What to do with a wild elephant?

Today, I read about the raging elephant in Kampong Speu province, and thought about how for all our modern lifestyles, it is still difficult to stop an angry elephant. It also reminded me of a famous essay by George Orwell, the author of Animal Farm and 1984. He was a police officer for the British Colonial Government in Burma (Myanmar today), and was once forced to shoot an elephant with a powerful rifle. But why did he shoot the elephant? Read the story below to find out:

Questions to think about:
*Have you ever been in charge of something? How did that change the way you acted?
*Have you ever been afraid of being embarassed? How did it change the way you acted?
*What do you think life was like for Cambodian people under the French Colonial Government?
*What do you think life was like for the French people who worked in the Colonial Government?

Click the link below to read the story.

A Good Video: How to Write a Research Paper

Earlier, I explained some basics of how to do research. Once you have done your research, however, you need to write it up into a paper. Here is a helpful video that explains one easy method of writing a research paper, journal article, or thesis:



Thanks to Simon Lindgren, maker of the video.

a recommendation

I try to keep in touch with my former students, or at least the ones who were interested in learning. Panharath, one of my former students, has his own blog. He has a unique writing style, born from his command of English vocabulary and structures, and willingness to use them in any situation. I encourage you to read his short story about a family that comes to Phnom Penh for the Water Festival, and gets caught in the terrible stampede on Koh Pich:

...the excitement grew stronger as the parents had been told about the newly built playground at a park near the riverside and mostly thrillingly, the fanciest venue available to everyone, the country’s renounced Koh Pich (Diamond Island). The expectation for Om Tuk this year then got even higher, and the anticipation of seeing the new places is overwhelming... 

--From  "The Festival of Fun and Fatal Fiasco"

self education and reading

I believe strongly in the power of self-education. When you learn about something interesting on your own, it is far stronger than something you are forced to learn by a teacher. While it is true that you cannot learn everything by yourself, there will come a time when you finish school. When that time comes, it is your decision whether you will continue learning, or start forgetting.

Richard Wright's non-fiction story "The Library Card," is taken from Black Boy, a book about his own life experiences growing up as an African-American (also called "blacks" or "Negroes") in the southern part of the United States during the 1920s-30s. At that time, whites in the south had a cruel system of power over the blacks (the "Jim Crow" system), took away the rights of black people, and tried to keep them from learning anything. In order to read, Wright had to pretend that the books he was getting from the library were for a white worker. 

He describes the effect when he began reading the books of H.L. Mencken: 

That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Prefaces and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words . . . Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons?

[...] I ran across many words whose meanings I did not know, and I either looked them up in a dictionary or, before I had a chance to do that, encountered the word in a context that made its meaning clear. But what strange world was this? I concluded the book with the conviction that I had somehow overlooked something terribly important in life. I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.

This is the power of great literature: to give you experience outside of your own life, to find new ways of looking at the world. Novels are "fiction," yes, but you can still learn a lot from them; they help you develop your personal view of the world. In the case of Richard Wright, they helped him open a window outside his own narrow life, and caused him to become a writer.

What do you read and why?

a helpful link

I apologize for not updating recently. I am studying for the GREs and applying to graduate schools for Master's programs. The GRE tests your abilities with both language and mathematics, as well as writing. If you are looking for an interesting topic to write or think about, try checking out this list of analytical writing topics. Some of them may be difficult to understand, but many of them are very interesting. Here are a few examples:

"Education should be equally devoted to enriching the personal lives of students and to training students to be productive workers."

"Success in any realm of life comes more often from taking chances or risks than from careful and cautious planning."

"It is not the headline-making political events but the seldom-reported social tranformations that have the most lasting significance."

"The best preparation for life or a career is not learning to be competitive, but learning to be cooperative."

What do you think about these ideas?

Getting ideas by asking yourself questions and making definitions

This is based on a paper I handed out to my Essay Writing class, when students had trouble figuring out how to develop their ideas. I hope it helps.

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First, if you are ever not sure what to write, ask yourself questions.  (Who, what, where, when, why, how)

Why should I do that? 

Because it helps you explain your thinking and gives you an easy way forward. 

Why do I need to explain my thinking? 

Because your reader does not live in your head--sometimes things that seem clear to you are difficult to understand when you do not explain them.

Why does it give an easy way forward?

 Because it helps give your writing a clear direction. After you ask the question, you need to answer it. You know it, and the reader will also know it (this makes it easy to follow). Question-and-answer form is a very coherent form of writing. 

