ST.

RITA’S COLLEGE OF BALINGASAG

Balingasag Misamis Oriental 9005, (08822) 333-2018 Cruztelco)
PAASCU Accredited: High School Department
(Philippine Accrediting Association of Schools, Colleges and Universities)

STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

Subject Area: 21st Century Literature Date: September 21-25

Semester: 1st Module Number: (4)
Lesson/Topic: PHILIPPINE REALITIES

Enduring Understanding:
Existing issues or problems of the country should be known to the
Topic/Lesson: rest of its people so they would know which track they are going to
choose in order to add up to this matter. It is a relevant matter to be
LESSON1: LENGUA PARA DIABLO given due attention because the country needs people who will care
LESSON 2: TURBAND LEGEND and not just people who are there but does not really contribute to its
improvement and progress.

Introduction:
Now that you’re done with Module (3). It’s time to proceed with Module (4). This Module contains two topics which have connection to
Philippine realities. The first topic is about the story entitled Lengua Para Diablo (The Devil Ate My Words) which is about a father and
how he no longer feels like he has power over his family and society. It shows you how unemployment can affect people and their family
members. The second topic is a story entitled Turband Legend which also talks about Poverty. It entails the hardships that Filipino
experiences when they are far away from their families. It shows the longing of Filipinos all around the globe.
In this module, you will begin with reading the stories including the background of its authors. After which, you need to answer some
questions related to the stories being read. For ODL, these topics will be discussed during our scheduled virtual classes. For MDL,
although you are not required to join, but if you have a stable internet connection and a device to use, you may join the scheduled virtual
classes for you to better understand and appreciate the topics.
Important note: Activities or Tasks for Module (4) are expected to be accomplished after one week. Do not forget to use and submit the
worksheets provided.

Essential Question/s:

 Why should students get acquainted with the problem that

out country is facing at present?

Objectives:

Compare and contrast the various 21 st century literary genres

and the ones from the earlier genres/periods citing their
elements, structures and traditions
Learning Activities:
A. Self-Paced Learning:
Lesson 1: LENGUA PARA DIABLO
In Lesson 1, take a look at the copy provided for you to read
and comprehend the story. If you wish to read it online, you
may access it using the link provided.
To know more about the author Merlinda Bobis,you may
access the link provided.
Lesson 2: TURBAND LEGEND
In Lesson 2, take a look at the copy provided for you to read
and comprehend the story. If you wish to read it online, you
may access it here:
To know more about the author R. Zamora Linmark, you may
access the link provided.Content for both Lesson 1 and 2 can
also be found in the Tekteach Learning Management System.
You may access it using the account provided by your
teacher. But, everything is in your module already. There’s
nothing to worry about if you can’t go online.  Make sure to
read it on September 21, 2020 anytime of the day before
proceeding to the next part of this module.
Learning Materials:
Lesson 1: Unemployment is one of the major problems that our
country is facing. Because we don’t have enough funds to sustain
the necessary jobs for every unemployed individual. Thus, many
Filipino suffer from poverty because of unemployment. This literature
talks about a father who lost his job and eventually lost his voice in
the family.
https://enhanceyourvocabulary.wordpress.com/love-makes-the-
world-go-round-author-simeon-dumdum/
To know more about the person behind this work, take a short tour
about the life of its author, Merlinda Bobis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlinda_Bobis
Lesson 2:
This is one of the realities we encounter at present. Most Filipinos
choose to work abroad because they are after the greener pasture
To work abroad means to provide more to once family. But alongside
this dream is homesickness which caused Filipinos to suffer from
anxieties and eventually caused them to lose their own lives.
https://maryriii.wordpress.com/2018/10/29/turban-legendby-r-
zamora-linmark/
To know more about the backgrounds of the story as well as its
author, click the following link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Zamora_Linmark

