ST.

LOUISE DE MARILLAC COLLEGE OF SORSOGON

HIGHER EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
S.Y.2020-2021
MODULE 5 and 6
PURPOSIVE COMMUNICATION
ROSELLE D. LAGAMAYO
Instructor
Name: ___________________________ Score:______________
Course:__________________________________ Date: ______________

Topic: COMMUNICATION FOR VARIOUS PURPOSES

a. THE EXPLANATION ESSAY
b. THE BLOG
Objectives: At the end of the discussion students are able to:
a. appreciate the value of clearly explaining a phenomenon
b. write an explanation essay and blog

Activity #1:
Direction: Test your knowledge of facts by answering atleast two of
the following Trivia Questions. You may use another sheet of paper for
your answers.
1. When will you know if you’re doing enough?
2. Why is love always associated with pain?
3. Why can’t a man become pregnant?
4. Why do people cheat?
5. Why do we need assurance?

WRITING AN EXPLANATION ESSAY

The main function of an explanation essay is to clear up the issue of the research,
describe it and reveal the essence of the matter in a brief and coherent way. To
make the work easier, apply the following questions to your thesis statement:

 What/Who?
 Why?
 What for?
 When?
 How?

If your essay contains the answers to these questions you are more likely to reveal
the topic to the fullest. Before you get started, it is a good idea to make a
relative plan, where you state the points you want to mention as a special feature
of the matter. It will save time in structuring the main body and forming the
conclusion afterwards.
 Your introduction should tell what you are going to explain and why
you chose it as your topic. Your thesis statement should include a bit of
all the aspects you mention in your plan and the other structural part of
your essay will reveal the details of every aspect.

The main body is likely to consist of more than one paragraph. If your
thesis statement consists of several aspects, you should evaluate each of
them in a separate paragraph. In the main body you have to develop your
thoughts backing them up with trustworthy evidence. You have to sound
convincing. The main task of this essay is to show that you are
knowledgeable in this sphere.
A conclusion is a paragraph where you state the definition of the
problem you made out of the sources you've used. Your conclusion is a
concise summary of the essay; therefore you are to make it logical and
solid. Proofread your work a couple of times and make necessary
corrections. It is a well-known fact that it is more difficult to proofread
yourself than the other person. Ask anyone you respect to do it but if it
is impossible, try to be as objective as possible. After all necessary
preparations and revision you may be sure that your essay is nicely
completed.

Activity #2:
Direction:Before reading the text look for the meaning of the following
words:
1. Lingua Franca 2. Crème de la crème
3. Linguistic Nationalism 4. Mano-a-mano
5. Cultural Chauvanism 6. Bourgeois Stories
7. Batting an eyelash

READ!!!

MANSION OF MANY LANGUAGES

By Danton Remoto
In 1977, my mentor, the poet and National Artist for 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 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.”

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.”

English enrollment rising

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 the region.

Why? First, Filipino teachers will accept a pay scale lower than their
Western counterparts, a pay scale that is still higher than what they would
get in the Philippines. Second, they are conversant with American popular
culture, a happy (or unhappy) result of colonialism and neo-colonialism.
Third, they are still Southeast Asians beneath their skin and are thus
familiar with Asian cultural practices, whether said or unsaid. One is the
importance of saving face.

The meaning of “maybe” or “I will try” to an invitation means the

invited does not want to hurt you by giving a vague answer. Another is the
primacy given to family. Already in his 50s, one is still called Totoy or
Baby or Blue Boy, and still lives with one’s parents and extended family in
the warm cocoon of home. Meals are shared, stories swapped, Netflix
passwords given away, to kin who live just an arms’ length away from you.
You can see that, as well, in the other Southeast Asian countries. In these
places, families are nuclear and not split. Food is communal and not eaten
in siloed cubicles. I have lived in Singapore and Malaysia, and food is one
good way of keeping friends.

Mastery of two languages

Three long decades of teaching English and Filipino to students have

shown me that the best students in English are also the best students in
Filipino. And how did they master the two languages?

One, they had good teachers in both languages in their early years.
Two, they have inhabited the worlds of both languages—English in school;
They spoke English in social media, Tagalog at home, and Taglish with
friends. Three, they have gone beyond the false either-or mentality that
hobbled their parents’ generation. This either-or mentality was a product
of weak critical thinking.

Let me explain.
 My best students in English and Filipino were taught by the crème de
la crème, many of them teaching in the private schools in Metro Manila and
the regions. At the Ateneo de Manila University, we used to have classes in
Remedial English, since renamed Basic English or English 1. These were six
units of non-credit subjects. These were intelligent students from the
public schools and the provinces. Lack of books and untrained teachers
hindered them from having a level playing field with the other freshmen. A
year of catching up was necessary for them to have the skills to put them
at par with the other students.

