Learning languages, telling stories

 

BY INEZ PONCE-DE LEON

OCTOBER 15, 2025

Read Next

The wind might’ve knocked my Jenga

Last week, I was the keynote speaker for the first day of the 2025 Speech Communication Conference held at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB).

In those few hours, I saw the kind of work that my fellow researchers were carrying out. We all spoke the same language: examining the world through the lenses of communication as a phenomenon, critiquing practice, moving past the usual “effects” questions, and asking instead about our lives as Filipinos.

Language is not merely that which carries meaning for a particular group. It can also refer to the parlance that allows people of the same profession to discuss the same issues and use a vocabulary familiar to them.

When I was a beginner communication practitioner, I thought that our language was simply that of convincing people to do as we wanted them to.

As I immersed myself in the research, however, I found that communication draws heavily from philosophy, and that it is more than dressing up information. As I became a science and risk communication scholar, I also found that my field was about listening to how people make sense of the world, what reality is like for them, and how they experience the intricate, maddening, beautiful combination of knowledge, experience, emotion, and risk (and more).

This has led me to advocate for gathering and listening to stories rather than imposing assumptions. I’ve written about this constantly in this column. Last week, I spoke about it during my keynote.

In the interactions that followed, I saw how researchers across the country already have stories to tell us all.

Kate de Jesus, an assistant professor at UPLB, has traveled to different places in the country, where she brought play and drama strategies to help communities understand complex information. She also has her own framework called Wari-Yari, which joins the two distinct modes of imagination in the Filipino language: kunwari, or the building of ideas in one’s mind; and kunyari, the building of actual structures to reflect the elements of one’s imagination.

Julienne Baldo-Cubelo, an associate professor at UP Diliman, is doing research on conversations, most recently on mothers and daughters discussing social media use, where she found that talk about the body was central to the ideas shared. Her work has explored conversations among different publics, all of them revealing experiences that speak of the Filipino at an uncertain time.

In these two studies, I could see what I wanted to bring forth: a closer look at how we, as a people, articulate our identity; and a deeper examination of how we, as a people, tell the stories of our lives.

It was also in these studies that I saw the richness of our culture, a richness that we often miss out on when we readily label people as too uneducated to react, too poor to have a say, and too simple to understand what we believe are concepts only the sophisticated have access to.

In those brief conversations, I found that there was no corner of the country untouched by perception and intelligence—we simply needed the right medium through which they could emerge.

And the imagination that people had, from the youth who played with ideas, to the old who did not realize that they were already teaching themselves complex concepts from hitherto inaccessible handbooks!

It is in these times of discovery that I am so proud of how we have so much to say, and in depth, and with our own tools; but it is also in these moments that I can see how much more painful it is to sacrifice our dignity at the altar of indifference.

SEE ALSO

COMMENTARY, OPINION

Keep the flame burning

Through the lenses of research and in the language of scholarship, I saw that every peso lost to corruption is a betrayal of a country that is deeply good, that can speak insightfully when called upon, that has its own way of seeing reality that must be shared rather than hidden beneath survey responses, agglomerated numbers, or mind-numbing so-called “entertainment.”

I saw so many lives whose stories could be told—but that could be cut short if we are to continue on this road of allowing the powerful to go unchecked in their corruption, if we allow the murderous and foul-mouthed to run free after having orchestrated the butchering of those whose lives and choices had been stolen from them.

For after all, in his rush to go after the drug addicts, was he not also attacking the poor, those who had been forced into poverty by the very government that had tasked itself to “discipline” them?

In the next few weeks, there will be rallies—there should be more of them, as we rattle our cages and speak up. Every shout we make must tell our story, of how we can no longer endure the humiliation of having our taxes decimated in favor of someone else’s comfort.

Every step in those marches must also be our language, where we tell the story of those who do not have the chance or who fear speaking up. If we can loosen their chains, perhaps they will find the power to finally open their eyes and demand justice for us all.

