Language teachers are certainly at a disadvantage in our society today. A popular perception is: what will come out of learning a language? A little bit of Mathematics and some Science will give a good grounding for later studies in Engineering and Management. Does anybody have time for a language teacher?
Part of the problem certainly arises from the ambition of securing seats in prestigious Engineering or Medical colleges, and the effort of a language teacher towards that goal is certainly not seen as an aid, if not a hindrance.
The dwindling importance of the Humanities in the curriculum after the tenth standard is indicative of the nature of employment opportunities that modern techno-managerial jobs have created. But is there no place for a language teacher in this model?
Some may argue that discussion on teaching and learning a language is more or less a liberalist argument and that it disregards the real battlefield where students have to come out and show their skills and talent to earn a living or support a family.
They could ask, “Does your language have anything to do with getting a good job for my son or daughter? Does it assure a decent living? Probably he or she might end up being a language teacher like you, which is not a glamorous profession like being a Software Engineer, a Cardiologist, a Scientist or a Banker. Anyway, what matters if Shylock did not get his pound of flesh, or Pip fell out of his newfound riches and realised that his benefactress was not Miss Havisham?”
As a teacher of English, this dilemma has dogged me repeatedly: whether the teaching and learning that was about to happen was in any way less significant or important than what the other subject teachers were doing, and whether the teacher of a language had only to enliven the classroom with his jokes and stories to unstress the students a little.
Is a language class the time to unwind and relax a little from the hard grind of sums and problems that other core subjects throw at you? Entertaining such a thought would be a very foolish thing to do, for no subject or discipline can claim greater or lesser importance than another. Have we not seen instances of students relaxing and enjoying themselves while being engaged in solving a difficult mathematical problem or an experiment in Physics?
This brings me again to my first proposition: what is the purpose of teaching a language?
Against this backdrop, I have felt that it would be a wistful activity for me, as a teacher, to reminisce about my time inside an English classroom and the different types of students I had to teach.
My first entry into a classroom to teach English was when some of us friends planned to go to a school in a rural area very near Hyderabad city to practise some teaching for our upcoming practice-teaching sessions. The students were in their first year Intermediate and I was given a poem to teach.
Rather than being a learning session for the students, the class was planned to give us a feel of the real classroom—to put to the test what we had been taught in our course about ELT and various approaches to teaching and learning English, such as the structural and communicative-interactive approaches.
With only the textbook and the blackboard, I soon slipped into the established mode of teaching: the monologue method. When my conscience did prick me about the lack of participation from the learners, I asked a few questions, cracked a few jokes and wound up the class.
My next session was in the actual practice-teaching class, which had to be completed to gain my PGDES degree. I was apprehensive about the class because some of my friends, who had taught before me, were unable to elicit any response from the students, who sat with a taciturn attitude and did not react to the outreach of the teachers. Perhaps it was a predisposed technique devised by our professors to test the preparedness of the trainees.
The proposition that I am trying to put forth is that a language class has to be an interactive class. If the purpose of learning a language is to learn it better and perhaps achieve a certain amount of proficiency in it, then what better way than to use it?
The teacher, in this context, has to be a facilitator and merge into the background, observing and steering the learning process onto the right course.
The topic I was given was vocabulary building. I chose the topic “clines”, and I thought I could make this interesting by giving examples from real life. A cline in vocabulary is a gradation from one extreme to another, as in “Flat, Shallow, Deep, Fathomless.”
I was given the cline: “Cool, Cold, Chilled, Icy, Freezing, Lukewarm, Warm, Hot, Boiling, Sizzling, Steamy.” This gave me an opportunity to draw the cline on the blackboard with some illustrations and coloured chalk work.
Initially, I was met by a batch of laconic pupils. As the class progressed, I kept asking my students repeatedly for examples and experiences. When the students were asked to respond from their own experience as the reference, they were quite free, and in the process a significant amount of language output did take place.
The students’ effort and their association with word combinations such as hot milk, cold coffee, chilled beer and cool lemonade made things easier for me. The important point which I did not ignore or overlook was involvement.
Unlike in some other subjects, a language teacher should not be overzealous to display his knowledge. It could be acceptable if a teacher of Geography tries to explain the cartographic details of something for the first time because the students are new to the topic and he is introducing it to them. For language learners, however, it is not the same, since no language is entirely new and language is constantly in a process of creation and modification, the matter of difference being the level of proficiency.
When I sought a job during my research period to meet my boarding expenses, I took up evening classes in a school to teach “Spoken English” to the students. This was a fashion then and continues to be so even today—learning Spoken English.
I did not have the aid of a library or a language lab. I was constantly aware of the threat of these classes lapsing into grammar classes, introducing the general rigmarole of parts of speech and related topics to the students.
But the enthusiasm of the students was very high, and I thought I should adopt some other method to make them speak and help them overcome their inhibition. I made them enact some situations, and although the conversation was forced and contrived, they did speak, and a few of them showed remarkable improvement by the end of a month.
What it demonstrated to me was the importance of doing rather than merely learning. If somebody wants to learn English, he or she has to start engaging with the language.
