END OF BLOG WEEK 7

Target for 10:00 am Friday 19th October 
= 32 comments

International Marriage

Herr and Madame, Señor and Mrs

Research at last begins to cast some light on the extent, causes and consequences of cross-border marriages

The Economist 

If Shakira, a Colombian pop star, marries her boyfriend, the Spanish national footballer Gerard Piqué, the only unusual things about it would be that she is even more famous than he is and ten years older. Otherwise, theirs would be just a celebrity example of one of the world’s biggest social trends: the rise of international marriages—that is, involving couples of different nationalities.

A hundred years ago, such alliances were confined to the elite of the elite. When Randolph Churchill married Jennie Jerome of New York, it seemed as if they had stepped from the pages of a Henry James novel: brash, spirited American heiress peps up the declining fortunes of Britain’s aristocracy. Now, such alliances have become almost commonplace. To confine examples to politicians only: the French president Nicolas Sarkozy is married to the Italian-born Carla Bruni and his prime minister François Fillon has a Welsh wife, Penelope Clarke. Nelson Mandela is married to Graça Machel (from Mozambique). Denmark’s new prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt is married to a Briton, Stephen Kinnock. And two leading ladies of Asian countries, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar and India’s Sonia Gandhi, are both widows from international marriages. In rich countries alone such unions number at least 10m.

International marriages matter partly because they reflect—and result from—globalisation. As people holiday or study abroad, or migrate to live and work, the visitors meet and marry locals. Their unions are symbols of cultural integration, and battlefields for conflicts over integration. Few things help immigrants come to terms with their new country more than becoming part of a local family. Though the offspring of such unions may struggle with the barriers of prejudice, at their best international marriages reduce intolerance directly themselves, and indirectly through their progeny.

The mists over marriage

So it is all the more disappointing that until recently so little has been known about these unions. Records are patchy. Some countries do not collect annual information about the citizenship of couples. Official figures may say nothing about a marriage if it takes place abroad (for example in the country of the immigrant spouse).

Defining what counts as international is tricky too. A wedding of a local man and a foreign-born bride is easy. But the marriage of two foreigners in a third country sometimes counts and sometimes doesn’t. Trickiest of all is how to treat the marriage of a second-generation immigrant who has citizenship of a host country (say, the child of a Moroccan in France or a Mexican in America). If such a person marries a native Frenchwoman or an American, that usually does not count as international, even though it is an alliance across ethnic lines. Perversely, if he marries a girl from his parents’ country of origin, that does count as international—but this is not a marriage across an ethnic divide and may indicate isolation not assimilation.

Belatedly, answers to these questions of scale and definition are coming, chiefly thanks to the efforts of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP), a professional association of demographers, and, especially, of Doo-Sub Kim, a professor at Hanyang University in Seoul who chairs its panel on cross-border marriages. Global figures remain sketchy, but marriage patterns in Asia and Europe, at least, are becoming clearer. Some tentative, often surprising, conclusions are emerging.

Asia is the part of the world where cross-border marriages have been rising most consistently. According to Gavin Jones of the National University of Singapore, 5% of marriages in Japan in 2008-09 included a foreign spouse (with four times as many foreign wives as husbands). Before 1980, the share had been below 1%. In South Korea, over 10% of marriages included a foreigner in 2010, up from 3.5% in 2000. In both countries, the share of cross-border marriages seems to have stabilised lately, perhaps as a result of the global economic slowdown. The country with the biggest share of such unions is Taiwan, where 13% of wives in 2009 were foreigners, about the same level as in 1998, but a big fall from the peak in 2003, when 28% of all weddings involved a foreign-born wife. Chinese citizens are not considered foreigners in Taiwan and if you include marriages in which they are one of the spouses, the proportion is still higher. International marriages have played a significant role in modifying the ethnic homogeneity of all these East Asian countries.


International marriages are common in much of Europe, too. Calculations by Giampaolo Lanzieri, an Italian demographer, show that in France the proportion of international marriage rose from about 10% in 1996 to 16% in 2009. In Germany, the rise is a little lower, from 11.3% in 1990 to 13.7% in 2010. Some smaller countries have much higher levels. Nearly half the marriages in Switzerland are international ones, up from a third in 1990. Around one in five marriages in Sweden, Belgium and Austria involves a foreign partner.

The Mamma Mia factor

The rate seems to be rising fastest in Mediterranean countries: in Spain and Italy, cross-border marriages accounted for less than 5% of the total in 1995; by 2009, the share had reached 14% in Italy and 22% in Spain. Cyprus is a special case: no less than three-quarters of marriages there in 2009 were international (up from half in 1995). But that is because Venus’s birthplace has a thriving wedding-and-honeymoon market. Many couples from abroad wed there.

Such figures are based on wedding records. Another way of getting at the trends is census micro-data (ie, from detailed samples collected as part of the census). These have a wider coverage, are extremely precise, and go back decades, which is helpful. On the other hand, many countries do not provide them. Researchers from the Centre for Demographic Studies (Barcelona) and the Minnesota Population Centre have for the first time trawled through the censuses of more than 50 countries in every continent for people aged 25-39. In general, they find that cross-border marriages are rising in most places, but the most significant fact is the big difference between levels in rich and developing ones.

In most developing countries, the share of men married to foreign women was less than 2% in 2000 (0.7% in Ghana and Bolivia; 0.2% in Colombia and the Philippines; 3.3% in South Africa). In contrast, three rich countries—America, Britain and France—account for half the total in the sample. America alone has a third. Because it is so large, though, the share of international marriage remains low: only 4.6% of Americans were married to a foreigner in 2010, up from 2.4% in 1970.

Albert Esteve of the Autonomous University of Barcelona reckons that the total number of cross-border marriages among 25-39-year-olds in his sample was about 12m in 2000. The sample excludes several countries with large numbers of such unions—Japan, Taiwan, Australia and Canada—so the grand total is certainly higher, probably 15m, possibly more. Compared with the very roughly 500m marriages within that age group round the world, 15m may not seem like much. But it is more than it used to be and, in some countries—senders and recipients of foreign spouses alike—the growth in cross-border marriages is having a significant social impact.

Everywhere, cross-border marriage rises with migration, but more slowly. According to Mr Esteve’s figures, the correlation is roughly one international marriage for every two new migrants. That would seem to mean that half of new migrants are marrying into their host society and the other half (presumably) into their own communities. So a surge in immigration usually leads to only a more modest rise in cross-border marriages; the process is slower and more complex.

Research into four European countries by Suzana Koelet of the Free University of Brussels and others confirms that international marriages have not risen as much as one might have expected in Europe. On her calculations, rates of marriages with a person from another European Union country have been flat in Belgium and the Netherlands since 2000 and shown only a modest rise in Spain. Marriage rates between Swiss and EU citizens have also not budged. True, marriages with foreigners have increased sharply in Spain—but that was because of a spurt of marriages with non-EU citizens: Spain had huge immigration flows from Latin America during the 1990s and 2000s. By implication, the closer integration that the EU is supposed to be bringing about seems to be having no discernible impact on the marriage choices of Dutch, Belgian and Spanish citizens.

