

THE GLEANER, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 | www.jamaica-gleaner.com

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[ OPINION & COMMENTARY ]

Sigma does so much more

by the resultant city detours. There are several roads that are inaccessible to vehicular traffic for four or five hours annually because of the race. Alysia Moulton White, assis- tant vice-president of marketing at Sagicor, posted on Twitter on Saturday,“Many will be inconven- ienced on Sunday. I know, I get the calls … and believe me, we’re truly sorry. The Sigma Run 2019 will bless many and raise PLENTY MONEY and so I thank you for your sacrifice”. She followed that up with a newspaper article detailing the traffic changes to be expected. Even in the very few years I haven’t participated, I’ve never thought of complaining about the ‘inconvenience’…because there’s a much bigger picture. This year’s beneficiaries – the Lupus Foundation of Jamaica, the May Pen Hospital Neonatal Unit and the Diabetes Association of Jamaica – or any of the recipients over the last 20 years, as well as the millions they serve, I’m sure would join the call in thanking folks for

putting upwith the inconvenience. MASSIVE INCOME GENERATOR Beyond the millions donated to charity, Sigma does somuchmore. It’s a massive income generator for local promotional items provid- ers. Every year their services are uti- lised toprint newshirts and caps for the various teams. Formany, outside of Christmas, Sigma represents their single largest selling opportunity. At the end of the morning, near nobody cooks breakfast because you’re just too tired. Whether it’s the caterers who supply meals to the hundreds of teams, or the various restaurants that receive the uncustomary sweaty Sunday morning walk-ins, they don’t see Sigma as an inconvenience at all. Banana, orange and watermelon farmers and vendors smile because they’re guaranteed a good sale that weekend to satisfy the fruit needs of race participants. And the marketer in me doesn’t miss the captive audience Sigma provides. Bert’s Auto Parts had a champion

in the crowd this year who was shouting out all the services they offer and parts they carry as he jogged down the road. It was a welcomed injection of humour, but a stroke of advertising genius. Now I knowwhere to check first for a control arm for my car. Catherine’s Peak used the finish line to remind everyone about their ‘pickney’-sized bottle of water, and the trend of branding shirts both in the front and back turned every participant into both a walking billboard and potential customer. For those who continue to complain about closed roads and inconveniences, lawks man, I urge you to see the bigger picture. Next year, come join the race, the comrade and the fun, the exercise, the economic ecosystem andmost importantly, the giving. And even if you choose not to, recognise the world of good Sigma sparks and, like Elva would advise...RELAX!!!!!! Patria-KayeAaronsisaconfectioner and broadcaster. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and findpatria@gmail.com.

Patria Kaye Aarons

F IFTY-THREEMILLIONdollars worth of people rolled out on Sunday to participate in this year’s staging of the Sigma road race. I find it more impactful referring to the donation figure as opposed to the headcount, because it brings into focus the power of what we can accom- plish when together we attack the same problem. Corporate Jamaica and giving individuals raised that! The attendance numbers were impressive nevertheless. Almost 30,000 strong. I quickly combed through my social media feed that afternoon and it was flooded with pictures of teams, people sharing their race times and hearty con- gratulations to the organisers for an incident-free event. One post that did stand out amid the Sigma praise was one from a non-participant complain- ing about being inconvenienced

Cheerleaders putting on a show at the 21st staging of the Sagicor Sigma Corporate Fun Run/Walk on Sunday.

Thematic approach to the structure of CSEC English Language exam could yield better results

to be some amount of guidance offered to teachers and students as to what areas students should inform themselves about to demonstrate their language skills. It is quite counterproductive for teach- ers to have to teach an entire topic for a singular lesson on a particular language skill and when the objectives of that lesson are met, they have to teach an entire topic all over again to teach a new language skill. This is so because teachers at the CSEC level use past-paper questions to prepare their students for the exam, and these questions often pull on knowledge from a wide range of topics that often times students are just not knowledgeable of. Therefore, the teacher is now forced to cram in one lesson, knowledge of the stimulus and development of language skills. This cramming of information in a 50-minute period is ineffective and the student neither really learns about the topic, nor do they fully grasp the language skill. Consequently, I posit that the CSEC English examination should adopt a sim- ilar thematic approach like that of the City and Guilds English examinations and the CSEC Spanish examinations for a more realistic approach to teaching students the various language skills to be assessed in the exam. With the introduction of the School-Based Assessment (SBA) compo- nent, students are even given an addi- tional opportunity to“inform themselves about, and to contribute reasoned opin- ions on social issues”. Hence, it is perfectly acceptable, and does not compromise the legitimacy of the exam in the least bit if students are aware of the theme and top- ics they will encounter in the written exam. As much as we should expect our chil- dren to be widely informed on various sociocultural issues, it is really unrealistic to expect that they will have knowledge of everything and, therefore, they should be prepared to discuss any possible topic that will appear on the exam. A thematic approach, however, would at least ensure that students have compre- hensive knowledge of at least one soci- etal topic, and at the same time provide teachers with more opportunity to focus on developing their language skills. -Rhonda Williams is a teacher of English A, City and Guilds and Communication Studies; English A lecturer/presenter for The Gleaner’s Youthlink CSEC Seminar; BEd, language education, and MA, cultural studies. Email feedback to columns@ gleanerjm.com.

Rhonda Williams/Contributor L AST YEAR’S sitting of the Caribbean Secondary School Examination (CSEC) for English language re- corded a 68 per cent pass (JIS News). Albeit satisfactory, passes in CSEC English language have always remained a long-standing concern. Educators and other stakeholders have been burdened with the task of figuring out the winning formula that would yield results of at least 80 per cent of students passing the exam. One such ‘winning’formula that teach- ers often exhaust is to encourage students to read ‘widely’, as success in the exam is heavily dependent upon knowledge of various topics, ranging from science, cul- ture, economics, governance, and the list goes on. So it was no surprise when I found myself heavily criticising my students for having very little knowledge of just about everything. In one particular summary writing class, the stimulus for the activity was based on globalisation and transnational crime. The students were given some questions to stimulate their understanding of the extract. When it was time to discuss the responses to the questions, they struggled to respond, almost as if the discussion in the extract was completely lost upon them. A farfetched thought then came to me: could it be that they don’t knowwhat glo- balisation is and therefore they are unable to contextualise the discussion? I then made a daring move. I asked, “What is globalisation?” One student responded with much uncertainty, “The cutting down of trees, Miss?” That response propelledme to then ask, “What is global warming?” The responses were disastrous. After a proper ‘tongue lashing’ on the importance of social and cultural awareness to be successful in the exam, I

English language (written and spoken) rather than the students’capacity for gen- eral knowledge. In exploring my position, I analysed the structure of the CSEC Spanish examination in comparison to the CSEC English exami- nation: both non-native languages among CARICOM states. The CSEC Spanish examination adopts a thematic approach for the content used as stimuli to test the language skills to be assessed; each unit to be studied has a different theme. Therefore, neither stu- dents nor teachers are overly caught up in deconstructing the stimuli for under- standing, but instead, they get to focus on the language skills to be developed for assessment. Similarly, the City and Guilds English examination has a thematic structure. Each year, a new theme is selected and all stimuli used throughout the course of preparing for the exam is centred on a singular theme. Examples of themes used by City and Guilds are ‘Employability’, ‘Science and Technology’, ‘Tourism’, ‘Music’, etc. The examination body even goes as far as to provide a vocabulary list of the words stu- dents should expect to encounter from the theme during the exam period. Likewise, this exam structure gives students and teachers maximum opportunity to focus on the language skills to be developed for assessment, and students and teachers are not burdened by the pressures of having to navigate through random topic selec- tions that the students may or may not be knowledgeable of and, as a result, robs them of the opportunity to demonstrate their language skills. COUNTERPRODUCTIVE FOR TEACHERS While one of the main objectives of the CSEC English language syllabus is to “pro- mote in students awillingness and ability to inform themselves about, and to contribute reasoned opinions on social issues” ( CSEC English syllabus 2017 ), there still needs