—————-

iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu

Raising the lifelong learner

BY INEZ PONCE-DE LEON

AUGUST 27, 2025

Read Next

The art of being, according to my cats

This semester, I am teaching Creativity once again. I always open the class with days-long discussions of the students’ school experiences. This helps them critique any assumptions they might hold about themselves, and by extension, their definition of creativity.

I employ freehand writing exercises in every class: students get a vague prompt, then have to write longhand for five minutes straight—no worries about grammar, punctuation, coherence, or flow. As long as they don’t stop writing, they get full credit.

The exercise helps them share thoughts they don’t want to say out loud, and also pushes out the mental cobwebs that might be standing in the way of their productivity. The students were understandably cautious in our first few exercises: they told stories about their friends, vacations, high school hijinks.

Our most recent prompt was: “But…” There was a variety of responses from my 76 students, but quite a number had the same story pouring out.

“But why doesn’t my work look like theirs?”

Some students wanted to give up drawing because no matter how hard they tried to imitate the illustrations they had seen online, their work just didn’t look the same. Others wanted to give up writing because their work didn’t sound right. And still others threatened to give up dancing, because try as they might to follow online choreographies, they just looked awkward.

Most asked the general question: “But what if I’m not good enough?”

The dance issue came up again after one of my belly dance classes. Some students stayed behind to follow an online video, but kept on groaning when they couldn’t get themselves to look like the dancer online.

“Ma’am!” one wailed. “How do I get my butt to move in circles like she does?”

I had to hold back a laugh as my students tried to draw letters with their bottoms. When they showed me the move, that was when I realized: there were no muscles in one’s hindquarters to support it; the muscles are on the side and up front.

I taught them the technique, which involves all the elements of belly dance posture, plus the right distribution of weight and the right muscles to access. The engine to drive the move wasn’t in the most obvious place; it was in the background, where people didn’t know to look unless they had dance training.

That, and more, is the engine that powers the creative process. It’s not just the shape that makes the dance, but the carriage, muscle control, body awareness, and stage presence. In illustration, it’s not just the shapes that make the image, but the weight of one’s hand, the strokes, perceptions of space and dimensionality, and one’s own style. In writing, it’s not just the words strung together, but flow, grammar, syntax, and the ability to take one’s experience and knowledge to create a piece that is uniquely one’s own.

Beyond these, an even larger engine: years performing onstage, or rough sketching, or writing drafts that never make it past the final edit.

And still, beyond these, the largest engine: years spent in workshops and classes to perfect form and sharpen style; to have a mentor to both correct and counsel; to have access to multiple lessons that allow students to see the many facets of the world that they can interlace to create work that doesn’t just show, but speaks.

The students didn’t need more practice. They had to recognize that they had to stop imitating; they had to acknowledge that they needed a teacher.

SEE ALSO

COLUMNISTS, OPINION

Facts first

We often speak of lifelong learning as encouraging people to keep asking questions because their school lessons will never encapsulate the fluidity of knowledge.

It is also this: ensuring that learners know when they need an actual human being, rather than relying on disembodied tutorials or condensed resources—to consult with and mentor them. This goes for all fields of study and practice, whether one wants to design better or learn more about a science issue.

This hunger for learning requires acknowledgment that one’s skills always need sharpening. Perhaps one solution, if well implemented, could be allowing students to learn beyond their specializations.

They’re often called core subjects: writing, public speaking, philosophy, theology, history, psychology, sociology, basic math and science, foreign languages, and physical education (PE).

Writing helps students express themselves coherently; it also organizes their thinking. Philosophy helps them examine the world critically while exploring diverse ways to understand issues. PE gives them options to stay fit and heightens their awareness of their bodies’ place in space.

In widening students’ options for knowledge, perhaps they might see how broad the world is and how much they still do not know. Such classes would not drive them to despair. Instead, students might admit, and without reservation, when their current skills need more than imitation, assumptions, and isolation to sharpen.

