English
Language Teaching and Learning in Modern India
Dr. Ratnesh Baranwal
Assistant Professor
Department of English
K.N.I.P.S.S.
Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India
Abstract:
This paper is intended to bring about the
exploration of the various aspects of English Language Teaching and Learning in
Modern India. English language is basically the language of England. Language
itself is the mark of the personality, identity, civilization and culture. It
passes from one generation to the other. Origin of English language can’t be
dated chronologically. It was born and brought up in England in 14th
C. as a local dialect having a local identity. It was not treated as a national
language. During that time, there was no national language in England. There
was the complete domination of the French and the Latin in England. Even in the
government offices and the royal families, these two (the French and the Latin)
had been in circulation. The condition of English was very much poor and worse
and it was a below dignity practice to speak and talk in English during those
days. Someone has commented ––– “Chaucer found English a dialect and left it a
language”. Prior to the 14th C., before Chaucer’s emergence, England
was devoid of any national language. There had been 4 types of dialects known
as Northumbrian, the Southern, the Eastern and the Western existing into the 04
different directions of the Country-East, West, South and the North. He made
the amalgamation of these four dialects and transformed them into a national
language. That’s why he is called the father of English language and poetry.
Today it has assumed the status of an international language and known as one
of the most-spoken languages in the world. Since then its popularity has
started shooting up by leaps and the bounds. There is no country in the world
today where it is not spoken. As far as India is concerned, since the
foundation of the East India Company in the 16th C. during the reign
of the Mughal emperor Jahangir, its popularity too has started increasing
everywhere. Thus this one has travelled along the Journey of over 7th
centuries. After Chaucer’s departure, Spenser, much better known as the poet’s
poet and the second father of English poetry and language, added glamour and
charm to the style of poetry and did employ the best quality of the poetic
diction. These qualities had been missing in Chaucer’s poetry. Thus Chaucerian
English language was very much poor and defective having the hybridity of the
French, the Greek and the Latin. Its beautification and ornamentation was done
by Spenser.
Abstract: English;
Language; Teaching; Learning; Modern India
This paper intends to focus upon the
different aspects, problems, challenges and opportunities concerning English
Language Teaching and Learning in Modern India. English can be defined as the
window of the educational kingdom by virtue of which we can observe each and
everything of the world. Its significance as an international language can be
understood from the evidence that there is no country in the world where
English is not spoken and understood. In the most of the countries, such as the
U.K., the U.S.A., Canada and Australia etc., it is dominantly preferred as the
first language. On the other hand, English is taken to be a second or a foreign
language in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Africa, France etc. Thus it is one of
the most-spoken languages in the world. It holds the next ranking to the
Chinese. But there still remains a very big difference between the two –
Chinese and English. The speakers of English are scattered everywhere in the
whole of the world, while those of the Chinese language are restricted to the
Chinese sub-continent only. But in the recent time, even in China, English is
getting more and more popular day by day. Apart from all these aspects, this
one also stands as the language of the international politics, being one of the
six official languages of the U.N.O. It is also the link language of the
Commonwealth Country.
Learning
a language is an art and not a science. The basis of art is practice, while
that of science is knowledge. Like the other arts such as singing, dancing and
drawing, without constant practice, language-learning process can’t be
perfected. On the other hand, modern techniques of teaching English language,
pay emphasis upon the oral assignment. English-learning process tends to follow
the multi-skill approach. Language-learning consists in keeping hold on the
four basic skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is the duty of
the teacher to ascertain that all these skills are properly grown up. All these
skills have equal importance in the process of English-learning. None out of
them is more or less important. It is very much important to notice that
English stands among the leading 20 languages of the world. Chinese holds the
first rank with 1000 million people speaking it. English holds the second rank
with 350 million people speaking the language. As far as the official language
is concerned, it does hold the first position.
Since
our independence in 1947, our political leaders, philosophers and thinkers
urgently required such a common language that could be used as a link language
for the entire country. In view of the requirement of English language for the
progress and peace in the country, it was unanimously decided under Article 343
of the Indian Constitution that Hindi in Devnagiri script is the official
language of the union but English would remain as an associate official
language of the Union for 15 years from the date of the implementation of the
constitution. Emphasizing the need for English, Pt. J.L. Nehru, the first P.M.
of India, observes –––
“We are driven to English principally because
we know it a good deal, we have people who can teach it and because it is the
most important language in the world today”.
