#English as an additional language

[kiragecko]

@geekeryisafoot It's interesting to see your thoughts through a disability education lense as I have very similar thoughts but through an ESL (English as a Second Language) lense, since that's what I have experience with. I think the disconnect between Barabra's intentions/goals and Cass's priorities for herself was absolutely intentional, but I didn't get the sense that her pedagogy was intentionally written as bad. I think the writers just showed whatever method of teaching they felt would not have worked for Cass, and stumbled upon Barbara being actively bad at the act of teaching

I am SO GLAD to get an EAL/ESL perspective! Because that is ABSOLUTELY the other influence here.

From the feedback I've gotten, that seems to be the consensus. Authours were deliberate about writing Babs as a flawed teacher who let her own issues get in the way of what was best for Cass. They were ignorant about just how bad what Babs was doing actually would be.

Final result is a story where, if you actually know about this type of education, you need to do a bit of translation to make things work. But the intention is there, and it's something I'm impressed and grateful that writers were willing to attempt. I much prefer people trying to travel the less trodden paths and stumbling a bit, rather than only sticking to the main roads!

Do you think Cass's writers KNEW how harmful Babs' teaching methods were?

Cass and/or Babs fans who have read the first Batgirl series and/or No Man's Land, what do you think?

I'll get into the details in a moment, but my guess is they were trying to write Babs as a fallible mentor, but were ignorant about just how much damage she would realistically be causing. I'd like to get second opinions, because I've spent enough time studying communication with nonverbal people that I no longer know what people actually KNOW.

Anyways, here's the stuff I want to know if you guys think is intentional:

When we first meet Cass, Babs is trying to teach her to read. Babs is showing her the word 'stop' and getting Cass to sound out the letters. This is ... not a good idea.

Some of the errors Cass makes (starting with a 'd' sound and correcting to 't', for example) suggest that Cass is still learning HOW TO MAKE SOUNDS. She's still teaching her body how to shape her mouth and throat, when to vibrate her vocal cords - the physical aspects of speech. That's HARD, and deserves focus so it can be learned properly!

We later learn she only knows a small number of words. She's still learning to associate sounds with meaning. That's HARD, and deserves focus so it can be learned properly!

She's also still learning to match letter shapes to sounds. THAT IS ALSO HARD AND DESERVES FOCUS SO SHE CAN LEARN IT PROPERLY!

By conflating reading, speech, AND understanding, Babs is making Cass' job MUCH MUCH more difficult! Each of those, and a dozen smaller aspects of communication, all need months of prioritization, without competition from other aspects.

-

Throughout Batgirl, Babs pressures Cass to read. Cass is still learning to parse meaning from the words downloaded into her head. She struggles to organize them into sentences. She struggles to understand the nuances of what other people are saying. Once again, these are all important things that she should be encouraged to focus on! Reading is nice, but at this point it shouldn't be the priority. By ignoring the skills Cass IS building, and pushing Cass towards competing skills she doesn't have the prerequisites for, Babs is slowing down Cass' progress and providing negative feedback loops.

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Babs seems to equate reading with communicating. Possibly because of her past as a librarian and the obvious value she gets from reading. Possibly because her current job is as an information broker and hacker. Possibly because her own disability limits her physically, and reading and writing has become necessary for interacting with the outside world. Possibly because she is living vicariously through the new Batgirl. And possibly because her eidetic memory suggests she thinks in words and can't actually imagine thought in other ways.

Cass is probably never going to use reading as a primary communication method, and would have benefited froma learning regimen that works with her skills, rather than pushing through her weaknesses.

-

Here's the stuff I'm pretty sure was intentional:

Babs calls Cass stupid for not being able to read during a high pressure situation that is triggering Babs. This is obviously wrong, and she feels awful about it.

Babs is frequently impatient with Cass' progress, and sometimes accuses her of not trying, or not caring enough. She makes comments in front of other people without thinking. These are all shown as problematic and hurtful.

-

Here's the things I think Babs did right:

Babs sets up a computer system that can be navigated by voice, and can interpret vague instructions. It provides visual, as well as verbal, information for everything Cass asks about. Cass is never pressured to use a different system.

Babs mostly allows Cass to explore, and builds lessons around Cass' interests. She integrates life skills into her lessons, and actually does a REALLY good job at helping Cass build enough of a foundation to start getting curious about the world.

She usually backs off when Cass gets stubborn, which lets Cass recover, and keep some agency.

She MOSTLY doesn't co-opt Cass' growing friendship with Steph. She supports them, and doesn't try to use Steph to push Cass in the directions Babs wants her to go.

Other than stuff around speech and literacy, I actually think the writers did a good job of writing a flawed but caring mentor who actually helped more than she harmed.

-

What do you guys think?

[williamverse]

There was a storm during my first journey to Dunwall. Thick dark clouds covering the skies, waves crushing into ship's sides. Standing on the ship's deck, I've witnessed something I'll never forget: a Leviathan, rising from the water's surface. It felt like for that spare moment the time had stopped. A giant whale-like creature cut through the water with his fins, glistening against the cloudy sky with his dark skin. Seagulls looked like nothing but countless specks floating around him. His powerful body was covered in countless scars with the sight of which I wondered: how many of them were left by other animals and how many - by humans? Beneath his skin - fat, powering his huge body. Hundreds of other whales were killed for that precious fat, later to be turned into whale oil, that would soon power one of the ships like the one I was boarding. But he was still alive, with his power still flowing through his body, only for him to use. How many nets has he torn? How many hooks had grappled his flesh and than torn out of it with a mighty tail's swing? How will he die: in whalers' hands, getting his flesh turned into food and his fat turned into fuel, or will he die of age, turning his body into a home for a new ecosystem? I saw his eyes, full of pain and hatred, but also of intelligence.

He had enough power to turn over the ship and drown everyone boarding it. But he didn't do that, diving back into the water and swimming away instead. Maybe, if he was trying to avenge himself and other whales, driven by hatred, he wouldn't be any better than humans? I didn't think about that back then, not how I think about it now, after all those years of trial my fate has set for me. In this realm I inherited Leviathan's philosophy.

[Excerpt from Lord-Protector's memoirs - by Corvo Attano]

[sinvulkt]

Hi! Bringing in two new angsty concepts for the fanfiction (and fiction) world: Wet Marshmallow and Shredding Fangs.

💧Wet Marshmallow💧

Now, wet marshmallow is a term I've been using for a while. It looks to be the most popular type of angst (and incidentally the type I like the less, rip XD — which doesn’t mean it can't be good quality). It's a softer kind of angst, closer to hurt/comfort than anguish. It tend to follow the tropes of self doubts, low self esteem, depression... feeling like you deserve whatever pain the world throw at you in a 'lean the other cheek' way, and turn it into 'selfless martyrdom'.

It is more a creature that seek pity and compassion, and bow down low in order to attract both — making the audience empathise with their suffering. "Poor little meow meow" is typically a wet marshmallow phrasing in my eyes. 

It is the angst of the stereotypical 'victim'. Sobs, crying, fever, searching hug and comfort... 'wet marshmallow'.

🧊 It is melting water.

⚡️Shredding Fangs⚡️

For shredding fangs angst, I just came up with the term! I was looking for something that could clearly differentiate it from wet marshmallow. It is one of my favorite types of angst, but is a lot less popular because less moral and harder empathise with. It is harsh, cutting, angry and hurting. It will bite, and hate itself all the more for it (possibly in denial). It is the will to fight, the snarling confidence to push forward no matter what. There is the notion of a powerful will being broken into shards. It is a cornered injured beast who would attack anyone and everyone in the hope it would give it the power to scale walls. Shredding Fangs is suffering turned into anger, anger turned into power (thus is the way of the dark side—). For another parallel, that would be 'selfish martyrdom'. The self hate can be as present as wet marshmallow, but it enpowers instead of declawing.

"I am already so deep in the abyss that as long as I achieve my goal, I can sink in deeper — since there is no going back."

Despair turned into a weapon to wield against everyone and itself, basically. Cutting the care out of your own heart using the pain (even though it will always linger through the denial), or lashing out to the person you never wanted to hurt through loss of control. 

It is the angst of the 'bully that won't or can't stop'. Burning, moving, tearing everything appart in an effort to escape the screaming anguish... 'shredding fangs'.

🔥 It is wrecking fire.

---

Offer for a third subtype of angst, the bittersweetness (emphasis on bitter) with pain written so raw, it make the audience want to scream. Grief and despair and hurt so *full* it drown everything else. (I love that too. It's an anguish similar to a headache scratching at my mind but I love it). I don't have any name for it yet, as it tend to be more 'did the author manage to convey graphically to the readers all the psychological violence going on' skillset than a trope. Facts can't bring it forward. Only the way of writing can.

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

Welcome To The Rock • 38 Planes • Blankets And Bedding • 28 Hours / Wherever We Are • Darkness And Tress • On The Bus • Darkness And Trees (Reprise) • Lead Us Out Of The Night • Phoning Home • Costume Party • I Am Here • Prayer • On The Edge • In The Bar / Heave Away • Screech In • Me And The Sky • The Dover Fault • Stop The World • 38 Planes (Reprise) / Somewhere In The Middle Of Nowhere • Something’s Missing • 10 Years Later • Finale • Screech Out

Spotify ♪ YouTube

[incorrect-finding-frankie]

My OC that I would like to share for @janesbeloved AU—Toonville Adventures: The Aftermath:

Percy is a hare that had always wanted to get into acting—which, down the line, it did. And the end result was the hare getting to work on the show every now and then.

And whenever it did get the chance to act in the show, it was usually just for additional thing’s. It never tended to have a major role—except maybe once—in or out of that show.

It sticks around after the whole thing ends, and chooses to work at the film studio that’s attached—commercials and such.

More random details in the tags-

[arashikohedervary]

✨Phrases that'd become part of my daily vocabulary if it weren't for English not being my first language✨:

Part 1: Young Justice

"I'm whelmed."

"I'm feeling the aster."

*slaps forehead* "Hello, Megann!"

"Be back in a flash"

"Are you feeling the aster?"

"The Wall-man has arrived!"

[windor-truffle]

wait shit do you think they're going to let you change the voice language in the graces remaster??? 👀

[enden-k]

well by seeing your pinned post and those two country flags it's probably korean? I couldn't recognize the first one

first is kazakhstan. im mixed. and a mess

[dripping-moonlight]

joining the war on pronouns on the side of pronouns we need more of them WHO the fuck are you referencing

[galsinspace]

Youtube is just going crazy with the unwanted autotranslations now. Got that current Ikea ad that plays this song and youtube partially muted the singer and replaced him with an AI voice reciting the German translation of the lyrics

AI voice: Mädchen / ich war so verloren / es ist, als wäre ich ohnmächtig gewesen

NOBODY WANTS THIS

And I wouldn't care that much if it was just ads like whatever, but I've had that happen on actual videos too! Just playing an AI audio translation without me EVER indicating that I wanted that, but I had to manually go into the video's settings and change the audio to original!

Why is every site just becoming actively, significantly worse rn

[avispraeda]

Hi op, do,,, do you happen to have detailed notes about how all the OCs in unfinished canvas look like?? Especially Rulue,,, I would love to draw something for your fic and I'm,, very attached to all your ocs which is not something I've ever experienced before.

Tldr can I please have whatever references you used to make Rulue so I can do fanart. PLEASE 🙏🥺

you have no idea how absolutely blown away i was to see this in my inbox i??? people like my funny little guys????? you're gonna make me actually cry here omfg thank you. I'd be HONOURED if you did but I'm so sorry, 99% of my notes on the ocs are entirely plot/character focused rather than design, and the notes that do have design focused elements are also plot related. I'm actually god awful at making up designs in general, let alone for characters, at most I'll get a vague idea of what their whole deal is (Rebel leader for Rulue, pair of dangerously silly idiots based on the Lion and Unicorn for the Jokers, etc) so when it comes to descriptions I just kinda throw out whatever comes to mind in the moment of writing and hope that the reader picks up the pieces and makes them look cool in their heads. Flying entirely by the seat of my pants.