I also started telling them stories, and the first story I told them was The Three Musketeers, a tale of adventure, romance and chivalry. The technique of storytelling in the first few classes made the students more interested in the evening Spoken English class, and I wove the learning around the story of D’Artagnan and his adventures.
I have observed that after the student is familiar with the syntactical patterns and has a reasonable grasp of vocabulary, the method that improves language learning most is to start getting them acquainted with the literature of the language: novels, short stories and plays.
The reason is not difficult to figure out. Literature presents language in a context, and contextual learning has more potential to reinforce language learning than isolated structural practice.
After one week, I started giving out simple books, mostly abridged versions of novels and short stories, to my class and encouraged them to read. After the reading had gone on for a week, I asked them to speak in the classroom about the books they had read. Students who were confident about it wrote reviews of the texts they had read.
The presentation in the classroom was the interesting part, as they had to come out and start speaking. In a way, the fear and inhibition that was holding them back had to be broken.
I could think of some books which had entertained me in my own journey of learning English: The Prisoner of Zenda, Treasure Island, Coral Island, The Man in the Iron Mask, Black Beauty, The Moonstone, Jane Eyre, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Around the World in Eighty Days, Gulliver’s Travels, Captain Blood, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Les Misérables, Silas Marner, Robinson Crusoe, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations, Kidnapped, Robin Hood, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Prince and the Pauper, and Ivanhoe, and so on.
The classes went on for more than three months until the annual examinations arrived and the students became busy with their regular studies. I could say with some happiness that I had put them on the journey towards learning English, and the more perseverant among them must certainly have become proficient later.
After I completed my PGDES and benefited a great deal from ELT practices and learning strategies, I applied and was selected as PGT in English for an institution in Gujarat.
EFLU, known during those days as CIEFL, was considered a centre of learning, and the teachers at the university were engaged in researching and promoting language learning. My exposure to these teachers and their classes had given me sufficient understanding of the nuances in the approaches and the debate that raged between structural and communicative approaches to language learning.
But at my new school, I had to teach English to a set of students who were proficient and competent in the use of the language. The challenges I faced were therefore of a different kind. I had to teach English to a class of students who were well read, who could detect any mistake on my part and also pose certain difficult questions.
As I had expected, the students were very sharp and I had to revise my methods suitably. The literary criticism classes came to my mind, and I gave them an introductory session on the relevance of learning a language at the Plus One and Plus Two level.
Appreciation of literature is one of the important aspects of studying a language at this level. Appreciation of literature can lead to higher comprehension, coherence of thought, clear formulation of ideas and precise communication, which are essential for any profession.
What helped me were the literary criticism classes which were part of my Diploma curriculum: the analysis of a piece of work based on diction, tone, symbol, imagery and theme.
Once I gave them a taste of something new, albeit of a literary kind, the students started to get involved in the exercise of analysing the poems and prose essays in the text by working with these tools.
One of the poems that I took up in my very first class was “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. The poem brilliantly supported my argument, and I could demonstrate to the class the layers of meaning embedded in this seemingly sweet and innocent poem lisped by most of us as a nursery rhyme.
The poet wonders about the little star, but the words of the poem reveal a thought process in which she is in awe of the star, and there is a subtle comparison between the terrestrial and celestial worlds. Once the meaning of a poem acquires a different dimension because of such close or attentive reading, the language class becomes an engaging exercise.
It was largely with such techniques and innovative methods that I could mould their interest, and very soon they were eager and awaited my classes. But the downside of this was that they branded me a philosopher who was mostly serious and weighty, and this “honourable badge” did not leave me as long as I was in that institution.
This became such a riveting exercise that, in one of my classes when I was teaching the poem “The Eagle” by Alfred Lord Tennyson, we had a long discussion about what the eagle symbolised.
I was under the impression that the eagle symbolised danger and could not stretch the meaning beyond that, but the class was firm in the view that the eagle symbolised Death. Such was the level of discussion we had in the classes, although they were not Literature classes. I recollect fondly even today the wonderful and very pleasant time I had in my Plus One and Plus Two classes.
After a few months, I asked them to read books in class and write reviews. Those who were interested were asked to present them too. All of them were students of Science, Commerce and Mathematics.
Whenever we had a lesson on something related to Science—for example, the lesson on “Splitting of the Atom”—the discussion became more animated and I let my students take the stage, willing to be enlightened by them.
This sort of multidisciplinary approach enlivens the English class and inculcates awareness about the synergic relationship between all subjects.
While in the same institution, I was attached to the eighth class also, and with them I concentrated mostly on improving their speaking skills and vocabulary.
The eighth-standard students were very active and inventive. They practised a play, The Man in the Bowler Hat, for the school anniversary and presented it successfully. Although they did not get a big applause, mostly because of the abstruse nature of the plot, they performed it with élan and composure, paying attention to all the nuances in the dialogue and the plot of the drama.
Circumstances forced me to come back to my state, and I landed a posting as Associate Lecturer in a Polytechnic college near Ongole.