B. Live Conferences:
A scheduled synchronous meeting with the class using
Links will be posted in the LMS day before our scheduled
Google meet. In order to assess your understanding about the
virtual class. Keep posted. 
story/poem you read, an oral recitation will be done and at the
same time, all questions will be entertained.
C. Collaboration:  
D. Assessment:  Lesson 1: REFLECTION PAPER
Lesson 1: LENGUA PARA DIABLO In the provided answer sheet, kindly write a short reflection
Essay: In your worksheet (1), please take a look at the paper regarding the enormous increase of poor families in our
questions written and answer it on September 22, 2020 country and how should this be addressed by the government
anytime of the day. Make sure to finish reading the story and also by those people who belong to the so called higher
entitled Lengua Para Diablo before answering. class. Provide instances which you think will lead us to
Lesson 2: TURBAND LEGEND progress. Take note that a refection paper consist of
Essay: In your worksheet (2), please take a look at the introduction, body and conclusion.
questions I have written and answer it on September 23, 2020
at your most convenient time.  Lesson 2: DEALING WITH POVERTY!
In the previous lesson, we discussed about unemployment
leading to poverty. At this point, we discussed about how
people cope up with poverty leading them to work abroad and
suffer from homesickness. Given the two lessons, create a
position paper which discusses these two contrasting ideas:
unemployed but does not suffer from homesickness or
employed yet far from the family. Choose your stand and
explain your point
 E. Four – Pronged Integration:
 Ignacian Core/Related Values
As an Ignacian-Marian student, what value do you think
can help you to be able to cope with the changes caused
by the Martial Law declaration of the President?
 Social Orientation
Based on the information you gathered based on your
activity, what do you think are the differences between the
previous declaration of Martial Law by Marcos and the
present declaration of President Duterte?
 Lesson Across Discipline
Relating the topic to English language, why is it necessary
to distinguish the difference between British English and
American English in the same manner we try to
differentiate the two Martial Law declaration?
 Bible Verse

  To know more about the particular literatures provided, kindly

F. Enrichment Work Using Supplementary Materials: search for video adaptations and identify possible differences from
the text and the adaptation.
G. Purposive Assignment :
If you have an internet connection and a device to use, please
read in advance the story entitled Armor by John Bengan https://dagmay.online/2017/01/08/armor/
which can be found in the following URL:

MODULE 4: 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE

Congratulations for accomplishing Module 3. You
are now on Module 4. Make sure to read and
comprehend the topics and do the tasks in this
module before its deadline. 

LESSON 1: APO ON THE WALL (Authoritarianism)

Objectives:
 The story entitled Lengua Para Diablo (The Devil
Ate My Words) is about a father and how he no
longer feels like he has power over his family and
society. It shows you how unemployment can affect
people and their family members.
Unemployment is one of the major problems that our
country is facing. Because we don’t have enough
funds to sustain the necessary jobs for every
unemployed individual. Thus, many Filipino suffer
from poverty because of unemployment. This
literature talks about a father who lost his job and
eventually lost his voice in the family.
LENGUA PARA DIABLO (THE DEVIL ATE MY
WORDS)
(EXCERPT FROM BANANA HEART SUMMER)
BY MERLINDA BOBIS
I suspected that my father sold his tounge to the
devil. He had little to say in our house. Whenever he
felt like disagreeing with my mother, he murmured.
‘The devil ate my words’. This meant he forgot what
he was about to say and Mother was often
appeased. There was more need for appeasement
after he lost his job.
The devil ate his words, the devil ate his capacity for
words, and the devil ate his tongue. But perhaps
only after prior negotiation with its owner, what with
Mother always complaining, ’I’m already taking a
peek at hell!’ when it got too hot and stuffy in our tiny
house. She seemed to sweat more that summer,
and miserably. She made it sound like father’s fault,
so he cajoled her with kisses and promises of an
electric fan, bigger windows, a bigger house but she
pushed him away, saying, ‘Get off me, I’m hot, ay,
this hellish life!’. Again, he was ready to pledge
relief, but something in my mother’s eyes made him
mutter only the usual excuse, ‘The devil ate my
words,’ before he shut his mouth. Then he ran to the
tap to get more water.
Lengua para Diablo: tounge for the devil. Surely he
sold his tongue in exchange for those promises to
my mother: comfort, a full stomach, life without our
wretched want. But the devil never delivered his side
of the bargain. The devil was alien to want. He lived
in a Spanish house and owned several stores in the
city. This Spanish mestizo was my father’s
employer, but only for a very short while. He sacked
him and our neighbour Tiyo Anding, also a mason,
after he found a cheaper hand for the extension of
his house.
We never knew the devil’s name. Father was
incapable of speaking it, more so after he came
home and sat in the darkest corner of the house,
and stared at his hands. It took him two days of
silent staring before he told my mother about his
fate.
I wondered how the devil ate my father’s tongue.
Perhaps he cooked it in mushroom sauce, in that
special Spanish way that they do ox tongue. First, it
was scrupulously cleaned, rubbed with salt and
vinegar, blanched in boiling water, then scraped of
its white coating--- now, imagine words scraped off
the tongue, and even taste, our capacity for
pleasure. In all those two days of silent staring,
Father hardly ate. He said he had lost his taste for
food, he was not hungry. Junior and Nilo were more
than happy to demolish his share of gruel with fish
sauce.
Now, after the thorough clean, the tongue was
pricked with a fork to allow the flavours of all the
spices and condiments to penetrate the flesh. Then
it was browned in olive oil. How I wished we could
prick my father’s tongue back to speech and even
hunger, but of course we couldn’t, because it had
disappeared. It had been served on the devil’s
platter with garlic, onion, tomatoes, bay leaf, clove,
peppercorns, soy sauce, even sherry, butter, and
grated edam cheese, with that aroma of something
rich and foreign. His silent tongue was already
luxuriating in a multitude of essences, pampered
into piquant delight.
Perhaps, next he should sell his esophagus, then
his stomach. I would if I had the chance to be that
pampered. To know for once what I would never
taste. I would be soaked, steamed, sautéed, basted,
baked, boiled, fried and feted with only the perfect
seasonings. I would become an epicure. On a rich
man’s plate, I would be initiated to flavors of only the
finest quality. In his stomach, I would be inducted to
secrets. I would be the ‘inside girl’ and I could tell
you the true nature of sated affluence.
 
