MASH Professional Development

Since starting my MA at the University of Birmingham, I've been colleagues and great friends with a group of very talented and research driven guys (sadly, it is a male dominated industry). During our coursework, they decided to start MASH-Meet Ask Share and Help, a collaborative group for University of Birmingham graduates. In addition to the conferences they have organized in Japan, they have recently started a Professional Development column on ELTnews.com. Guess who is featured this week?

This has been a great tool for professional development and collaborative research projects including publishing. More on that as it develops...

An MA Graduate...at last!

I started my MA program in April 2006 and after 2.5 years of combined distance and on-campus study, I apparently graduated sometime this week in abstenia. I've completed my first MA! Yes...there might just be one more!

Instead of spending money I don't have for a lot of pomp and circumstance in the UK, my wonderful roommate organized a dinner with our lovely Chennai friends and even ordered a special chocolate cake! The food was also fabulous--appetizers with real mozzarella and fresh basil, salads with more mozzarella, two cheesy delicious pizzas, and four different pasta dishes with not even a hint of Indian spice! Thanks to everyone for coming and making this a memorable celebration!


Next up: Planning my celebratory MA graduation trip to Vietnam with my dad, updating and writing a new resume, looking for jobs for fall 2009 and researching the next MA program!

A Visual Corpus of my MA dissertation

For anyone who is vaguely curious as to what I spent the last few months locked up in my parents house writing about, below is a visual representation of my MA dissertation. It is much more interesting presented this way. And saves several hours of reading. Plus, the fact that I took the time to do this proves exactly how nerdy I can be! Gotta love academia and linguistics.

(grammatical lexis not included).

Created using http://wordle.net/

சென்னை சென்னை சென்னை

I'm moving into my new apartment in Chennai tomorrow! Since my last post I've been to India, finished my MA dissertation, flown back to India, attended a 12 day AIF Service Corps orientation, met amazing people and am about to leave for my site! I've been on the move for over a year, and I'm really ready to settle in and unpack my bags. I want a 'home' for 10 months!

Pictures, stories and more about life in Chennai coming soon!

Another 4,000 written, only 12,000 words to go!

That's it folks! I've finished my 6th module or assessment essay for my MA course. Feels good to have that out of the way. Just have to run to the library and print it and submit it and I'm done!

This one was about the global spread of English, otherwise known as 'englishization' which I might add is not in any dictionary or referenced by hardly anyone other than academics (and mostly linguists at that)! So, in my mind it doesn't even really exist as a word, at least not in mainstream media yet. So, if you haven't heard of it...don't worry, neither has anyone else!

Time to pack up, say good-bye, fly home and start the dissertation! Eeps!

Another 4,000 written, only 16,000 to go

Finished one more assessment for the MA. This one was the most boring of them all. It was a critical analysis of two articles from the Journal of Intercultural Communication. Blah!

Only one more essay and then I can start the dissertation. And if I write the next paper the way I want to, it will be the lit review and background for the dissertation! Ah hah!!

Diversity Exploring Part II

A Few Residents from Asbury Overseas House

(Countries Represented include: India, Venezuela, China, Italy, UK, USA,

Congo, Egypt, Vietnam, Korea, Norway)

Since I’ve moved in, my Sri Lankan, Ghanaian, Russian, Korean and French floor mates have moved out and been replaced by an female Egyptian doctor, a Christian Egyptian, a Parisian man originally from Togo, his girlfriend from Gabon and a British woman who lives in the Ukraine.

The Egyptian doctor helped me find the local GP when I was sick. She also brought me a plate of veggies with mayo one night. She studies cardiovascular disease.

I’ve had several interesting conversations about ‘liberalism’ with the Christian Egyptian in our wireless internet room which prompted me to put stickers of Hindu gods and “save Tibet’ on my laptop which prompted him to give me a few interesting looks the next time.

I met an Indian family from Madurai living in my house. And another family that used to live in Chennai.

My sticker of Lord Muruga on my computer sparks lots of conversation among the Indian children when I’m checking Internet in the common room.

During a house potluck dinner I complimented the woman from Madurai on her delicious payasam in Tamil.

Several weeks ago my German classmate invited several of us over to her flat to watch the Eurovision Decision-England. As usual I was the only native speaker among Polish, Spanish, and Korean women.

On the bus to London I sat next to a Muslim Tamil-speaking man from Sri Lanka.

On the bus coming back from London I sat next to a man from Nigeria.

I went to a birthday party for a woman from Iran. She showed us pictures from her wedding and taught us Persian dancing.

Several days later she came to my birthday dinner and brought her Persian music—more dancing with women from Germany, Spain, South Korea, the US and Iran.

While my mom was visiting, several people stopped us in stores to comment on our ‘cute’ American accent. One woman had diamond and gold studs embedded into her teeth.

In the course of my moms four-day visit we ate pub grub, Bangladeshi curry, Persian chicken with tea for two, a Full English, and enjoyed a New York family restaurant.

I gave a presentation on “English as a Global Language” with a classmate who moved here from Algeria when she was in middle school and didn’t speak ANY English. She is now studying to become an Arabic-English translator.

This same friend from Algeria invited me to her house and baked me sponge cake, biscotti, and jam cookies. While I was enjoying tea and cake, we heard the call to prayer and she went in another room and prayed.

I was invited to an Iranian New Years dinner with students from Mexico, Indonesia, Spain, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, the US and of course, Iran.

The next night I went out drinking with the above Iranians. At the table there were Americans and Iranians drinking beer, vodka, and whiskey while comparing international gestures of offense. If only the US President Bush and the Iranian President Ahmadinejad could have a similar light-hearted conversation.

I have had lots of great conversations about fundamentalist Christians with the American on my floor who is studying theology. We were kindly handed Easter ‘booklets’ by our British floor mate.

I attended the St. Patrick’s Day parade in the city center with the above mentioned American. In addition to the dance troops, bag pipers, and every other person with painted green faces, there was a Sikh drumming group and an African music group in the parade.

The rich international community and experiences I’m having in Birmingham continue to surprise me! It is unlike anything I have experienced anywhere in the world. The only sad thing is, I don’t feel like I have many British friends as part of THIS experience. Although I know lots of Brits from my three years in Japan so I don’t feel as if I’m missing out too much! If I had the money I could spend my days traveling the UK visiting them all…alas the funds have quickly disappeared and I’ll be living out my last weeks in Birmingham enjoying the diversity and multi-culturalism.

Another 4,000 written, 20,000 to go

Well, I've made it through another 4,000 word essay. They do seem to be getting much much easier. Or maybe I'm getting lazier. Since I'm on-campus I was forced into giving a power point about my topic several weeks ago. So it was much easier to write up after having organized all the information for a presentation! I have six weeks to complete 8,000 more words and then it's on to the last 12,000--the mighty dissertation!

For all you interested EFL/ESL nerds out there...for this essay I designed a teacher education course for volunteers in India. Maybe someday I'll actually get to use it!

Another 4,000 written, 24,000 to go!

Well, it's official. Paper #3 has been submitted; mistakes, typos, and all! Well, hopefully there aren't too many of those, but I'm sure I missed something. But I think it's my best paper yet! Let's see what 'the grader' thinks!

The good news: I'm officially on academic hiatus until January! I'll continue the MA course on campus. Being a distance student has been interesting and challenging, the best part--the people I've met! Thanks guys! I couldn't have made it this far without you!!

Now...time to clean the apartment and start packing!

Temporarily Suspended

Enough is enough! I gotta focus on the paper! I'll be back in April!