Why not? For part of the explanation, Ms Koelet points to the intriguing marriage patterns of the Swiss. The country has one of the highest rates of international marriage in the world (surpassed only by Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Cyprus). But the Swiss “marry out” in particular ways. The German-speaking Swiss marry largely neighbouring Germans; the Francophone Swiss marry the French; Italian-speakers marry Italians. It is the same with Belgians: Flemish-speakers tend to marry Dutch partners, Walloons marry French people. Language, it appears, remains a persistent barrier to international marriage in Europe and the spread of English as a second language does not seem to have changed that.

Asia is different. In Europe and America, marriage tends to follow migration. In Asia, people marry to migrate. Marriages in South Korea, for example, are often arranged by a broker in an unromantic process that takes two or three days and costs the Korean groom $20,000-30,000. Similarly, Taiwan has many marriages between its male citizens and Vietnamese women. The growth began when Taiwanese companies started investing in Vietnam.

Local men in such countries, Mr Jones argues from Singapore, look for foreign brides for two reasons. First because of the so-called “marriage strike” affecting some East Asian societies. In the richer countries of East and South-East Asia, like Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, a third or more of local women are not marrying; and those who do wed late, at 31 or 32. This is causing some men to look to foreign shores for potential mates. The other reason—specific to a few Asian societies—is because a combination of traditional preference for sons and the availability of sex-selective abortion skewed the sex ratio at birth 20 years ago, leaving too few native-born women now. South Korea is an example. In 1990, it had 117 boys born for every 100 girls. Men are looking abroad to plug the gap in their local marriage market.

Hard noses, not soft hearts

For their part, the young women, often from poor areas of China and Vietnam, are looking for economic opportunities. Marriage with a man from a richer country is seen as a means of advancement and a way of helping their families at home. In Asia, it seems, cross-border unions are products of distorted local marriage markets; in Europe, they are results of gaps in labour markets that encourage migration. In both parts of the world, diasporas play a role: as immigrants settle down they encourage friends and family from back home to follow in their footsteps.

Many Asian men also seem to be looking abroad for wives in the hope that immigrant women will bear them more children. This indeed happens in Europe and America: the fertility rate of new immigrants is higher than average, though it reverts to the local mean within a few years. So at first, migration adds to the birth rate. Strangely, this higher initial fertility does not seem to happen in Asia, or at least not in South Korea. According to Kwang-hee Jun of Chungnam National University, non-naturalised immigrant women have on average just 1.08 children—even fewer than native Koreans, whose average is 1.79.

This finding was a shock and a puzzle. Why are immigrants in South Korea behaving so differently from those in Europe and America? One explanation may be that the age gaps between husbands and much younger wives discourage large families. Another is that in the past decade, about 60% of foreign brides have come from China, where the fertility rate is also low, especially among Chinese of Korean ethnicity. Jungho Kim of Ajou University also suggests poverty. Both spouses will usually work and may be unable to afford to bring up a child in a society where half of the cost of pre-school education comes from the household budget. Evidence for this comes from families with a Vietnamese-born bride: when they do have children, says Danièle Bélanger of the University of Western Ontario, they send some of them back to be raised for a few years by grandparents in Vietnam, where schooling is cheaper.

Victims or opportunists?

Marriage between girls from poor countries and older men from rich ones are controversial. As Sang-lim Lee of the International Organisation of Migration centre in Goyang says, when men pay the brides’ family “they tend to think they have bought a good. If it has a defect, they think they can send it back.”

It is certainly true that the men tend to be older, often much older. Doo-Sub Kim finds that Korean husbands are on average 17 years older than their Vietnamese-born brides. They usually have around three years’ more education as well. One fifth of Korean husbands have been married before. All this is very different from the typical pattern in native Korean marriages.

It is also true that some young women are victims of cruelty, neglect, physical abuse and trafficking. Women in strange countries are almost always vulnerable. A Vietnamese interpreter married to a Korean man complains that “if I run away here, my parents will be embarrassed in Vietnam.” That, she explains, would leave her unable to return home, but with “no place to go here”. The media in Vietnam tend to portray migrant brides either as victims of trafficking or people driven by desperate poverty to migrate. Children of international marriages in South Korea have more health problems than average. In Taiwan, they do less well at school—something that occurs in European countries, too.

Yet this is not the dominant pattern, still less the sole one. International marriages often seem to work for the couple involved—at least if the longevity of their union is any guide. And they seem to have social benefits, as well as costs, for both receiving and sending countries.

Though the gap in background, age and education between spouses in international marriages is greater than in those between compatriots, it does not seem to affect these unions’ durability. Doo-Sub Kim plotted the time that cross-border marriages have lasted in South Korea against the couples’ ages and educational backgrounds. Amazingly, the bigger the difference, the longer the marriage. It is hard to know why this should be. Maybe those who marry foreigners invest more in their marriages. Or maybe younger, poorer wives find it harder to leave.

Vietnamese girls are seen in much of Asia as the paradigm of the submissive foreign bride. But a study of their role in Taiwan by Ms Bélanger shows that many are married to men whose companies trade with Vietnam—and they are vital to the companies’ future. As one man told her, revealingly: “I have six trusted subordinates. One is my wife. One is her younger sister. They will not betray me.” Remittances to their families help keep the practice alive in Vietnam, even though many young men there dislike it and say they have been driven out of their villages by the shortage of brides and forced to migrate to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Similarly, marriage abroad is seen as so desirable by the Punjabi diaspora that the press in Punjab is full of advertisements offering to arrange marriages abroad.

Not all international marriages in Asia are those of poor brides in rich lands. In a “reverse migration” Japanese women from rich Tokyo have married into poor peasant families in South-East Asia—especially in Bali and Thailand—and settled down to live a more “authentic” rural life, perhaps as a way of escaping the strictness of Japanese family life. That same impulse may well be behind the surprising growth in the numbers of Japanese women married to Africans in Japan (probably as many as 3,300 in all). As one wife told Djamila Schans of Maastricht University, “I had doubts marrying a foreigner but he waited for me at the station every day. Sometimes even with flowers! A Japanese man would never do such a thing.”

Most demographic trends are irresistible forces. It is rare that government policy can make a big difference. But international marriage is sensitive to public policy. In the mid-2000s, Taiwan’s government, for example, took alarm at the number of foreign brides coming into the country. It did not slam the gates but started to wrap the marriage process in licensing and permits, insisting on better treatment of immigrant women. This reduced the number of foreign brides by more than half between 2003 and 2010. Malaysia also maintains an array of secular and religious permits which foreigners must get not only for marriage, but also for residence and work. It seems effective: less than 2% of all Malaysian marriages involve a foreigner, against almost 40% in neighbouring Singapore.

Governments impose restrictions in the belief that cross-border marriages can destabilise their societies. Sometimes, their fears are understandable. In Taiwan, the share of international marriages doubled in five years. But such rapid change is highly unusual. By and large, marriage between people of different nationalities has grown more slowly than immigration. In the past few years, the increase in marriage has slowed further, probably reflecting global economic problems.

International marriages are often attacked as exploitative, because they typically take place between an older richer man and a younger, less well-educated woman from a poor country. Terrible examples of abuse do exist. Yet the evidence suggests that international marriages often last longer than average and that migrant wives come to play important roles in their husband’s host country.