Obviously
English has assumed very significant place in our country because of its
threefold purposes –– as a national link language, as an international link
language and as a library language. We have certain goal and destination in our
mind, while teaching English to our students. We wish to make the students
capable to understand, speak, read and write English correctly. The specific
purpose of teaching English can be summed-up to develop in the learners the
following skills ––––––
I-
Understanding
English with smoothness when spoken at the normal conversational speed
II-
Speaking
English correctly and fluently
III-
Reading
comprehensively and at a reasonable speed so as to use it as a library language
for collecting information and enjoying reading
IV-
Enjoying
poems, short stories and other library genres in English
V-
Acquiring
knowledge of the elements of English for the practical command of the language
VI-
Translating
common English words, phrases and sentences into the functional equivalents in
mother tongue and vice-versa
VII-
Growing
interest in English language in its totality.
Thus
the main target of English language teaching and learning (ELTL) is to enhance
the four languages skills, i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing
(LSRW). Now it is questionable if our students really get dexterous in the
employment of LSRW skills, or they can communicate in English as and when the
situation demands. Most of the problems in teaching English in this country are
aroused because of the following factors –––––
I-
Dearth
of competent English teachers, large classes, very poor infrastructure
II-
No
curricular reforms and the dominance of the traditional educational
infrastructure
III-
Ignorance
of the learners’ needs and aspirations and the national needs
IV-
Undue
interference of the dirty politics into the educational system
V-
Thoughtless
adherence to the teaching, learning models developed in other countries, where
the English language teaching situation is different from India.
Apart
from all these points as mentioned above, it is significant to notice that some
considerable efforts have been made to improve the English language teaching
learning scene in India. Since the last four decades, CIEFL, RIES, ELTS and
some university teaching departments have been doing their best to improve the
pitiable and poor state of affairs. In other way, it can be said that the
learners of English language and the teachers of English – both of them are the
essential elements which need to make a cumulative effort leading to an overall
change in ELTL programme.
Since
the 1960s, a great revival of interest in linguistic studies has occurred. Many
fundamental linguistic theories have been interrogated. One of them is deeply
concerned with the function of language in the communication of the meaning.
Traditionalists opine that the meaning of an utterance/text is what
speaker/writer means by it. According to this opinion, the writer/speaker’s
intention determines the meaning. Structuralists tend to propound that the
meaning lies in the text as if meaning were the products of the language
itself. Post-structuralists strongly claim that it is the context which
determines meaning.
Language
is always well-organized specifically. It stands as a system or a structure,
where any individual elements are meaningless separately. The language existing
at a particular time is described as a system. Thus it remains as an underlying
system on the basis of which speakers are able to produce and understand
speech.
David
Birch argues that “Language is Saussure’s virtual world and parole his real
world. People do, however, live and talk in real words – real in the sense that
they are socially, culturally and institutionally determined ……… In order,
therefore, to be able to talk about how meanings are produced in such a system,
a theory of actualization has to be determined” (Birch 48).
Thus structuralism bears the concept
that if human actions carry a meaning, there must be an underlying system of
distinctions and conventions making this meaning possible. The actions and
events are proved to be meaningful, provided that they are governed by
institutional conventions. Various social conventions make it possible to
marry, to write a poem, to produce a meaningful utterance.
Saussure argues that ––– “the relation
between the signifier and the signified is a matter of convention: in English
language, we conventionally associate the word tree with the concept “tree”
(Rice 6).
Both
the signifier/word and the signified/meaning are described themselves as
conventional divisions of the plane of sound and the plane of thought
respectively. Language seems to divide up the plane of sound and the plane of
meaning differently. Saussure says ––– “Each language cuts up the world
differently, constructing different meaningful categories and concept” (ibid
6).
English language, for
example, differentiates book, pen, pencil, pan, pain and pun on the plane of
sound, as separate signs with different meanings. But Saussure argues that if
words stood for pre-existing meaning/concept, they might have some equivalents
in meaning from one language to the other: which is not found at all. Rather he
says that ––– “the structures of language affect and influence our perceptions
of reality” ( Bradford 74).
Thus each language
stands as a system of concepts as well as forms that organizes the world.
It is noted that any structure/sentence is a sequence of
signs. Each sign contributes something to the value/meaning of the whole
sentence. Simultaneously, each sign contrasts with all other signs/words in the
language. Linguistic unit generates concept/meaning not because it refers to
the object, but because it differs from other objects of the system. For
example, a word ‘book’ bears its concept not because it merely refers to an
object but because it differs from other units such as pen, pencil, pan, pain
etc.
Saussure argues that –– “Concepts are purely
differential, not positively defined by their content, but negatively defined
by their relation with other terms of the system” (Baskin 67).