MERLINDA BOBIS (born 25 November 1959) is a
contemporary Philippine
Australian writer and academic. Born in Legazpi
City, in the Philippines province of Albay, Merlinda
Bobis attended Bicol University High School then
completed her B.A. at Aquinas University in Legazpi
City. She holds post-graduate degrees from
the University of Santo Tomas and University of
Wollongong, and now lives in Australia. Written in
various genres in both Filipino and English, her work
integrates elements of the traditional culture of the
Philippines with modern immigrant experience.
Also a dancer and visual artist, Bobis currently
teaches at Wollongong University. Her play Rita's
Lullaby was the winner of the 1998 Awgie for Best
Radio Play and the international Prix Italia of the
same year; in 2000 White Turtle won the Steele
Rudd Award for the Best Collection of Australian
Short Stories and the 2000 Philippine National Book
Award. Most recently, in 2006, she has received
the Gintong Aklat Award (Golden Book Award,
Philippines) for her novel Banana Heart Summer,
from the Book Development Association of the
Philippines. Bobis won the 2016 Christina Stead
Prize for Fiction, NSW Premier's Literary Awards for
her book, Locust Girl: A Lovesong.
 
LESSON 2
This is one of the realities we encounter at present.
Most Filipinos choose to work abroad because they
are after the greener pasture To work abroad means
to provide more to once family. But alongside this
dream is homesickness which caused Filipinos to
suffer from anxieties and eventually caused them to
lose their own lives.
Turban Legend | by R
Zamora Linmark
(An excerpt from Leche)
By the time Vince arrives at the Philippine Airlines
departures terminal, it is already bustling with
restless souls who, with their balikbayan boxes,
have transformed the terminal into a warehouse, as
if they’re returning to the motherland on a cargo ship
rather than Asia’s first airline carrier. Comedians use
these durable cardboard boxes as materials for their
Filipino-flavored jokes. “How is the balikbayan box
like American Express to Filipinos? Because they
never leave home without it.”
Everywhere Vince turns are boxes, boxes, and.
more boxes. Boxes secured by electrical tape and
ropes. Boxes with drawstring covers made from
canvas or tarp. Boxes lined up like a fortified wall
behind check-in counters or convoying on squeaky
conveyor belts of x-ray machines. Boxes blocking
the Mabuhay Express lane for first-and business-
class passengers. Boxes stacked up on carts right
beside coach passengers standing in queues that
are straight only at their starting points before
branching out to form more-or converge with other-
lines, bottlenecking as they near the ticket counter.
Boxes that ought to be the Philippines’ exhibit at the
next World’s Fai1, Vince tells himself as he
navigates his cartload of Louis Vuitton bags in and
out of the maze. An exhibit that should take place
none other than here, at the Honolulu International
Airport, he laughs, as he imagines an entire terminal
buried in the Filipinos’ most popular-and preferred-
pieces of luggage.
With a balikbayan box Filipinos can pack cans of
Hormel corned beef, Libby’s Vienna sausage,
Folgers, and SPAM; perfume samples; new or hand-
me-down designer jeans; travel-sized bottles of
shampoo, conditioner, and body lotion gleaned from
Las Vegas hotels; and appliances marked with first-
world labels that, as anyone who’s been to the
Philippines knows, can easily be purchased at Duty
Free right outside the airport or from any of the
crypt-like malls that are so gargantuan they’re a
metropolis unto themselves.
Filipinos will even throw themselves into these R’s (1995), Leche (2011), and The Importance of
boxes, as was the case of the overseas contract Being Wilde at Heart (2019); themes involving ethnic
worker in Dubai. The man, an engineer was so and sexual identity are common throughout.
homesick that, unable to afford the ticket-most of his
earnings went to cover his living expenses and the
rest to his wife and children-he talked his roommate,
who was homebound for the holidays, into checking
him in. He paid for the excess baggage fee, which
still came out cheaper than a round-trip airfare. En
route to Manila, he died from hypothermia.
 