Marriage remains, for the most part, an institution that promotes economic improvement and personal happiness. It also tends to boost social assimilation—the main exception being when a second-generation immigrant weds a girl from a village his parents had left long before. Over the next few years, international marriage is likely to continue its quiet upward crawl. Governments should protect its victims—but not prevent the process.

I will find the link to this. It's an article from The Economist.

Using Semicolons

The semicolon is a hugely powerful punctuation mark. Getting it right will not only impress your tutors and future employers, it will allow you to express your ideas and opinions with more subtlety and precision than ever before. The good news is that it is simple and easy to use and should take you no more than a few minutes to master.

In complicated lists.
The semicolon can be used to sort out a complicated list containing many items, many of which themselves contain commas.

Have a look at this example:

In the meeting today we have Professor Wilson, University of Barnsley, Dr Watson, University of Barrow in Furness, Colonel Custard, Metropolitan Police and Dr Mable Syrup, Genius General, University of Otago, New Zealand.

In a situation such as this, only the mighty semicolon can unravel the mess.

In the meeting today we have Professor Wilson, University of Barnsley; Dr Watson, University of Barrow in Furness; Colonel Custard, Metropolitan Police and Dr Mable Syrup, Genius General, University of Otago, New Zealand.

In most lists a comma is enough to separate the items. In a complicated list like the one above, it is perfectly acceptable to use the semicolon to make the list more understandable.

Separating closely-related independent clauses. 
The semicolon is also used to connect two closely-related independent clauses. Have a look at this example:

• Terry always slept with the light on; he was afraid of the dark. 

The two clauses here are closely connected but the link has not been made explicit. They could have been separated by a full stop.

• Terry always slept with the light on. He was afraid of the dark. 

They could have been connected by a conjunction.

• Terry always slept with the light on because he was afraid of the dark. 
• Terry always slept with the light on, as he was afraid of the dark. 

In this instance we have changed the second clause into a dependent clause; it is directly dependent on the first clause.

If you are going to use a semicolon to connect two clauses, it is very important that the two clauses are both independent. That means that each clause has to be able to stand alone and make complete sense without the other. If either one cannot stand alone, a semi-colon cannot be used.

Style.
Using the semicolon to separate the two clauses has allowed us to imply the relationship between the two without stating it explicitly. This can be quite a powerful tool in allowing/encouraging your reader to make implicit connections. As the reader is involved in the development of the idea, it may well be more persuasive than simply stating the causal relationship between the two clauses. The decision as to whether to use a semicolon or to make the two clauses into separate sentences is one of style and, as such, is up to you the writer. As with many punctuation marks, the semicolon is powerful and can give your writing a good deal more style and precision, but it should not be over used.

Taken from HERE.

A poem: Hotel Freedom

there was confusion, there was some pain

who owned what and who would gain

hotel freedom stands so tall and proud

they built it on some common ground

the biggest deal in this town

no one could stop it going down

a sullen native brings me my fries

some foreign coins should raise a smile

perhaps he'll show them to his children

and watch this world spin in their eyes

it could change their lives

little white graves behind the school

a fitting end for stubborn fools

hotel freedom goes from strength to strength

they say its chains are gaining ground

when those that count they speak as one

then all the cranes block out the sun

there is a wall around this pool

and little iron bars on every room

this thing called freedom is a noble cause

but we must take steps to contain

the common anger that remains

Mix lingo 'literally' a thing for South Jakartans

Jokes have been circulating on Twitter in the past few days pointing out the distinctive way in which people who live and/or work in South Jakarta talk. The jokes highlight how people in the middle-upper class part of the capital often mix English and Indonesian in their daily conversations.

======

anak sastra jaksel kalo bikin acara namanya asian literally festival

— dwiki aprinaldi (@dwikiaprinaldi) September 1, 2018

======

Twitter user @dwikiaprinaldi, for example, tweeted “Anak sastra Jaksel kalo bikin acara namanya Asian literally festival”, which translates to “If literature students of South Jakarta made an event, it would be called Asian literally festival”. The tweet satirically pointed out how often they use the word “literally” regardless of its relevance.

======

from what i gathered, padinya ditumbuk which is bijinya lepas gitu nah moreafter dikumpulin deh itu hence masi ada kulitnya its fine baru abis itu ditumbuk2 like biar jadi beras literally

-petani jaksel

— nga (@iyajgybg) August 28, 2018

======

Another user, @iyajgybg, tweeted “[…] padinya ditumbuk which is bijinya lepas gitu nah moreafter dikumpulin deh itu hence masi ada kulitnya its finebaru abis itu ditumbuk2 like biar jadi beras literally — petani jaksel”.

Those two tweets got over 2,000 retweets since being posted on Sept. 1 and Aug. 28 respectively.

Stand-up comedian and filmmaker Ernest Prakasa through his Twitter account @ernestprakasa on Tuesday joined the fuss by tweeting a post using “South Jakarta-style” plus Hokkian, a Chinese dialect, which according to him was the West Jakarta style.

======

Gua lahir di Jakbar, gede di Jaksel. So ya gua ga problem whatsoever sama becandaan lu orang, cengli2 aja. Ga worth it aja gitu kita orang baper sama begituan, a little bit bokamguan IMO.

— Ernest Prakasa (@ernestprakasa) September 4, 2018

======

“Gua lahir di Jakbar, gede di Jaksel. So ya gua ga problem whatsoever sama becandaan lu orang, cengli2 aja. Ga worth it aja gitu kita orang baper sama begituan, a little bit bokamguan IMO,” he said, which translates to:

“I was born in West Jakarta and raised in South Jakarta. So I don’t have any problem whatsoever with your jokes, it’s OK. It’s not worth it to sweat the small stuff, which in my opinion is a little bit time-wasting.”

South Jakartan Nomena Hutauruk admitted that she and her friends sometimes talked using both English and Indonesian in one sentence — mostly involving the words “which is”, “literally”, “prefer”, “at least” and “I mean”.

“I don’t say the word ‘which is’ that often. The jokes are exaggerated,” the Jagakarsa resident told The Jakarta Post.

Although not new, communication expert from the University of Indonesia Devie Rahmawati said the phenomenon has shown the city’s youngsters’ potential and eagerness to communicate in the global language, English.

“These youngsters live, work and socialize with mixed-culture communities, including people from English-speaking countries. They work, hang out, even play games with foreigners. They want to be part of the global community,” she said on Tuesday.

“They mix two languages in their conversations to signify their ability to talk in both. The blame is on us, the adults, who fail to equip them with enough skills to communicate properly in English and Indonesian,” she added.

She also mentioned that many state officials and celebrities often talked in mixed languages too — which could not be good examples for the country’s young generations about the proper way to talk. This, instead, showed that Indonesians are not confident in their own language.

“This has become people’s habit, not only in South Jakarta, to showcase that they’re smart and educated. If that’s the case, we potentially lose our true identity: Indonesian,” she said.

Linguistic expert Ivan Lanin said people from generation to generation have been mixing languages in their conversations, a term in linguistics known as “code mixing”.

[Read also: 'Language is my ultimate weapon': Ivan Lanin - HERE]

Code mixing can happen both intentionally and unintentionally in a group of communicators. Such a manner of speaking does not pose a problem as long as people in the group can understand the meaning.