Here, the students were from a very rural and underprivileged background. The Polytechnic course in Andhra Pradesh had English in the curriculum only for the first year. Being of a qualifying nature and not included in the overall assessment for grading the student, English did not carry much importance for the faculty or the students in Polytechnics in those days.
But the students were very obedient and were always in awe of their teachers. I tried to let them relax and speak out more, underlining the importance of interaction in an English classroom. The syllabus was also very fundamental, and completing the syllabus, as it were, was not a concern for me.
Although I tried my best, I could not make the students speak without fear, and my only victory was when the responses to my questions, which initially were only in Telugu, gradually got transformed into English.
What it made me realise was the undeniable significance that social background plays in shaping cultural and linguistic responses. One year of English is hardly enough to break the fears and inhibitions that have been cemented over years of schooling.
I was not successful in my aim, and my batch of students left English by the wayside when they passed out of their first year Diploma and got promoted.
Another myth strongly believed is that students of Technical Education need only a working knowledge of English. Perhaps this could explain the reason why only first-year students have a language in the curriculum. But it is evident that planners are missing the wood for the trees.
Learning a language and acquiring a certain amount of competence in it to communicate and express oneself effectively is not a matter of fragmentation. It is rather a continuous process, making the student attach importance to the various skills needed to be a good user of the language for technical purposes.
Skills such as business communication, study skills, note-making, note-taking, summarising, logical reasoning, analysing, collating and comprehension come only from a gradual interaction with the language.
Teachers benefit by sharing their knowledge. Language teachers benefit by dividing their time in the class with their students. The level of participation from the students and the resourceful use of language in context and in situations in the classroom make them ready to be future leaders, entrepreneurs and communicators.
But unfortunately many students and parents too, especially in the middle- and lower-income groups, tend to believe that learning Grammar is the best way to learn a language. This is the baggage they carry from an archaic model of teaching and learning the language.
While Grammar is important for becoming competent speakers and users of the language, it does not encourage the process of experimenting with language. Grammar, being an analysis of language, often inhibits or restricts the fun and freedom that children need when they are learning a new language.
Often, teachers who place excessive emphasis on Grammar are themselves not adequately equipped to teach the language. Having been taught in such a way, they replicate the model safely and hail the grammar textbook as a single-point solution.
I have believed very firmly that students should be encouraged to read—read what interests them. Reading has to happen continuously, and the scale of difficulty should become higher as the student improves his or her familiarity with the language.
At the same time, there is a good case to revisit the choice of texts for learners of English at the undergraduate or secondary-school level.
The year was 1986 and I was in my second year of graduation. I was a student of B.A. Advanced English. The level of the texts prescribed for the Advanced English course was not very challenging. We had Essays of Elia, The Citizen of the World, The Return of the Native, Dr Faustus and other texts.
Surprisingly, however, the text that was prescribed for the second-year General English course was Hamlet, the drama which is considered to be among the most difficult of Shakespeare’s works.
The idea that students should appreciate such texts is welcome, but prescribing it for the general language course must be treated as an error.
The philosophical reflections of Hamlet did have a theatrical impact on me, but I cannot imagine the language capability it inculcated in me. I was enamoured by the way in which the text was taught by my professor and afterwards remembered that the plural of “Exit” is “Exeunt”.
What would have been more useful for the students would have been a practical English course on simple things like writing a report, summarising, letter writing, writing a notice or a pamphlet, translating, paraphrasing, essay or paragraph writing, conversation practice, comprehension and copywriting.
This proposition of mine is not contrary to my earlier point that language learning should focus on Literature. An approach that will be more productive in the long run is to intersperse language skills with Literature reading. Both streams should run side by side, and the student should be encouraged to do independent reading from different genres.
Reverting to my earlier question as to why language learning is important, I am reminded of a question that I was posed in my interview for selection to the State Civil Services.
Looking at my optional paper, English Literature, the panel asked me what the relevance of Literature was to administration.
I gave a sketchy answer, stating that Literature helps us understand people better. Since Public Administration is about people and their welfare, Literature would help me perform my work better.
After that, I have pondered a great deal over the question and come to an understanding that the real value a student of Literature brings to administration is understanding, empathy and compassion.
As in Literature and in administration, I have benefited from being able to express my ideas logically, clearly and without obfuscation.
Over the years, my classroom observation has been that students from the vernacular medium are either afraid of English or have been given the impression that being good at STEM subjects can enable quick career movement.
Such students, I feel, have not been given the right learning environment to appreciate the importance of English.
Communication, being the vehicle which accelerates the building of relationships and teams in a professional environment, has to be given primacy for all jobs which are not extremely specialised or technology-driven.
Unfortunately, many rural youth with a marginal or diffuse proficiency in English tend to remain in the lower rungs of positions in an organisation principally for that reason.
Awareness of this has been increasing of late, and it is important to steer this awareness towards a higher competence for all users of English and enable them to communicate clearly and effectively.
Every teacher of English is bound to this fundamental task and, with proper skill, will and commitment, this can be achieved.