Moreover, I introduced them to the worlds of the language they were

studying. This can be in the formal realm of the textbook. It can also be
found in films, documentaries, graphic novels, YouTube video clips
or animes. I encourage them to keep a journal as well, which was not a
diary where you wrote what time you woke up and why. A journal, or its
cyberspace cousin, the Web log or blog, aims to capture vivid impressions
or moods on the wing. If at the same time it sharpens the students’
knowledge of English, then the English teacher is ready to sing hallelujah.

Bilingual students

Tthe third is that today’s generation is no longer burdened by the

guilt of learning English – and mastering it. I still remember the writing
workshops I took in the 1980s, when I was asked why I wrote “petit-
bourgeois” poems and 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 unfortunately, I
grew up in a military base and knew nothing about the lives of workers and
peasants. I added that to write about something I don’t know would be to
misrepresent them. I could write about the lives of young soldiers and
retirees fading into the sunset. I could write about the lives of the brave
soldiers’ wives and their children. That I know only too well.

To the charge that I write only in English, I showed them my poems in

Filipino. The modern Filipino writer is not only a writer in either English
or Filipino. He or she writes in both languages, or in Cebuano or Bikolano
or Ilocano or Waray. These languages are like colorful balls he juggles
with the dexterity of a seasoned circus performer.

So it’s no longer choice between English and Filipino. Rather, it is

now 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 Malaysia, German, or French. Learning other languages
is good. It gives you a better way to view the world from many windows. 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.

To end in a full circle, we must return to Professor 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.” This, then, is the
gist of the mother-tongue approach to language learning, which the
Department of Education has finally adopted for our elementary schools
nationwide.

In short, as Dr. Isabel Pefianco Martin, my friend and fellow

professor at the Ateneo de Manila University has put it: “The Philippines
is a multi-lingual paradise.” The earlier we know that we live in a
paradise of many languages, the better we can savor its fruits ripened by
the sun.

Activity #3:
Direction: The reading example above is an example of an explanation essay.
Sharpen your understanding of the text by answering the following questions.
1. How does the author introduce the topic in the essay?
2. In paragraph 4, the author asks the question “Why?” this signals that he
is explaining something. What exactly is the phenomenon he is explaining?
3. What are the explanation he provides for the phenomenon you identified in
no 2? Give three answers.
4. In paragraph 7, the author writes, “Let me explain.” What exactly is the
phenomenon he is explaining?
5. What are the explanations he provides for the phenomenon you identified
in no 4 above? Give three answers.
6. How does the author end his essay?

Activity #4:
Direction: Write an explanation essay on any topic of your choice. You may need
to do some research about the topic inorder to be better explain it. The essay
must be atleast 500 words long and is organized as follows:
 Introduction- one or two paragraphs
 Body- atleast three paragraphs
 Conclusion- one or two paragraphs

THE BLOG
Today, with easy access to computers and the Internet, people write
their diaries differently. From handwritten entries on a piece Of paper or
a notebook page, diaries in contemporary times Come in the form of online
journals which are called blogs.

The term "blog" was first used in the 1990s. It is a short version of
"weblog," or an individualized piece of written work found on the web.

Blogs, like diary entries, are individual accounts of a writer's

experiences and emotions. Thus, the viewpoint is usually personal and
subjective. However, 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 (those who write blogs) to include visual
features, as well as links to other sites on the net. Unlike diary entries,
blogs are public in nature. This means that bloggers, even if they write
about personal issues, must present these issues in a way that would
interest the general public. Blogs, compared to diary entries, are more
concerned with communicating a message, rather than situply expressing or
documenting an idea or ernotion.

How does one create a blog? Go to wikihow.com and look up "How to

start a blog." The site provides step-by-step instructions on how to create
a blog from coming up with a concept, starting a blog at blogger.com,
launching a blog on WordPress, to promoting your blog. This lesson,
however, focuses on writing a blog entry.

Activity #5
Direction: Check your understanding of the input by answering the following
questions:

1. What is a blog?

2. How is a blog similar to a journal or diary entry?

3. How is a blog different from a journal or diary entry?

Activity #6

Direction: Write a blog on any topic of your choice. Decide first on your purpose
of creating the blog. You may choose from any of the following reasons for
blogging:
 To entertain
 To inform
 To instruct
 To persuade
The blog must be atleast 500 words long and includes atleast three images.

Post your blog on your facebook account. Print your screenshot then attach it to
your module.

GENERALIZATION:

1. An explanation essay is a written piece of work that addresses

“why” questions. It aims to inform or educate readers.
2. Writing an explanation essay requires pre-writing activities that
will help you sharpen the focus of your writing.
3. A blog is online equivalent of a journal or diary entry.