“Though I can’t say whether this is good or bad, I’m still not suggesting people talk in mixed code or languages in one sentence. We don’t expect people to do so once their linguistic skills improve,” he told the Post.

“People have a number of reasons to talk in mixed languages, even if they have the ability to talk properly. Laziness [to find equivalent words in Indonesian] and keeping up with their circles’ talking style are but a few,” he added.

Taken from HERE.

=================================================

Other article:

Presidential election: Rival camps squabble over English debate proposal

Of Allah and the state of Malaysia

Ruling on use of word 'Allah' shows a worrying state of affairs that, left unchecked, may be disastrous for Malaysia.

Al Jazeera 28 Oct 2013

Malik Imtiaz Sarwar is the Immediate Past President of the National Human Rights Society of Malaysia and practices law in Kuala Lumpur.

The Catholic Church in Malaysia must not use the word 'Allah' for 'God', despite widespread usage of the term

Earlier this month, the Malaysian Court of Appeal upheld an administrative direction by the government prohibiting the Catholic Church of Malaysia from using the word "Allah" to denote "God" in the Malay version of the Church's newsletter, The Herald.

The government asserts that the direction, along with a condition that the newsletter was only to be circulated among members of the Catholic Church, is aimed at preserving public order. The unimpeded use of the word "Allah" by the church, it explains, will result in confusion among Muslims.

The ruling was handed down in a controversial appeal brought by the government against a lauded 2009 decision of the first court striking down the prohibition as unreasonable for, among other things, it not being reconcilable with the long history of the use of the word by Christians in Malaya (later Malaysia), and the constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, expression and association. It was also, in the mind of the court, irrational in light of the word "Allah" being freely used to denote God in the Malay translation of the Bible.

One Malaysia? Not so much

That the government felt it necessary to appeal the ruling in the first place was questionable. The government, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak, had spent much time, effort and money in a branding exercise, centred on the use of the slogan "1Malaysia", to showcase itself as a moderate and inclusive government. "1Malaysia", in Najib's view, was the blueprint for a participatory democracy that would be the envy of others. Justifiably, questions arose as to why it was necessary to pursue an appeal against a decision that did nothing more than state the obvious.

It would seem that the appeal was not prompted by concerns about the state of public order, Malaysia has, after all, shown itself more than capable of dealing with actual threats in the past. The fact that the government has in the wake of the decision of the Court of Appeal clarified that the prohibition only applies to The Herald and not to other publications, including the Malay version of the Bible, undermines any assertion that the national security of the country would be threatened by the unimpeded use of the word.

Rather, the decision of the government appears to have been a strategic appeal to the ethnocentric sentiments of a Malay, and as such Muslim, majority voter base in a move that Malaysians have come to recognise as a leaf out of the playbook of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the political party which Najib heads and which has led the coalition government that has ruled since independence.

The UMNO-led coalition suffered a setback at the 12th general election in 2008, when it lost its two-thirds majority in parliament and the popular vote in peninsular Malaysia. Persuaded by the meritocratic rhetoric of the opposition, led by Anwar Ibrahim, more Malays were voting against UMNO. UMNO placed the blame for this state of affairs at the feet of Najib's predecessor, Abdullah Badawi, whose attempts to reduce the emphasis on race and religion in the politics of the coalition that he ledwere characterised as weakness.

Ratcheting up racial and religious sensitivities was, in the minds of influential members of the party, the way to go. Reactions to the initial ruling point to that having been a factor in the decision to appeal the first ruling, as does government rhetoric surrounding the decision to appeal.

Political decision

Though it is tempting to blame the judiciary for the way things have turned out, this would be unfair. It cannot be overlooked that leading the charge was the attorney general, who appeared on behalf of the government. It was his arguments that ultimately led to the Court of Appeal concluding that the use of the word "Allah" was not integral to the Christian faith, and did not correspond with the supremacy of the Islamic faith in Malaysia.

Equally, the current home minister was in a position to withdraw the appeal when it came up for hearing in September. That he did not do so in the face of the then imminent UMNO elections, and a potential leadership challenge, and in the aftermath of the 13th general election that saw the ruling coalition lose the popular vote is, I think, not coincidental.

The self-evident truth is that the government, and as such Malaysia, is constrained by deeply divisive racial and religious politics. It is not the model multi-faith society that some characterise it as being. For it to be so, the government must recognise that it has no choice but to play the role of an honest broker in the public sphere, irrespective of its political ideology. That would mean that the government must give due recognition to the fundamental freedoms of all citizens, regardless of their race or religion. It must also, more fundamentally, recognise that the way forward for Malaysia does not lie in pandering to ethno-religious sentiment but rather in an empowering process for all its citizens.

Sadly, that does not appear to be the case at the present time. The initial ruling, and other hard-won decisions on various aspects of religious freedom, would not have been welcomed as landmark decisions if that were the case. They would have been nothing more than routine administrative law decisions. The reality is that Malaysians are confronted by a worrying state of affairs that, if left unchecked, will have disastrous consequences for the nation.

Malik Imtiaz Sarwar is the Immediate Past President of the National Human Rights Society of Malaysia and practices law in Kuala Lumpur.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

This is a few years old. What's the latest news on this issue? What are your thoughts?

Interesting Web Site

Germany Guide for Refugees

You can visit it HERE.

Understanding Assignments

The first step in any successful college writing venture is reading the assignment. While this sounds like a simple task, it can be a tough one. This guide will help you unravel your assignment and begin to craft an effective response. Much of the following advice will involve translating typical assignment terms and practices into meaningful clues to the type of writing your instructor expects.
Regardless of the assignment, department, or instructor, adopting these two habits will serve you well:

Firstly, read the assignment carefully as soon as you receive it. Do not put this task off—reading the assignment at the beginning will save you time, stress, and problems later. An assignment can look pretty straightforward at first, particularly if the instructor has provided lots of information. That does not mean it will not take time and effort to complete; you may even have to learn a new skill to complete the assignment.

Secondly, ask the instructor about anything you do not understand. Do not hesitate to approach your instructor. Instructors would prefer to set you straight before you hand the paper in. That’s also when you will find their feedback most useful.

Assignment formats
Many assignments follow a basic format. Assignments often begin with an overview of the topic and include a central verb or verbs that describe the task, as well as offer some additional suggestions, questions, or prompts to get you started.

An Overview of Some Kind
The instructor might set the stage with some general discussion of the subject of the assignment, introduce the topic, or remind you of something pertinent that you have discussed in class.

The Task of the Assignment
Pay attention; this part tells you what to do when you write the paper. Look for the key verb or verbs in the sentence. Words like analyze, summarize, or compare direct you to think about your topic in a certain way. Also pay attention to words such as how, what, when, where, and why; these words guide your attention toward specific information.

“Analyze the effect that gerbils had on the Russian Revolution”, or “Suggest an interpretation of housefly undergarments that differs from Darwin’s.”

Additional Material to Think about
Here you will find some questions to use as springboards as you begin to think about the topic. Instructors usually include these questions as suggestions rather than requirements. Do not feel compelled to answer every question unless the instructor asks you to do so. Pay attention to the order of the questions. Sometimes they suggest the thinking process your instructor imagines you will need to follow to begin thinking about the topic.