And by then, perhaps they can make the jump from “I’m just not good enough” to “Not yet; but with the right mentor, soon.”

 

When prayers seem unjust

BY INEZ PONCE-DE LEON

JULY 9, 2025

Read Next

Green guilt

Irecently served as lector for a weekday Mass at Our Lady of Pentecost. As on any non-Sunday Mass, I read the Prayers of the Faithful from a book distributed to different parishes.

One of the prayers was rather unsettling. I cannot quote it directly, but it asked for people in government not to take bribes, not to be greedy, and to be content with their salaries.

I appreciated the prayer’s insistence on integrity, but it also seemed to box greed into simply not being content with what one receives in compensation; and, more disturbingly, its converse: that one must be content with whatever one is paid, otherwise one would automatically be greedy.

But what happens when the salary that one receives is neither commensurate with one’s skills nor justly addresses one’s needs? When our nurses, lower-ranked police officers, teachers, and workers are asking to be paid more, are they necessarily being greedy, or are their protests asking us to scrutinize systems of injustice that are being perpetuated by institutions where the hardworking many receive little while the overseeing few wallow in cash?

What if our plea for people to be content with their meager pay is also encouraging a system that devalues human labor?

Such a prayer was surprising, especially for a church that has a long history of speaking up for the poor, the marginalized, the desperate, and the deprived.

In the late 1800s, Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical “Rerum Novarum” rallied against the perils of an unchecked Industrial Revolution. The pope called for the protection of workers, who had become isolated and helpless in the face of greedy employers. Employers, the pope said, had to ease unforgiving work hours, assign humane tasks, and tend to both the bodies and souls of their employees.

Over a century later, Pope Francis’ “Laudato Si” tied a critique of society with a holistic approach to ecology. The Pope decried the culture of consumerism that makes it easy for people to “get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending,” further feeding the belief that people “are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume.”

The only ones who are free in this situation, however, are the few who wield power. It is the acceptance of such power that feeds into a culture that treats consumption and accumulation as a norm, even as such a culture exacerbates people’s selfishness and empty hearts.

Governments can only do so much when the culture is corrupt, the Pope warned. Politics must operate in the long term to first address and challenge the culture; if not, then the evils of society (human trafficking, organized crime, the drug trade, violence) will continue.

A careful reading of both encyclicals shows that the critique is not simply of individual mindsets and sins. The Church speaks, through the Holy Father, of sins that are spread by institutions that have long been allowed to fester with people who abuse both power and privilege, of institutions that have created a culture of self-centeredness.

Without addressing the corruption of social institutions and the role of culture, we reduce the issue of greed to a mindset, which puts us in danger of forgetting that we, too, must fix, question, and hold accountable the institutions that feed into a culture that prizes visible riches over that which is hidden, timeless, priceless, and righteous.

SEE ALSO

COLUMNISTS, OPINION

Corpus Christi

In reducing greed to a mere mindset, we also absolve ourselves of the citizen’s obligation to demand that the government exercise oversight of important institutions, such as those that govern health, agriculture, and education. We ignore the possibility that badly created bureaucracies and the classification of difficult tasks as “menial” all contribute to rewarding the greedy while depriving the desperate.

In praying for people to be content with what they are given, we might also be in danger of praying that they remain silent in the face of injustice. When so narrow in scope, the prayer can put us in danger of telling hungry and desperate nurses, workers, teachers, police officers, and families to change their mindset and accept being abused and exploited for their labor—to simply accept others’ sins as their norm.

In praying for people to simply be content, we are also contradicting the once potent voice of the Church, where its leaders spoke on behalf of the oppressed, led the voices in the streets that defended people’s rights, and demanded change in broken social institutions even as the church was judged, laughed at, ignored, or neglected.

Why has the Church become so silent these last few years? Why have so few priests spoken up, with so little support from their leaders?

Perhaps the prayer could simply have been: Let us pray for our government employees, that they act righteously, and for our government, that it acts justly.

