A Taste of Oral Culture: My Experience
When I first moved to the United Arab Emirates and was placed at my school, I was overjoyed at the amount of English that my Grade 6 students spoke. I had taught English in Japan and the students that I taught their had a minimal grasp of spoken English. I did a little dance inside, because I envisioned all the activities that I could do with my new students. The day I gave my first quiz, I was shocked. Many students could not read the questions on the quiz, yet when I read them the questions many of them could answer them, yet they could not write their answers on their test paper. This, later learned was because these students have grown up in a predominantly oral culture. For days, I pondered what had happened in my class, I spoke to many individuals who had been teaching in the UAE for longer than I have and I was informed that the UAE was a predominantly oral culture. This was when things began to make sense, almost all of my students know the Holy Koran by heart, they recite passages everyday in morning assembly and the call to prayer is played five times a days on loud speakers from every mosque. Students are trained from a young age to listen to passages and repeat them, committing them to memory. I was also told that if I were to visit an Emirati home, I would not find many books, as many stories are passed on orally from one family member to another and one generation to another.
To alleviate the issues that I had with this first quiz,I read all the questions out loud to the class on future assessments make it easier for them, I even gave on assessment that was completely oral.
Ong’s text also discussed black males in the US and the Caribbean tongue lashing each other in a playful way. This is also the root of Hip-Hop culture, storytelling through rhythms and rhythms. The reason behind so much slang in hip hop culture could also be because there are no definitions in oral culture. Slang and popular lingo are ever changing in meaning and form.
References:
Ong, Walter. (1982.) Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. London: Methuen.
(2011, 01 27). Holy Quran 5 [Web Photo]. Retrieved from https://amazingquran.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/holy-quran-51.jpg
Very Interesting Haneefa, great example into our reading this week. It makes me think about the logistics of how to assess an oral culture effectively and efficiently? In my opinion tests are important, but how does a teacher spend 1 on 1 time with 30 students to give oral tests? On the other side of the coin academic scholars such as Alfie Kohn propose tests aren’t a good idea and don’t reflect the student’s true understanding of a topic. The subject of assessing or rating the intelligence of students from oral cultures certainly has its struggles and is filled with complication and controversy, as implied by Ong. (pp. 56,57). Ong also states the need to remember everything forces an entire set of thought organization and speech patterns on primary oral cultures. Everything worth knowing must be easy to remember because otherwise not enough people will remember it for it to continue being useful to society (pp. 49). I don’t tend to agree with that as I believe we want our students to be able to take the knowledge that they have, whether it be memorized or “googled”, and transform it into other areas of thought and innovation.
Do they do a lot of presentation based assessments in the middle east? As a business teacher we do a lot of those and assess the presenters as well as the audience in their question and answering. I feel I can grasp the thought patterns of the students and how they relate the information they are receiving with past knowledge.
Mike
Hi Haneefa,
The education system in the UAE is attempting to reform the methods of education to western modes while preserving Emirati culture. This is a difficult task for many reasons beyond the differences in oral and chirographic cultures and the details of these reasons are beyond the scope of this comment, therefore I will focus on this topic, while acknowledging that many other factors affecting these students exist beyond the clash of oral and chirographic cultures. I have also worked in the UAE and spent some time in Jamaica and have had the opportunity to experience the presence of oral culture in both the Middle East and the West Indies. In my opinion, both the Middle East and the West Indies (as drastically different as they are) have one similarity. There is a high contrast and a blending of oral and chirographic culture. In the UAE, students are now educated in English while they speak Arabic at home and with their peers. Similarly, in Jamaica, students are educated in English, while many of they speak Patois at home and with their peers. Observing the situation in both countries, I do not agree with Ong in the notion that oral and chirographic culture are so separate that even illiterate people in literate societies adjust to think in ways that are influenced by literate people or that illiterate people look up to people of literacy. I have observed and read incredible compositions and essays, some of them superior to those of North American students submitted by students in the Middle East in English ( a language foreign to them) who came from a primarily oral culture. I have also observed illiterate Jamaican people express wisdom in their sayings and and criticism or vent mockery of the conviction of the literate that they have a good understanding of the world. Perhaps the literate interpretation of an oral expression or a cliché can create a very big misconception in the mind of the philosopher and consequently in the minds of those who study his work. It is much too easy to pass our own assumptions or judgements on one expression and unknowingly create a misrepresentation of a culture thus we must use caution when interpreting the culture or abilities of others. The difficulties arises when we must assess others while we are still trying to learn about their culture, values and ways of being. The ministry of education may also creates situations where assessment does not reflect the needs of the society or students in that culture I am interested to find out more about the evolution of your teaching and the freedom to use your choice of assessment strategies while living in the UAE.