“You may wish to consider the differing views held by Communist gerbils vs. Monarchist gerbils, or Can there be such a thing as ‘the housefly garment industry’ or is it just a home-based craft?”

Style Tips
These are the instructor’s comments about writing expectations:

“Be concise”, “Write effectively”, or “Argue carefully.”

Technical Details
These instructions usually indicate format rules or guidelines.

“Your paper must be typed in Palatino font on gray paper and must not exceed 600 pages. It is due on the anniversary of Mao Tse-tung’s death.”
The assignment’s parts may not appear in exactly this order, and each part may be very long or really short. Nonetheless, being aware of this standard pattern can help you understand what your instructor wants you to do.

Interpreting the assignment
Ask yourself a few basic questions as you read and jot down the answers on the assignment sheet:

• Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?
• Who is your audience?
• What kind of evidence do you need to support your ideas?
• What kind of writing style is acceptable?
• What are the absolute rules of the paper?

Try to look at the question from the point of view of the instructor. Recognize that your instructor has a reason for giving you this assignment and for giving it to you at a particular point in the semester. In every assignment, the instructor has a challenge for you. This challenge could be anything from demonstrating an ability to think clearly to demonstrating an ability to use the library. See the assignment not as a vague suggestion of what to do but as an opportunity to show that you can handle the course material as directed. Paper assignments give you more than a topic to discuss—they ask you to do something with the topic. Keep reminding yourself of that. Be careful to avoid the other extreme as well: do not read more into the assignment than what is there.

Why did your instructor ask you to do this particular task?
Of course, your instructor has given you an assignment so that he or she will be able to assess your understanding of the course material and give you an appropriate grade. But there is more to it than that. Your instructor has tried to design a learning experience of some kind. Your instructor wants you to think about something in a particular way for a particular reason. If you read the course description at the beginning of your syllabus, review the assigned readings, and consider the assignment itself, you may begin to see the plan, purpose, or approach to the subject matter that your instructor has created for you. If you still aren’t sure of the assignment’s goals, try asking the instructor.

Given your instructor’s efforts, it helps to answer the question: What is my purpose in completing this assignment? Is it to gather research from a variety of outside sources and present a coherent picture? Is it to take material I have been learning in class and apply it to a new situation? Is it to prove a point one way or another? Key words from the assignment can help you figure this out. Look for key terms in the form of active verbs that tell you what to do.

Key Terms: Finding Those Active Verbs
Here are some common key words and definitions to help you think about assignment terms:

Information words
Ask you to demonstrate what you know about the subject, such as who, what, when, where, how, and why.
define—give the subject’s meaning (according to someone or something). Sometimes you have to give more than one view on the subject’s meaning
describe—provide details about the subject by answering questions words (such as who, what, when, where, how, and why); you might also give details related to the five senses (what you see, hear, feel, taste, and smell)
explain—give reasons why or examples of how something happened
illustrate—give descriptive examples of the subject and show how each is connected with the subject
summarize—briefly list the important ideas you learned about the subject
trace—outline how something has changed or developed from an earlier time to its current form
research—gather material from outside sources about the subject, often with the implication or requirement that you will analyze what you have found

Relation words
Ask you to demonstrate how things are connected.
compare—show how two or more things are similar (and, sometimes, different)
contrast—show how two or more things are dissimilar
apply—use details that you’ve been given to demonstrate how an idea, theory, or concept works in a particular situation
cause—show how one event or series of events made something else happen
relate—show or describe the connections between things

Interpretation words
Ask you to defend ideas of your own about the subject. Do not see these words as requesting opinion alone (unless the assignment specifically says so), but as requiring opinion that is supported by concrete evidence. Remember examples, principles, definitions, or concepts from class or research and use them in your interpretation.
assess—summarize your opinion of the subject and measure it against something
prove, justify—give reasons or examples to demonstrate how or why something is the truth
evaluate, respond—state your opinion of the subject as good, bad, or some combination of the two, with examples and reasons
support—give reasons or evidence for something you believe (be sure to state clearly what it is that you believe)
synthesize —put two or more things together that have not been put together in class or in your readings before; do not just summarize one and then the other and say that they are similar or different—you must provide a reason for putting them together that runs all the way through the paper
analyze—determine how individual parts create or relate to the whole, figure out how something works, what it might mean, or why it is important
argue—take a side and defend it with evidence against the other side

More Clues to Your Purpose
As you read the assignment, think about what the teacher does in class:

What kinds of textbooks or coursepack did your instructor choose for the course—ones that provide background information, explain theories or perspectives, or argue a point of view?

In lectures, does your instructor ask your opinion, try to prove her point of view, or use keywords that show up again in the assignment?

What kinds of assignments are typical in this discipline? Social science classes often expect more research. Humanities classes thrive on interpretation and analysis.

How do the assignments, readings, and lectures work together in the course? Instructors spend time designing courses, sometimes even arguing with their peers about the most effective course materials. Figuring out the overall design to the course will help you understand what each assignment is meant to achieve.

Who is your audience?
Now, what about your reader? Most undergraduates think of their audience as the instructor. True, your instructor is a good person to keep in mind as you write. But for the purposes of a good paper, think of your audience as someone like your roommate: smart enough to understand a clear, logical argument, but not someone who already knows exactly what is going on in your particular paper. Remember, even if the instructor knows everything there is to know about your paper topic, he or she still has to read your paper and assess your understanding. In other words, teach the material to your reader.

Aiming a paper at your audience happens in two ways: you make decisions about the tone and the level of information you want to convey.

Tone means the “voice” of your paper. Should you be chatty, formal, or objective? Usually you will find some happy medium—you do not want to alienate your reader by sounding condescending or superior, but you do not want to, um, like, totally wig on the man, you know? Eschew ostentatious erudition: some students think the way to sound academic is to use big words. Be careful—you can sound ridiculous, especially if you use the wrong big words.

The level of information you use depends on who you think your audience is. If you imagine your audience as your instructor and she already knows everything you have to say, you may find yourself leaving out key information that can cause your argument to be unconvincing and illogical. But you do not have to explain every single word or issue. If you are telling your roommate what happened on your favorite science fiction TV show last night, you do not say, “First a dark-haired white man of average height, wearing a suit and carrying a flashlight, walked into the room. Then a purple alien with fifteen arms and at least three eyes turned around. Then the man smiled slightly. In the background, you could hear a clock ticking. The room was fairly dark and had at least two windows that I saw.” You also do not say, “This guy found some aliens. The end.” Find some balance of useful details that support your main point.

The Grim Truth
With a few exceptions (including some lab and ethnography reports), you are probably being asked to make an argument. You must convince your audience. It is easy to forget this aim when you are researching and writing; as you become involved in your subject matter, you may become enmeshed in the details and focus on learning or simply telling the information you have found. You need to do more than just repeat what you have read. Your writing should have a point, and you should be able to say it in a sentence. Sometimes instructors call this sentence a “thesis” or a “claim.”

