Pur posi ve

Communication

GEC 005
Writing An
Explanation
Essay

Why do you think

WHY question is
important?
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing An
Writing An Explanation
Explanation Essay
Essay
WHY questions are very important.
Addressing WHY questions means providing
explanations for phenomena.
Explanation Essay
➢ It is one such example of written piece of work that
addresses “why” questions.
➢ It explains a particular topic to its readers.
➢ This meant to inform or educate the readers, the essay
should present convincing and adequate support for
the explanations.
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing An Explanation Essay

The article in the next
slides show titled A • Lingua franca
Mansion of Many • Linguistic Nationalism
Languages written by • Cultural Chauvinism
Danton Remoto will • Conversant
attempt to answer some
• Siloed Cubicles
WHY questions.
• Crème de la crème
• Mano-a-mano
Before we proceed, • Bourgeois stories
kindly look these
• Batting an eyelash
following words online:
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

A Mansion of Many Languages

by Danton Remoto (2017) Writing An
(1) In 1977, my mentor, the poet and National Artist for Explanation
Literature and Theater Rolando S. Tinio, said: “It is too
simple-minded to suppose that enthusiasm for Filipino
as lingua franca and national language of the country
Essay
involves the elimination of English usage or training for
it in schools. Proficiency in English provides us with all
the advantages that champions of English say it does.
It gives us access to the vast fund of culture expressed
in it and mobility in various spheres of the international
scene. This is especially true in those spheres
dominated by the English-speaking Americans. It also
helps us to participate in a quality of modern life of
which some features may be assimilated with great
advantage.”
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing An Explanation Essay

(2) Professor Tinio continues:
“Linguistic nationalism does not
imply cultural chauvinism.
Nobody wants to go back to the
mountains. The essential Filipino
is not the center of an onion one
gets at by peeling off layer after
layer of vegetable skin. One’s
experience with onions is quite
telling: Peel off everything and
you end up with a pinch of air.”
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing An Explanation Essay

(3) Written 40 years ago, these words still echo
especially now. By some quirk of history and
economics, enrollment in English courses are rising.
This is so because there are many vacant positions
for teachers of English and literature in private and
public schools. Moreover, there are many vacancies,
still, for jobs in call centers with entry-level pay of
P18,000 plus a signing bonus. It is also a career that
will make you earn twice your present salary in just
a few years. With the opening of the doors of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),
more Filipinos are being hired to teach English in
Indonesia, Thailand and yes even our best friend,
China.
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the
explanation essay

Writing An
Explanation
Essay
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

(5) Three long decades of teaching Writing An

English and Journalism to students
(together with four years of teaching Explanation Essay
Filipino) have shown me that the best
students in English are also the best
students in Filipino. And how did they
master the two languages?
(6) One, they had very good teachers in
both languages. Two, they inhabited
the worlds of both languages. Three,
they have gone beyond the false
either-or mentality that hobbled their
parents.
(7) Let me explain.
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing An Explanation Essay

(8) My best students in English and
Filipino were tutored by crème de la
crème, many of them teaching in
private schools. The enrollees in the
university where I taught are mostly
intelligent students from the public
schools and the provinces. Lack of
books and untrained teachers
prevent them form having a level
playing field with the other freshmen.
A year of catching up is necessary for
them to have the skills to have a
mano-a-mano with the other
students.
 ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the
conventions of the explanation essay

Writing An Explanation Essay

(9) Moreover, I introduce them to the

worlds of the language they are
studying – be it in the formal realm of
the textbook or the popular ones of
film, graphic novel, YouTube or anime.
I encourage them to keep a journal as
well, which is not a diary where you
write what time you woke up and why.
A journal, or its postmodern cousin, the
Web log or blog, aims to capture
impressions or moods on the wing. If at
the same time it sharpens the students’
knowledge of English, then that is
already hallelujah for the English
teacher.
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing An Explanation Essay

(10)And the third is that today’s generation of students is no longer
burdened by the guilt of learning English – and mastering it. I still
remember those writing workshops I took in the 1980s, when I was
asked why I wrote bourgeois stories in the colonizer’s language. The
panelists said I should write about workers and peasants – and that I
should write in Filipino. Without batting a false eyelash, I answered
that I don’t know anything about workers and peasants, and to write
about something I don’t know would be to misrepresent them. To the
charge that I write only in English, I showed them my poems in
Filipino, because the modern Filipino writer is not only a writer in either
English or Filipino, but a writer in both languages, or in Bisaya or
Bikolano or Ilocano or Waray, languages that are like colorful balls he
juggles with the dexterity of a seasoned circus performer.
 ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing An Explanation Essay

(11)So it’s not a choice between English and
Filipino, but rather, English and Filipino, plus
the language of one’s grandmother, be it
Bikolano, Waray, or Tausug. And in college,
another language of one’s choice, be it
Bahasa Indonesia, German, or French – the
better to view the world from many windows,
since to learn a new language is to see the
world from another angle of vision. In short,
one no longer has to live between two
languages, but to live in a mansion of many
languages.
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing
Writing An
An Explanation
Explanation
Essay
Essay
(12)To end in a full circle,
we must return to Rolando
S. Tinio, who said: “Only
the mastery of a first
language enables one to
master a second and a
third. For one can think and
feel only in one’s first
language, then encode
those thoughts and feelings
into a second and a third.”
ILO: Demonstrate an understanding of the conventions of the explanation essay

Writing
Writing An
An
Explanation
Explanation Essay
Essay
(13) In short, as a friend
and fellow professor has
put it, “The Philippines is
a multi-lingual paradise.”
The earlier we know we
live in a paradise of
many languages, the
better we can savor its
fruits ripened by the sun.
Writing a
Blog
What can you
say about our
present
vloggers and
their content?
ILO: Differentiate between the journal or diary entry and the blog

Writing a Blog
Today, with easy access to
computers and the Internet,
people write their diaries different.

Blogs
• From handwritten entries on a
piece of paper or a notebook page,
diaries in contemporary times
come in the form of online journals.
• This term was first used in the
1990s.
• It is a short version of “weblog” or
an individualized piece of written
work found on the web.
ILO: Differentiate between the journal or diary entry and the blog

Writing
a
Blog
ILO: Differentiate between the journal or diary entry and the blog

Writing
Writing aa Blog
Blog
Blogs
➢ Like diary entries
➢ Known as individual accounts of a writer’s
experiences and emotions
➢ The viewpoint is subjective
➢ Blogs are different from the traditional journal or
diary entry in the sense that blogs are
uploaded to online platforms that make it
easier for bloggers to include visual features.
ILO: Differentiate between the journal or diary entry and the blog

Writing
Writing aa Blog
Blog
Blogs compare to diary
entries, are more
concerned with
communicating a
message, rather than
simply expressing or
documenting an idea or
emotion
 Synthesis
❖ An explanation essay is a written piece of work that addresses
“why” questions. It aims to inform or educate readers.
❖ Writing an explanation essay requires pre-writing activities
that will help you sharpen the focus of your writing.
❖ A blog is the online equivalent of a journal or diary entry.
❖ Because of its public nature, a blog has more visual material
and makes use of topics that are of general interests to the public.
Pur posi ve
Communication

GEC
GEC 005
005