One way to use questions to direct an essay is through DEFINITION. Try starting your thinking with a definition. Then you can look at whether something fits the definition or not. Sometimes it's very difficult to create a perfect definition. Here's a playful example

What is a tuk-tuk? 

A Tuk-tuk is a 3-wheeled vehicle for transporting people.

 Once you have a definition for a concept or thing, then you can prove whether a specific thing fits the definition or not.

Is this a Tuk-Tuk?

(from India)

Yes, because it has 3 wheels, a small engine, and is transporting people.

Sometimes you need to revise your definition, when you notice something that should fit, but is not included in your definition.

Is this NOT a tuk-tuk?

(from Cambodia)

This is definitely a tuk-tuk. It uses a motorcycle engine, and is meant to transport people. But it has 4 wheels, so we should maybe change our definition.

What is a tuk-tuk? 

We can say that a Tuk-tuk is a 3 or 4-wheeled vehicle for transporting people.

Okay, what about this? It has 4 wheels, and seems to be used to transport people...

Hmmn. It looks like we'll need to change our definition again.

Okay. "A tuk-tuk is a 3 or 4 wheeled vehicle with a motorcycle-style front end, and is used to transport people."

Hmmn. This could be more difficult than I thought...How about:

"A tuk-tuk is a 3 or 4 wheeled vehicle with a motorcycle-style front end and at least one bench seat meant for transporting passengers."

Anyway, I thought this would be a fun exercise in definition. What do you think?

In America, food-culture changed a lot after the Second World War. People began to cook at home less, especially when women began working more in the 1960s. At the same time, companies created many new ways to make food cheaply in factories, and they sold them as fast food or TV dinners.  Many technologies that had first been used to preserve food for soldiers were now used for American families. This style of eating was faster, and sometimes cheaper than cooking food "from scratch," but it was not natural or healthy. As a way of showing this, a few years ago a man made a movie about what happens to your body if you only eat fast food:

[The whole movie is available here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1432315846377280008#]

In New York, Farmers' Markets
 are very popular.

It is a big problem, because Americans are getting too fat. But not everyone follows this lifestyle. There is a growing movement towards natural, locally grown foods that are grown and harvested in a way that is good for both the environment and our health. In many American cities, there are now farmers' markets, where farmers can bring some of their products directly to the town center and sell them to shoppers. The farmers can sell directly, so they get a higher price, and the shoppers can know where their food comes from. This might seem like a normal thing to you, if you live in Cambodia or another developing country, and it used to be a normal thing in America.

Sometimes, good things are forgotten during development, and we must search through our history to recover them. The Slow Food movement was formed to preserve local foods and cooking cultures, and protect the unusual and special things about food in different places. Their mission is cultural, but also ecological: they help preserve biodiversity in plants and animals.

 Slow Food advocates learn and teach about local traditions and ways of cooking, but they also explore the unique fruits and vegetables of an area. Some of the most delicious examples are heirloom tomatoes. Most tomatoes in supermarkets are breeds that can stay on a shelf for a long time. In the same way, we have only one kind of banana in the US, because only that kind can survive the transport from Central America without rotting. But there are many other kinds of banana, and some of them are very delicious. Heirloom tomatoes are the same way. They may look strange, but they taste so much more delicious than regular tomatoes.

So, the next time you bite into a strange tomato or banana that only comes from your home province, or notice how your aunt uses a particular spice in her soup, ask more about it. It's the most delicious way to preserve your culture.

RESEARCH: Don't be scared, be prepared!

The word "research" sometimes scares students, because it seems very difficult. It does not have to be! If they think carefully about your goals and methods, anyone can do research. (Note: This is a general guide for many majors, but it was originally written for history students, so many of the examples come from historical research.)

Early research often means running through many questions.
(image from Learning Historical Research, "Asking Good Questions")

The first thing you need to do is find your research question. It needs to be something that you can prove one way or another. (The existence of God, for instance, is very hard to prove or disprove--I would not recommend it as a research question.) You may need to revise your question as new information comes to you. Don't be afraid of that. Sometimes you need to get some basic information and data on the subject before you can form a theory. Also, make sure your theory is testable (it can be proven or disproven by the research): if there's no way for your research to disprove the theory, what's the point of the research? 

Once you have a good question and a first draft of a theory, you can get to the real research. 

Styles of Research

There are two main kinds of research, Quantitative (from quantity, meaning 'number') and Qualitative (from quality, meaning a describable but not countable thing, like color or feeling). Good research often uses both styles.