So, if your instructor tells you to write about some aspect of oral hygiene, you do not want to just list: “First, you brush your teeth with a soft brush and some peanut butter. Then, you floss with unwaxed, bologna-flavored string. Finally, gargle with bourbon.” Instead, you could say, “Of all the oral cleaning methods, sandblasting removes the most plaque. Therefore it should be recommended by the American Dental Association.” Or, “From an aesthetic perspective, moldy teeth can be quite charming. However, their joys are short-lived.”

Convincing the reader of your argument is the goal of academic writing. It doesn’t have to say “argument” anywhere in the assignment for you to need one. Look at the assignment and think about what kind of argument you could make about it instead of just seeing it as a checklist of information you have to present.

Taken from the University of North Carolina website.

Do young Japanese people dream big?

By AMY CHAVEZ, 

Do young Japanese people dream big? This was the question posed by Steven Kim recently on LinkedIn's "InStyle Tokyo Premier Networking" group.

When I taught at a Japanese women's college in the late 1990s and early 2000s, one of the entrance exam questions was, "What is your dream?" Students answered anything from "To become a fluent English speaker" and "To own a flower shop" to "My dream is to become just like my mother."

Every now and then you'd get something different, such as "To become a truck driver" (a real example), but for the most part, none of the prospective young women entering our college were dreaming big, unless you consider that, proportionate to a young Japanese coed, a semi-truck would have to be pretty big.

I don't teach anymore, so I have no idea if students these days have big dreams, but I do know what their parents and grandparents are thinking. The older people are so down on the economy and the state of things in Japan that if the young people are listening, these negative thoughts may have a profound impact on them.

Young people should never be led to think their efforts are in vain, their education will never get them a good job, or that they will never have a chance to become anything due to a bad economy, or even a hopeless nation. Because if they believe this, they will not strive.

When I graduated from high school in 1981, the United States was in a recession. We had just come through the oil and gas crisis, were at the beginning of the Latin American debt crisis, and in the middle of the real estate boom that ushered in the ensuing savings and loan crisis.

Unemployment was at a historic high of 7.5 percent. For good reason adults had negative views of young people's future. I remember a university professor telling us we'd never, ever be able to afford to buy our own home. It was clear that adults felt young people had everything stacked against them.

Did we believe this? Of course not! We were young! We refused to believe we would not be successful, that our dreams were in vain or that going to college wasn't going to gain us a darn good job. Because those ideas go against the thinking of a free, democratic society that encourages creativity, new ideas and change.

When you are taught that you can be the one who makes a difference, that you are responsible for your own future and that, by the way, there will be no government there to take care of you, you become a survivor. Living in a dynamic country such as the U.S., where things are constantly changing, where there is immigration, where there is growth — there is opportunity.

It wasn't until years later that I realized the country was in such a dire recession at that time. And I'm sure many of my classmates didn't realize it either. How could we not know? Because we were young — the present was all we knew, and the present was fine with us.

But most importantly, we had good parents: parents who told us to have dreams, who told us that we could do whatever we wanted if we put our minds to it. And we believed them — because we were young. (Enter Pat Benatar: "We were young . . .").

To this day I am proud of my female classmates — the ones I went to grade school, college and grad school with. They've gone on to become newscasters, authors, actresses, doctors, corporate executives, entrepreneurs and the best mothers the country has ever seen. (Sing it Pat: "Heartache to heartache we stand . . . !")

So perhaps the question is not whether young people dream big, but rather, are young people being empowered to dream big? Do they have good role models who encourage them, teachers who believe in them, and professionals who will mentor them? Are they being taught critical thinking skills? Problem solving skills? Do they know how to make their dreams come true? Do they have good parents?

I received an email from a friend in Hong Kong who is home-schooling his two girls who are 12 and 13 years old. "After two years of local school, where the girls did very well academically, we reverted to home schooling to save their creativity and restore their happiness. Too much pressure and learning of facts in an Asian school, not enough critical thinking, sport or just ordinary play."

There is no lack of entrepreneurs in Japan. Every time I go into the city, I see new shops opened by energetic young people. But so many of these shops disappear within six months. Where are the business plans behind these new ventures? Did they do any research first to see if their product was in demand? I suspect that what is behind these entrepreneurial failures is dreams without vision. (Save us Pat: "No promises, no demands . . .")

Young people can understand the past because they've studied history. They can understand the present because they live it. But can we expect them to understand the future if they've never experienced it? Shouldn't they be given the same chance to dream no matter what the economy? After all, their future starts now.

To have a strong country, you must empower your women and your young people. Let them dream big, but let's make sure they have the knowhow and the vision to achieve their dreams.

At the very least, they should be listening to Pat Benatar. Because business, like love, is a battlefield.

Taken from The Japan Times HERE.

The Food Of India

Indian cooking is colorful, fragrant, and delicious. It depends on a wide array of spices, legumes, and grains for its distinct character.

An Ancient Treasure

India is the world’s chief supplier of spices and has been for at least thirty-six hundred years. These fragrant and flavorful plant substances, which often have been more prized than jewels, have drawn people from all over the world to India throughout history.

Unlike spice seekers from other nations, Indians have always had access to a wide array of different spices. Some of the most popular spices include mint, bright orange turmeric, pungent cumin, sweet and refreshing cardamom, parsley-like coriander, bitter-tasting kari (cah-ree), cinnamon, and mustard seeds. Indian chefs have been using these and other delicious spices to preserve, color, flavor, and perfume their food for thousands of years. Indian cuisine would not be the same without them.

An Artful Combination

Indians use spices the way artists use paint, blending them together in hundreds of different combinations and proportions. For a dish to be considered well cooked, no single spice should ever dominate. Instead there must be a perfect balance of ingredients, with each dish having its own distinctive taste, color, and perfume. This means that cooks need to understand the characteristics of each spice and how they mix together. Chef Mridula Baljekar explains: “Spices are the heart and soul of Indian cooking. Knowing how to use the spices is the key that unlocks the secrets of alluring aromas and magical flavors of classic Indian cuisine.”

Indian cooks blend spices in a number of ways. They create a masala (mah-saah-laah), a general term that refers to any combination of ground spices. They make masala by grinding different spices together into a powder. This may be done in a stone dish known as a mortar with a small, wooden, clublike tool called a pestle. A food processor can also be used to save time. Garam masala (gah-rahm mah-saah-laah), a favorite spice mixture, is a specific blend of up to fifteen spices that is widely used in Indian cooking. It features cinnamon, black pepper, cloves, cardamom, and other spices. It is dark and zesty.

Spices are also used whole. Roots, pods, seeds, and leaves are fried for less than a minute in hot oil or ghee (gee). Ghee is a type of butter in which all the milk solids have been removed. Incredibly fragrant, the spiced or tempered oil is used as a basis for hundreds of different sauces.

Rice and Grains

Sauces are often served over rice, a staple of the Indian diet and an important part of Indian culture. Rice symbolizes good fortune in India, which is why rice porridge is the first solid food fed to babies. It is also the most important crop in India, with one-fourth of all cultivated land planted with it.

Although many varieties of rice are grown, basmati (bas-maah-tee) rice is the most popular. It is known for its smooth, rich taste and fresh aroma. Basmati literally means “the queen of perfumes” in Hindi, one of the most common languages spoken in India. Indians have many uses for basmati rice. It is boiled and topped with a spicy sauce filled with meat or vegetables. It can also be stir-fried with spices, used in puddings, puffed into a popcorn-like snack, or cooked in aromatic casseroles.

