{"id":228,"date":"2011-06-05T11:58:29","date_gmt":"2011-06-05T09:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=228"},"modified":"2011-06-05T11:58:29","modified_gmt":"2011-06-05T09:58:29","slug":"philo-logos-or-the-love-of-language-reading-jaume-cabres-el-sentit-de-la-ficcio-and-thinking-of-entry-level-exams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2011\/06\/05\/philo-logos-or-the-love-of-language-reading-jaume-cabres-el-sentit-de-la-ficcio-and-thinking-of-entry-level-exams\/","title":{"rendered":"PHILO-LOGOS, OR THE LOVE OF LANGUAGE: READING JAUME CABR\u00c9\u2019S <em>EL SENTIT DE LA FICCI\u00d3<\/em> (AND THINKING OF ENTRY LEVEL EXAMS)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is serendipity. I get from my excellent local library Jaume Cabr\u00e9\u2019s autobiographical essay on why and how he writes, <em>El sentit de la ficci\u00f3<\/em>. As I read it on the train I find the perfect passage to close my first-year course on 20th C English Literature (pp. 24-25, in case you know the book). My last lecture is scheduled for just one hour later&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>In this passage Cabr\u00e9 explains how pleased he was to discover that at university he would be given marks for reading books he would have read anyway for pleasure. This seems written for my students!! What is more important, he explains next how reading led him to writing and how our souls are trapped as we read by style, \u201csempre l\u2019estil, sempre l\u2019\u00fas de la llengua, sempre la relaci\u00f3 \u00edntima de tu amb la llengua amb que t\u2019has fet persona i que, mitjan\u00e7ant la intencionalitat art\u00edstica, es converteix en llengua liter\u00e0ria i deixa de ser vehicle per convertir-se en ess\u00e8ncia.\u201d (p. 25) I rarely quote here this long, but I think this time it is worth it. As I read aloud in class, I realise we often forget that \u2018philology,\u2019 a word which has been dropped from the names of our degrees because students often didn\u2019t know what it stood for, means that: the love of the language. How hard it is to instil it&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I realise that the main difficulty in a first year course in a second language degree is that although students\u2019 love of languages may lead them to us, the way they love English is diffuse, based just on a superficial acquaintance. We possibly spend more time improving this acquaintance than teaching them to savour the beauties of Literature for the very basic reason that without a sound knowledge of the language these beauties pass unnoticed. And here\u2019s the rub: the courses we teach are designed for students who already know English intimately; instead, students often approach us because they want to learn English, starting from that superficial acquaintance. And this is not enough, much less when they take combined language degrees, mixing two poorly known foreign languages.<\/p>\n<p>Why don\u2019t we introduce entry level qualifications? Well, for some strange reason we can\u2019t. In contrast, they have them in the Translation Faculty or School, I have no idea why. I mean to say that it would make perfect sense for both to have entry level exams: ballet schools have harsh examinations for prospective students and I don\u2019t see why future \u2018philologists\u2019 shouldn\u2019t be tested on their command of language, both first and second. Instead, we admit everyone \u2013many of them are those who didn\u2019t pass the Translation test&#8230; And hope for the best. <\/p>\n<p>I wonder if in Mathematics they have the same problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is serendipity. I get from my excellent local library Jaume Cabr\u00e9\u2019s autobiographical essay on why and how he writes, El sentit de la ficci\u00f3. As I read it on the train I find the perfect passage to close my first-year course on 20th C English Literature (pp. 24-25, in case you know the book). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}