Quantity("Quant")-based research is all about counting and measuring things. It could be the answers to a survey, or the number of miles of paved road at different times, or the number of times in a book that the author says good things about his king. You can be very clever in figuring out ways to measure things that may be hard to find. During WW2, British researchers would listen to German radio and pay attention to seemingly-unimportant things like the price of milk in Paris. If the price was high, that meant that Allied bombing had successfully damaged the infrastructure there, making transport more difficult (and expensive) and therefore causing the prices to rise.  There are two main issues when doing research of this kind: 

1. What do you count and why? You should only measure things that actually give you useful information, and you should be clear about what information a measurement can give you. Logic and creativity are very important when planning your research strategy.
2. How do you analyze all the numbers you have collected? This may require some skill in statistics and probability, (for example, if you are dealing with many survey results or historical census data), and may require a consultation with someone from the sociology or mathematics departments if you don't feel confident.

Since answering question 1 is difficult, sometimes researchers start by doing a few interviews or using other qualitative methods to generate theories and ideas before going out and counting a bunch of things. That way, they can be sure that they're measuring the right thing in the right way.

Quality-based research does not use mathematics. Instead, it is based on analysis and interpretation of human society and culture. It can involve interviews, observation of daily life, or close reading of primary sources. You might think that it is easier, since it does not require mathematics, but it can be just as difficult. If you want to do good qualitative research, you need to know about the society and culture of your source (otherwise, you might not understand their answers or ways of thinking). You also need strong critical thinking skills so that you can think carefully about your source. 

1.  Evaluate the source: Who is the source? What is the context? Why are they saying/writing this? How do they know what they claim to know? (Sometimes villagers will tell NGO workers that they are so hopeless and pitiful (even if they are not), because they want the NGO to give them money or other help. )
2.  Check for bias: Is there anything in the source's background or reason for writing that could affect their answers and make them unreliable? If the source is biased, be specific about what the bias is and what it affects. (A king's official writer will probably not say bad things about the king, for instance. So we should be critical when looking at his statements about the king. But we can probably trust what he says about unrelated things, like if he mentions a flood in a particular province in a particular year.)  The classic example for Cambodian students is how Zhou Daguan's Chinese background and audience affect his report of Cambodia c.1295.



No matter your research style, there
is always a little bit of the other.
(image via vovici)

3.  What can you learn from the source? Maybe it gives evidence for how people felt or thought about a certain subject at a certain time, or maybe it gives important information about culture and behavior

Other Points: Coding and Triangulation

If you are working with only a few primary sources or informants, you can just keep detailed notes of your thoughts and analysis. But if you are doing a study of many different sources or people, you might need some form of organization. One way to do this is called coding, which is a way to turn qualitative analysis into usable numbers. Basically, you think of different categories for your sources and then you group them into different categories. For each interview or primary source, you tag it with terms to describe the source and its content (things like "female author," "pro-king," "blames flood on unusually heavy rains" "blames flood on bad government" or "unreliable on dates"). That's a good way to compare many sources, and see if there are patterns. Probably, many of the sources identified as "pro-king" tend to blame the flood on heavy rains rather than government policy.

Another general principle of research is called triangulation (triangulate means to form a triangle). The idea is, one particular method or source could be wrong or inaccurate, but if you get several different methods and sources that all agree, it is more likely that your idea is correct. 

These are the basics. Also, here is a good website, meant specifically for the methods of environmental history, but useful generally: Learning Historical Research 

If you have questions or comments, please comment below!

Girls versus Boys

When I was teaching in Cambodia, there were many arguments about the rights of women and their place in family and society. We thought that the back-and-forth between these students was very interesting, but also very funny.

 This is a video put together by my friend/sweetheart, Sarah, to start a discussion about these issues:


GIRLS V. BOYS from Sarah Outhwaite on Vimeo.


Do you think that only the man should work in a family? If you think so, is it because of gender roles, or because you think someone should stay home with the family? If that's the case, what about if the woman has a better job? Should the man stay home instead?

Hello World!

Hi! My name is Adam Flynn. I taught English in Cambodia for two years at the Royal University of Phnom Penh. I am now moving back to America to find a job, but I want to continue helping students of English, and stay in contact with my former students. So, I am creating this blog.

The goal of this blog is to give students a way to practice their reading and internet skills. They will also improve their background knowledge by learning about interesting news and ideas. I hope also that students will comment and discuss the stories on my blog.

In the meantime, here is a picture of me in Cambodian style clothes. I think it's pretty funny.