Indians eat about 4.5 pounds (2 kg) of rice a week. Before cooking it, they carefully rinse the rice. This removes impurities and excess starch and keeps the grains from sticking together. Then the rice is soaked for at least an hour before it is boiled. Soaking whitens the rice and helps the grains absorb the flavor of the spicy sauces that will be poured over them. According to authors Martin Hughes, Sheema Mookherjee, and Richard Delacy, the end result is, “white, long, and silky.”

Wonderful Breads

Although rice is eaten at every meal in southern India and in great quantities in northern India, flat breads known as rotis (ro-tees) are the core of northern meals. Rotis are also popular in the rest of the nation. Roti originated centuries ago as a portable food that farmers and shepherds could dine on when they were out in the fields. Today Indians use rotis like edible spoons to scoop up saucy dishes, meat, and vegetables.

Rotis are made without yeast from nutrient-rich whole-wheat flour, which is mixed with water and kneaded to form a thin dough. The dough is divided into tennis ball–size portions, rolled into almost perfect circles, and cooked on a hot cast-iron griddle known as a tawa (tah-waah).

Cooks make a wide variety of rotis, but the most common is chapati (chah-paah-tee), a soft flat bread that balloons out as it cooks. Other favorites include pooris (poo-rees), which are deep-fried chapatis, and paranthas (pah-rahn-thahs), which have a pastry-like texture. Many Indian cooks make fresh roti for every meal. Traditionally the woman of the house makes the bread as the family eats. When the roti is done, she brushes it with butter to keep it soft and transfers it from the griddle to the table. “This is simple . . . home cooking,” explains a chef at the Indian Foods Company. “I cannot go for many days without my roti.”

Colorful Legumes

Legumes are another essential part of the Indian diet. Legumes such as lentils, beans, and peas are eaten at least once a day. They are usually flavored and scented with spices and served over rice, or with roti and a vegetable. Since they are loaded with vitamins, minerals, protein and fiber they are quite nutritious. This may be why an Indian proverb says that legumes and roti are all an Indian needs to survive. Indian cooks use over 60 different types of legumes. These include tiny yellow split peas; black, yellow, and pink lentils; and tan chickpeas. One of the favorite ways of using legumes is in dal (dahl), a delicious stewlike dish. Each cook has his or her own dal recipes, so there are countless variations. Depending on the cook, dal can contain just one type of legume or a few. It can be thick and chunky, or the lentils may be mashed so that the dal is thin and velvety smooth. But what gives dal its special taste and aroma are the spices that flavor it.

To make dal, cooks soak the legumes overnight to soften them. Then they simmer them for hours. When the legumes are tender, selected spices are cooked in hot oil or ghee and added to the legumes right before they are served. This gives the legumes, which are otherwise bland, a savory flavor and a mouthwatering aroma. Popular combinations include pink lentils spiced with cumin, pepper, and chili powder, or yellow split peas flavored with mashed garlic, ginger, and cinnamon.

Mint is often added to the stew. And sometimes yogurt is mixed into dal to give it a creamy texture. One thing is certain: No matter the ingredients, Indians love dal. “There is something wonderfully warm and tasty about . . . dal,” explains chef Suvir Saran. “I want [it] when I have a craving for something simple and homey, but still savory.”

Indian cooking is, indeed, warm and tasty. Indian chefs artfully combine brightly colored legumes, richly perfumed spices, and deliciously satisfying grains to create dishes that are uniquely Indian.

Taken from my copy of the book whose cover is being used to illustrate this blog post.

Writing Anxiety

This article discusses the situational nature of writer’s block and other writing anxiety and suggests things you can try to feel more confident and optimistic about yourself as a writer.

WHAT ARE WRITING ANXIETY AND WRITER’S BLOCK?

“Writing anxiety” and “writer’s block” are informal terms for a wide variety of apprehensive and pessimistic feelings about writing. These feelings may not be pervasive in a person’s writing life. For example, you might feel perfectly fine writing a biology lab report but apprehensive about writing a paper on a novel.You may confidently tackle a paper about the sociology of gender but delete and start over twenty times when composing an email to a cute classmate suggesting coffee. In other words, writing anxiety and writers’ block are situational. These terms do NOT describe psychological attributes. People aren’t born anxious writers; rather, they become anxious or blocked through negative or difficult experiences with writing.

WHEN DO THESE NEGATIVE FEELINGS ARISE?

Although there is a great deal of variation among individuals, there are also some common experiences that writers in general find stressful.

For example, you may struggle when you are:

• adjusting to a new form of writing—for example, first year college writing, papers in a new field of study, or longer forms than you are used to (a long research paper, a senior thesis, a master’s thesis, a dissertation).
• writing for a reader or readers who have been overly critical or demanding in the past.
• remembering negative criticism received in the past—even if the reader who criticized your work won’t be reading your writing this time.
• working with limited time or with a lot of unstructured time.
• responding to an assignment that seems unrelated to academic or life goals.
• dealing with troubling events outside of school.

WHAT ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR HANDLING THESE FEELINGS?

Get support

Choose a writing buddy, someone you trust to encourage you in your writing life. Your writing buddy might be a friend or family member, a classmate, a teacher, a colleague, or a Writing Center tutor. Talk to your writing buddy about your ideas, your writing process, your worries, and your successes. Share pieces of your writing. Make checking in with your writing buddy a regular part of your schedule. When you share pieces of writing with your buddy, use our handout on asking for feedback.

In his book Understanding Writing Blocks, Keith Hjortshoj describes how isolation can harm writers, particularly students who are working on long projects not connected with coursework. He suggests that in addition to connecting with supportive individuals, such students can benefit from forming or joining a writing group, which functions in much the same way as a writing buddy. A group can provide readers, deadlines, support, praise, and constructive criticism. For help starting one, see our handout about writing groups.

Identify your strengths

Often, writers who are experiencing block or anxiety have a worse opinion of their own writing than anyone else! Make a list of the things you do well. You might ask a friend or colleague to help you generate such a list. Here are some possibilities to get you started:

• I explain things well to people.
• I get people’s interest.
• I have strong opinions.
• I listen well.
• I am critical of what I read.
• I see connections.

Choose at least one strength as your starting point. Instead of saying “I can’t write,” say “I am a writer who can …”

Recognize that writing is a complex process

Writing is an attempt to fix meaning on the page, but you know, and your readers know, that there is always more to be said on a topic. The best writers can do is to contribute what they know and feel about a topic at a particular point in time.

Writers often seek “flow,” which usually entails some sort of breakthrough followed by a beautifully coherent outpouring of knowledge. Flow is both a possibility—most people experience it at some point in their writing lives—and a myth. Inevitably, if you write over a long period of time and for many different situations, you will encounter obstacles. As Hjortshoj explains, obstacles are particularly common during times of transition—transitions to new writing roles or to new kinds of writing.



Think of yourself as an apprentice.

If block or apprehension is new for you, take time to understand the situations you are writing in. In particular, try to figure out what has changed in your writing life. Here are some possibilities:

• You are writing in a new format.
• You are writing longer papers than before.
• You are writing for new audiences.
• You are writing about new subject matter.
• You are turning in writing from different stages of the writing process—for example, planning stages or early drafts.