Structuralism, thus,
seems to have been concerned with the analysis and understanding of an action
under a particular system of systems within a culture. And language is
seemingly taken as the ideal model for explanatory purposes.
“This structuralism
aims to do for literature – or myth, or food or fashion – what grammar does for
language : to understand and explain how these systems work, what are the rules
and constraints within which, meaning is generated and communicated” (Lodge
ix).
Noam Chomsky, therefore, criticized
structuralism and its psychological basis as not merely inadequate but as
misconceived. Chomsky states –––––
“Linguistics have had their share in perpetrating the myth that
linguistic behaviour is ‘habitual’ and that a fixed stock of ‘patterns’ is
acquired through practice and used as the basis for ‘analogy’. These could be
maintained only as long as grammatical description was vague and imprecise. As
soon as an attempt is made to give a careful and precise account of the rules
of the sentence formation, the rules of phonetic organization, or the rules of
sound-meaning correspondence in a language, the inadequacy of such an approach
becomes apparent. What is more, the fundamental concepts of linguistic
description have been subjected to serious critique” (Chomsky 43-44).
As per
the National Education Policy (1986 and 1992), the teacher is the most
impressive factor in the entire system of education. He occupies the role of a
facilitator in the teaching and learning process. The language-teacher assumes
a greater significance because language is regarded the greatest achievement of
human intelligence. English in our country is considered to be a global
language and hence the English-teacher enjoys a place of distinction in Indian
society. It is very much significant to keep in mind as language-teacher is
that language-teaching has to be different from the teaching of non-language
subjects because the teacher’s concern in language teaching is to help the
learners acquire language skills rather to pass on the information. A good
English-teacher has to improve his/her pronunciation and acquires fluency
through practice and by listening to good models of spoken English such as the
varieties of English used in the news-bulletins of BBC, the voice of America
etc., as well as by some individual speakers of English. A good English teacher
has to motivate his students for the participation in all the classroom
activities and provides ample scope to the students to interact among
themselves and with the teacher. He provides lots of opportunities to the
students to practice English. He does maintain the records of the mistakes done
by the students and takes corrective measures.
A
critical and sound analysis of English language teaching and learning leads us
to the conclusion that the existing state of ELTL programme in terms of
learners’ achievement is quite dissatisfactory.
The
factors responsible for this disastrous and pitiable condition comprise the
non-availability of standard text books, lack of clear-cut goals, shortage of
competent and decicated teachers, lack of suitable teaching-learning technical
resources, impractical assessment system and shortage of innovative techniques
and methods to handle English language effectively in the actual classroom
situation English should be taught as a language not as a subject and the
teacher must be knowledgeable in the basic language skills by going through
latest materials and attending various training programmes on English language
organized from time to time by ELT institutes in the country and abroad too.
Dexterity
does not remain as a considerable amount of dedication on the part of English
teacher, but it is mandatory because lack of conviction and passion adds
destruction to everything. Today English has gained the status of a living and
breathing language used for national and international communication. English
language should be assessed on the ground of skill and talent, continuity,
regularity and punctuality, employing multiple techniques and it should be used
for improvement in learning communicative ability of the students. It must be
reassured that teacher’s role in promoting ELTL programme is of great
significance. A conductive atmosphere of inculcating communicative skill can be
easily created in our educational institutions with knack, knowledge and
commitment. Let every teacher be a facilitator and motivator and English
language teaching and learning a very delightful experience.
Thus
on the basis of the above discussion, it can be very briefly summed-up to say
that ELTL programme has been progressing by leaps and bounds in every nook and
corner of our country. Convent education system has accelerated this campaign
to a greater extent. But in spite of all these positive steps being taken in
uplifting the standard of ELTL programme, there are also some loopholes and
defects which are existing in our country, in our modern education system as
mentioned earlier in the beginning of the discussion. These weak points need to
be improved and this programme must be done at a very large scale. This
programme must enlighten even the poor and the illiterate section of the
society.
Works Cited
Baskin, Wade, translated, Course in General Linguistics. New York:
McGraw Hill, 1966. Print.
Birch, David. Language, Literature and Critical Practice. London: Routledge,
1989. Print.
Bradford, Richard. Stylistics. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.
Chomsky, Noam. “Linguistic Theory”, in Robert
G. Mead, Jr. ed., Language Teaching
Broader Context. Middleburry: North East Conference Reports, 1966.
Lodge, David. Working with Structuralism. London: Routledge, 1991. Print.
Rice, Phillip and Patricia Waugh, ed.
Ferdinand de Saussure, Fran Course in General
Linguistics (1915), Modern Literary
Theory. Great Britain: Routledge, 1989. Print.