And perhaps, too, for our Church: that it will have the courage to speak up, in a loud, united voice, from its leaders to its shepherds, when it sees injustice that must be set right.

Campuses, diversity, stories, lives

 

Campuses, diversity, stories, lives Diversity, perhaps, is one of the greatest strengths of any institution, academic or otherwise. It shows that the doors of knowledge have been flung open for all to partake, where all involved have the chance to witness the lives and learn from the stories of those who are unlike them.

The joys and fruits of language learning

By: Inez Ponce de Leon - @inquirerdotnet

Ambeth Ocampo, my friend and colleague from both the Ateneo and the Inquirer, had an interesting column last week. He talked about how he had to learn Spanish in college, and then linked it to the value of Filipinos learning another language besides English and Filipino to equip themselves for a globalized world.

To this, I have two things to add.

First, I agree with the idea of investing time in learning a language. Most people will contend that they are too old or too busy to do it. A 2019 review of research over the past decades by Fox and colleagues, however, shows that being multilingual has a wide range of benefits, no matter what age you start learning.

Multilingual people can associate with multiple cultures and are more confident. Later in life, those who spend time learning languages also have stronger memory, can do more cognitive tasks, and delay the onset of dementia.

Language learning can be difficult and costly, but there are free, helpful apps. Ambeth and I use Duolingo. I’ve been on a streak for over six years now: I started with Italian; when I finished it, I added Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Ukrainian. I spend 30 minutes a day on weekdays, 90 minutes on weekends.

What’s the point? Language learning has indirect benefits: The brain stretches its memory-retaining muscles, so to speak, because it is forced to remember where words are placed, how sentences are formed, how verbs are conjugated to meet both tense and doer. This is why most of our first memories revolve around our first words: The capacity to remember things is connected to the capacity to connect words with objects, and objects to meaning.

Learning languages has since helped me spot themes in data, making analysis easier; it also helps me check students’ papers faster.

This brings me to my second point: The fruit of learning new things goes beyond knowing.

A student recently posted online that she didn’t need to learn things beyond her college major, like writing, languages, or philosophy. She needed only science because it was the only thing she would ever need anyway.

I was disappointed in the post and those who agreed with it. To confine oneself to a single field is to betray one’s ignorance of how all fields and professions are integrated—how all fields and professions should work together to solve our wicked problems. To ask, “Why do I have to do this?” is to refuse to learn how other fields are related to one’s own.

True: having more classes does not mean better students; but having quality classes, even in subjects outside one’s field, can strengthen one’s toolbox of ideas and skills. Having well assessed tasks can also help students grow beyond the classroom.

Writing research papers, for instance, helps students organize their thinking and trains them to always cite sources for their claims. Relegate the entire task to ChatGPT, and a student loses their ability to work independently. They are no better than the troll that ends their empty rhetoric with “you’re ugly and stupid.”

Interpreting literary texts helps students deepen their understanding of the human condition, allowing them to develop a sense of empathy. Philosophy trains them to use logic to build arguments. To dismiss such fields and skills as useless betrays a lack of imagination.

This lack of imagination then leads to arrogance, in this case, the state in which one refuses to learn new things because they believe that they should learn only what their field appears to be about. This is arrogance because a beginner in the field truthfully has no idea what the future will hold and how their field will evolve.

They have imprisoned themselves in the present and condemned themselves to a state of not adapting to the changes that will eventually, inevitably come—because knowledge will not always be the same.

That, too, is the gift that any kind of learning brings: the willingness to open oneself to other worldviews in a globalized world.

One might be learning a new language in their old age, restarting their career in middle age, reading a new author in college, embarking on a project in high school, identifying colors in elementary, forming their very first word—learning is and should always be a joy, whether or not one is in school, no matter what field one is in.

iponcedeleon@ateneo.edu

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/?p=162663#ixzz7zwsPNijJ

Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook