Extension work

You have been doing extension work for quite a while. 

As time passes, you see the difficulty of researchers and extension workers in expressing themselves and taking pride in their output, which some of them even fondly call their labor of love. 

Consider the regional symposium you are now tasked to cover.  You listen to the researcher who sounds awkward presenting the project on the production of this crop. During the panel evaluation, you pity her because the evaluator loudly scores points off the study because it lacks the right methodology. The national crops expert tells in her face that the study being reported presents only commonsensical information that needs neither explanation nor further study. You realize from among the crowd she turns out to just fill in to report for the said study. She virtually “extended” her services for her absentee fellow researcher.

While the other researchers may be articulate in the technology they must have studied, er, mastered in all their 20 years or something of government service, you find it revolting that they do not sound good in their English. They sound funny speaking in their borrowed language. In the presentations conferences and contests, what you will appreciate are those who are well versed in their studies as they are fluent in speaking the technical terms in English.

You wonder whether there have been efforts through the years in the academic world to allow for researches to be written in the Filipinos’ native language, if the purpose is to advance the technologies and not how the English-speaking world understands or wants to receive them.

Why does the presenter who is fluent in English impress you more? The mussel community researcher sounds fishy to you because he has this twang, an accent probably spoken in one northern town of this province.

Sadly, because you were taught English this way and not that way, you yourself are isolated from what you see and hear. The Filipino tongue that makes the most correct English inflections sound more pleasing and seem to merit your attention. You rather notice the researcher who could not fully express his efs and vees. To you he sounds less persuasive. His wrong enunciations distract you that you don’t want to reconsider what he has to say while he is being aided by his PowerPoint slides.

Further in the presentation sessions, you notice the presenter on biogas digester did not use parallel structures in his objectives. You wonder if he cares about these at all. He even sounds like a military general who cannot distinguish his e’s from his i’s. He reminds you of the military chief over the television who munches English as if it were peanuts.

You ask when you can start to admire.

Here, you realize that everyone presenting the study for scrutiny might as well have the heart to extend to what other people have to say about their labors of love; extend further to see whether they are valid judgments so they can improve the study. Extend further to understand, if the said judgments are rather prejudiced and therefore should only be ignored.

This presenter on site-specific nutrient management very well understands her figures as she reports her rice research. Asking her questions now, the panel evaluator sounds like she speaks the same language. It seems she is going to win because they sound alike when they begin the discussion. Perhaps she will win the top prize in this summit because the presenter’s words slide into your ears and your sensibility.  Other extension workers seem to mince words. But she doesn’t. Does this study prove to have more social impact than those presented by less articulate ones? While there are criteria set for all this research business, you start to wonder who deserves the prize.