As much as we fail to admit it, the students who sit CSEC English in this region are really learning English as a second language, even though they are not taught English as a second language.

suspended all summary skills lessons until they each return to the next class with a correct definition of‘global warming’and ‘globalisation’ and present one fact they learnt about each topic. Following that, I used an entire class to teach both topics before I moved on to teaching summary skills. UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS Then just Friday, a repeat of the situation occurred. This time the topic was ‘border protection and national security’. I had to pause teaching summary skills to teach the role of Customs departments in mon- itoring the entry of goods received at the ports, as this was crucial to understanding the main points in the extract. After this experience, I thought to myself again, how could they not know the functions of a Customs department? Then mid-thought it hit me; perhaps

the structure of the exam just does not facilitate our ‘modern’ children and our expectations of them; that is, to have knowledge of a wide range of topics is really unrealistic. I am, therefore, of the opinion that, since we have conceded that this generation of school-age children learn and process information differently, and teachers are expected to adjust their strategies tomeet their learning needs, then it is only fair that the assessment tool is also adjusted to facilitate same. As much as we fail to admit it, the stu- dents who sit CSEC English in this region are really learning English as a second lan- guage, even though they are not taught English as a second language (that is another battle to be fought at another time) and, therefore, the examination really needs to focus its assessment on testing the students’ ability to use the

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Wea. SH SU MC SS MC

Febr uary 19 , 2019

H i 0 6 C 10 C 2 9 C 28 C - 01 C 2 8 C 32 C 22 C 2 5 C 1 2 C 16 C 27 C 0 3 C 30 C - 11 C

Low 0 3 C -0 1 C

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km/hr. Tonight will be fair to cloudy. High temperature will be near 31°C with a low ranging between 19°C and23°C. Locally, it will be sunny to partly cloudy. Isolated clouds and shower activities may a ect mainly hilly inland areas of central and western parishes. Winds will exceed 38 are across Jamaica, is expected to remain over the area for the next few days. F air weather conditions the eastern and western Caribbean. A cold front is across the Gulf of Mexico. The high pressure over much of the northern Caribbean, including

Atlanta Boston Bridgetown

Sunset 6 : 10 PM 6: 13 PM 6: 15 PM 6: 16 PM

Locations Kingston Mandeville Mobay Negril

Sunrise 6: 32 AM 6: 35 AM 6: 37 AM 6: 38 AM

2 4 C 2 5 C

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Cayman Chicago Georgetown Havana Hong Kong Johannesburg London Los Angeles Miami New York Port of Spain Toronto

Full Moon Feb . 19 10 : 53 A M

- 03 C 2 4 C 1 9 C 20 C 1 3 C 0 7 C 06 C 23 C

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Please send comments and suggestions to weather_data@yahoo.com 31 Partly to mostly cloudy, 5 0% psbl. showers. TODAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY 31 31 40 % psbl. showers. showers. Sunny to partly Sunny to partly cloudy, cloudy, 40% psbl.

Tides:12:17 AM hgt. 0.43 m. H.; 8:01 AM hgt. -0.27 m. Weather: partly cloudy with isolated afternoon clouds/showers. Port Royal Tides: 2:34 AM hgt. -0.11 m. L.; 11:18 AM hgt. 0.16 m. H.; 2:39 PM hgt. 0.11 m. L.; 9:10 PM hgt. 0.18 m. H.; Negril L.; 3:38 PM hgt. 0.39 m. H.; 8:06 PM hgt. 0.26 m. L. Inshore - north coast: winds east-north east 15 - 20 kts., seas 1.5 - 2 .0 m; Tonight: southeast 5 - 10 kts. wave 0.5 - 1.0 m. Inshore - south coast: winds east-southeast 15 - 2 0 kts., seas 1.5 - 2. 0 m; Tonight: southeast 5 kts. seas 0.5 m.

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