It makes sense to have trouble when dealing with a situation for the first time. It’s also likely that when you confront these new situations, you will learn and grow. Writing in new situations can be rewarding. Not every format or audience will be right for you, but you won’t know which ones might be right until you try them. Think of new writing situations as apprenticeships. When you’re doing a new kind of writing, learn as much as you can about it, gain as many skills in that area as you can, and when you finish the apprenticeship, decide which of the skills you learned will serve you well later on. You might be surprised.

Below are some suggestions for how to learn about new kinds of writing:

• Ask a lot of questions of people who are more experienced with this kind of writing. Here are some of the questions you might ask: What’s the purpose of this kind of writing? Who’s the audience? What are the most important elements to include? What’s not as important? How do you get started? How do you know when what you’ve written is good enough? How did you learn to write this way?
• Ask a lot of questions of the person who assigned you a piece of writing. If you have a paper, the best place to start is with the written assignment itself. For help with this, see our handout on understanding assignments.
• Look for examples of this kind of writing. (You can ask your instructor if he/she could recommend an example). Look, especially, for variation. There are often many different ways to write within a particular form. Look for ways that feel familiar to you, approaches that you like. You might want to look for published models or, if this seems too intimidating, look at your classmates’ writing. In either case, ask yourself questions about what these writers are doing, and take notes. How does the writer begin and end? In what order does the writer tell things? How and when does the writer convey her or his main point? How does the writer bring in other people’s ideas? What is the writer’s purpose? How does she or he achieve that purpose?
• Read our handouts about how to write in specific fields or how to handle specific writing assignments.
• Listen critically to your readers. Before you dismiss or wholeheartedly accept what they say, try to understand them. If a reader has given you written comments, ask yourself questions to figure out the reader’s experience of your paper: What is this reader looking for? What am I doing that satisfies this reader? In what ways is this reader still unsatisfied? If you can’t answer these questions from the reader’s comments, then talk to the reader, or ask someone else to help you interpret the comments.
• Most importantly, don’t try to do everything at once. Start with reasonable expectations. You can’t write like an expert your first time out. Nobody does! Use the criticism you get.

Once you understand what readers want, you are in a better position to decide what to do with their criticisms. There are two extreme possibilities—dismissing the criticisms and accepting them all—but there is also a lot of middle ground. Figure out which criticisms are consistent with your own purposes, and do the hard work of engaging with them. Again, don’t expect an overnight turn-around; recognize that changing writing habits is a process and that papers are steps in the process.

Chances are that at some point in your writing life you will encounter readers who seem to dislike, disagree with, or miss the point of your work. Figuring out what to do with criticism from such readers is an important part of a writer’s growth.

Try new tactics when you get stuck

Often, writing blocks occur at particular stages of the writing process. The writing process is cyclical and variable. For different writers, the process may include reading, brainstorming, drafting, getting feedback, revising, and editing. These stages do not always happen in this order, and once a writer has been through a particular stage, chances are she or he hasn’t seen the last of that stage. For example, brainstorming may occur all along the way.

Figure out what your writing process looks like and whether there’s a particular stage where you tend to get stuck. Perhaps you love researching and taking notes on what you read, and you have a hard time moving from that work to getting started on your own first draft. Or once you have a draft, it seems set in stone and even though readers are asking you questions and making suggestions, you don’t know how to go back in and change it. Or just the opposite may be true; you revise and revise and don’t want to let the paper go.

Wherever you have trouble, take a longer look at what you do and what you might try. Sometimes what you do is working for you; it’s just a slow and difficult process. Other times, what you do may not be working; these are the times when you can look around for other approaches to try:

• Talk to your writing buddy and to other colleagues about what they do at the particular stage that gets you stuck.
• Read about possible new approaches in our handouts on brainstorming and revising.
• Try thinking of yourself as an apprentice to a stage of the writing process and give different strategies a shot.
• Cut your paper into pieces and tape them to the wall, use eight different colors of highlighters, draw a picture of your paper, read your paper out loud in the voice of your favorite movie star….

Okay, we’re kind of kidding with some of those last few suggestions, but there is no limit to what you can try (for some fun writing strategies, check out our online animated demos). When it comes to conquering a block, give yourself permission to fall flat on your face. Trying and failing will you help you arrive at the thing that works for you.

Celebrate your successes

Start storing up positive experiences with writing. Whatever obstacles you’ve faced, celebrate the occasions when you overcome them. This could be something as simple as getting started, sharing your work with someone besides a teacher, revising a paper for the first time, trying out a new brainstorming strategy, or turning in a paper that has been particularly challenging for you. You define what a success is for you. Keep a log or journal of your writing successes and breakthroughs, how you did it, how you felt. This log can serve as a boost later in your writing life when you face new challenges.

Get support

Wait a minute, didn’t we already say that? Yes. It’s worth repeating. Most people find relief for various kinds of anxieties by getting support from others. Sometimes the best person to help you through a spell of worry is someone who’s done that for you before—a family member, a friend, a mentor. Maybe you don’t even need to talk with this person about writing; maybe you just need to be reminded to believe in yourself, that you can do it.

If you don’t know anyone on campus yet whom you have this kind of relationship with, reach out to someone who seems like they could be a good listener and supportive. There are a number of professional resources for you on campus, people you can talk through your ideas or your worries with. A great place to start is the UNC Writing Center. If you know you have a problem with writing anxiety, make an appointment well before the paper is due. You can come to the Writing Center with a draft or even before you’ve started writing. You can also approach your instructor with questions about your writing assignment. If you’re an undergraduate, your academic advisor and your residence hall advisor are other possible resources. Counselors at Counseling and Wellness Services are also available to talk with you about anxieties and concerns that extend beyond writing.

CONCLUSION

Apprehension about writing is a common condition on college campuses. Because writing is the most common means of sharing our knowledge, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves when we write. This handout has given some suggestions for how to relieve that pressure. Talk with others; realize we’re all learning; take an occasional risk; turn to the people who believe in you. Counter negative experiences by actively creating positive ones.

Even after you have tried all of these strategies and read every Writing Center handout, invariably you will still have negative experiences in your writing life. When you get a paper back with a bad grade on it or when you get a rejection letter from a journal, fend off the negative aspects of that experience. Try not to let them sink in; try not to let your disappointment fester. Instead, jump right back in to some area of the writing process: choose one suggestion the evaluator has made and work on it, or read and discuss the paper with a friend or colleague, or do some writing or revising—on this or any paper—as quickly as possible.

Failures of various kinds are an inevitable part of the writing process. Without them, it would be difficult if not impossible to grow as a writer. Learning often occurs in the wake of a startling event, something that stirs you up, something that makes you wonder. Use your failures to keep moving.

Taken from the University of North Carolina website.

See also this poem !

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How to Deal with Writer's Anxiety and Writer's Block (including video)

Writer’s Block and Writing Anxiety

University of South Carolina

7 Tips to Get Over Writer's Block

No matter what you’re writing about, writer’s block can literally 

put a roadblock in your path to success.

Make Your Writing Anxiety Disappear By Thinking Small