Like as an example, Rulue was a COMPLETELY different character looks-wise---and backstory-wise, but that's for later chapters---had a different description for the design in chapter 2, right up until like a week before it went up while I was doing tweaks. Had an idea while out and about, thought I was being a clever little sneak (it'll make sense later. or not. who knows! but there's elements in their new design that now hint towards their identity :3c), googled how tailcoats look, and just re-did the meeting portion of the scene from scratch. Originally in my head they looked more like a toy soldier (think Playful Vil) except with camouflage and a more stereotypical drama mask. The Jokers had more standard street clothes in jackets and hoodies. Heck, in the first story draft the new doctor character (who I still don't have a name for oops lol) was actually a different version of Professor Crewel a la FGO's alters before the hookah caterpillar idea popped into my head while writing the smoking scene! Yeah, I hadn't put all that much thought into them. Overall I was more worried about focusing on the Heartslabyul boys than the funny lil dolls I'd stitched together off to the side.

All this rambling to say I don't have any specific notes or references I can share ;; sorry.

BUT!!! A very good friend of mine did draw them for me, and I got permission to share them! This is the only visual I can provide for them and I cry over it every day sobs. I hope this helps!

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

OK ANOTHER THING BECAUSE I READ THE NEXT PART… THE WIBBLES??? ;-; the wiggles I am only now discovering are in fact not a universal childhood staple… next thing your gonna be telling me you don’t know about playschool… lol

Playschool like... the educational institution?

I mean my brother went to playschool. I guess.

TW: uh, corporeal punishment at school, so proceed with caution.

My, uh 'playschool' made me learn four languages in addition to maths and environmental science at the age of four, those languages (thankfully one being english) used different scripts, at the same age of four I had midterms and finals of fifty marks each and a grading system from A to F, and when we didn't do homework we were hit with wooden scales on the palms until a centimetre thick 30 cm long scale broke after hitting a whole class of five year olds...

If you're referring to playschool like a show/band/anything else, then I admit that no, I do not know about playschool.

[roseverdict]

new shitty superpower idea: you can understand anyone on the planet, but ONLY if they are either speaking in your mother tongue or any language other than their own. you know exactly what someone's saying if they have to keep jumping between languages they've previously dabbled in because they don't remember much vocab from any, or if they learned a second language through schooling or personal hobby interest, but if somebody's multilingual due to being raised with multiple languages, you'd better hope they figure out they need to speak in something else or you're likely screwed

[deliriousblue]

musing on the aspects of language we do and don’t tend to think about. in particular i’ve gotten significantly less surprise about reading than about speaking from thai speakers, vs english speakers who generally assume i’m not learning to read and are surprised to learn differently.

all very small sample sizes so drawing any real conclusions would be silly! but it makes me wonder how we think about literacy as distinct from spoken fluency. it’s not a distinction i by default make in english, and in my experience people don’t make the distinction when talking about (say) french/spanish/other languages using the same basic character set either.

(i don’t remember learning to read as a child; i wish i did because it’d be fascinating to compare. they’re not identical and there was more formal memorization involved for thai but at this point i don’t think they’re actually all that different; i learned lots of words from reading in english too.)

[itsbebebe]

Looked at the inspector calls tumblr tag out of curiosity and its full of british teens crying abt their gcses and making yaoi out of it to cope. As it fucking should be

[tovaicas]

anyways my friends activated my conlang brain and I've made smth insane as usual

red is influences, blue is Elezen-family languages, green is like a mix bc I see the Alliance cities as having a trade language (that critically is limited to them).

I see Duskwight as a separate language from Black Shroud Elezen (but sharing a lot - easy enough to learn for those speakers). Coerthan and all its derivatives are a whole different language under the Elezen umbrella and isn't mutually intelligible with BSE. Because they split so early, they probably don't share much more than root words and etymologies; within the same family so not difficult to learn for other speakers of Elezen languages, but very distinctly different.

(also I'm not listing them but the branches extend to include other diaspora Elezen languages)