Enculturating Dialogue

Culture refers to the traits and knowledge belonging to a specific group of individuals, encompassing language, religion, social traditions, music and arts. The Centre for Advance Research on Language Acquisition of the University of Minnesota defines culture as shared patterns of behaviours and interactions, cognitive constructs and understanding that are learned through socialization. Thus, culture is generally understood as the growth of a group’s …

Stop Cyberbullying!

“No one likes you. Do everyone a favour. Just kill yourself.” This posting was directly tweeted to a girl by an anonymous account via Twitter. The girl read the tweet in one of the sessions in a popular United States television programme, Jimmy Kimmel Live known as “Mean Tweets.” Her facial expression completely changed. Her self-esteem is totally destructed. She cannot hide her devastation towards the tweets.“Mean Tweets” session in Jimmy Kimmel Live involves a …

Empowering Protection for Our Children

A report by the local newspaper recently showing that a high percentage of child sexual abusers are close family members such as fathers and stepfathers is heart-wrenching. It is even more heart-breaking when the report stated that most adults do not believe their children when they say that they have been sexually abused. Ironically, 98 per cent of the reported child abuse cases are true. Children are no doubt …

Hellish consequences of fake news

In today’s world, we are bombarded with news and information at the speed of electrons. Some of the news nowadays, if not most, are known as “fake news” – a term popularised by President Donald Trumps during his presidential campaign which refers to news that are false – while others are news that need further verification on its authenticity and truth. During those days prior to the invention of the internet technology and …