Vince, who had heard the story from his older sister
Jing, didn’t buy it. There were too many loopholes,
too many unanswered questions, like wouldn’t an x-
ray machine in the Middle East detect a Filipino man
curled up inside a box? He simply dismissed it as a
“turban legend.”
“You’re missing the point brother,” Jing said. “It’s not
the mechanics that matter. It’s about drama. The
extremes a Filipino will go to just to be back home
for Christmas with his family.”

R. Zamora Linmark, born in Manila, is a Filipino

American poet, novelist, and playwright. He earned
a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawaii
in Honolulu. He is the recipient of a Japan-United
States Friendship Commission, a winner of
a National Endowment for the Arts creative
writing fellowship in poetry (2001), and was
a Fulbright Foundation Senior Lecturer/Researcher
in the Philippines (2005-2006). He was a
Distinguished Visiting Professor in Creative Writing
at the University of Hawaii and University of Miami.
His works include Prime-Time
Apparitions (2005), The Evolution of a
Sigh (2008), Drive-By Vigils (2011), rolling the

Lesson 1 Worksheet: REFLECTION PAPER

(You should start working on this activity on Monday and it must be accomplished already by WEDNESDAY.)
Instruction: Find a comfortable spot at home. While staying in your comfortable spot, think of a subject that you
would like to write about. It could be nature, something important or certain emotion that you have always noticed
to be present in you. At this point, your poetry will follow no rules, no standards, and no requirements- just your
written output alone. Your output just has to be well-thought and well-crafted. Your main goal is to touch the
hearts or cater the interest of your respective reader.

I
I am a girl, I’m a dreamer
I make mistakes
I have flaws and insecurities
I am not perfect, but I’m real.

I laughed so hard at my own jokes

I know a lot of things but I can’t say even one thing
I have best friends but I’m not showy and open
I am just scared, and I can’t explain.

I am always there when somebody needs me

I cried so much when nobody sees me
I swallowed all the pains that keep attacking me
I called for their help but they’re not answering me.

I can keep a secret but they didn’t trust me

I know I can but fear preceded me
I always wear a smile just to hide my tears
I may look so strong but I have a lot of fears.

I loved them that it breaks my heart

I feel like it was being torn apart
I feel useless and worthless
But God knows I’m worth it.
 Written by: MARY ANN Y. CALALIN

Lesson 1 Worksheet: POSITION PAPER

(You should start working on this activity on Monday and it must be accomplished already by WEDNESDAY.)
Instruction: Dealing with Poverty!
In the previous lesson, we discussed about unemployment leading to poverty. At this point, we discussed about
how people cope up with poverty leading them to work abroad and suffer from homesickness. Given the two
lessons, create a position paper which discusses these two contrasting ideas: unemployed but does not suffer
from homesickness or employed yet far from the family. Choose your stand and explain your point

I choose employed yet far from the family because it better than to be far
from the rather than unemployed but does not suffer from homesickness
because you do not depend on someone or your family will not suffer from
poverty. In order to be success in our lives we need sacrifice but sacrificing
is still worth it after all. You should set aside homesickness in order to make money
for their family to live, even though it's hard they can still handle it as the time goes by,
and sacrificing is still worth it after all.

Written by: MARY ANN Y. CALALIN