TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN INDIA (revisited)
Khaliqur Rahman
Have you ever thought about the difference that is there in India
between an MA in English and an MA in any of the languages like French, German
or Arabic? I’ll tell you, English in India carries the burden of Second
Language while all the languages cited above have the status of a Foreign
Language. A foreign language student is personally interested in the language
and is highly motivated, whereas a second language student is
socio-economically under tremendous pressure to learn the language, in the hope
of getting a job and earning a livelihood. A second language student thus finds
himself or herself in a don’t-want-to-but-have-to situation. Therefore, when a
student seeks admission to a Master’s course in a Foreign Language, the
student’s language proficiency level is much higher than that of a student in
India who wants to do MA in English which is a Second Language for him or her.
During the MA in
English course, the student is exposed to the works of authors like Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Shelly, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge … Eliot
… just to name a few of the many in the Syllabus. The teachers and the
students lug information, like coolies, without ever bothering what the contents
are or what they mean! You have MAs in English Literature in tens or even
hundreds of thousands every year, and MPhils and PhDs in thousands! They have
somehow studied (?) English Literature and have somehow obtained degrees like
MA or MPhil or PhD, but can they teach English language which they are now
asked to do at universities and colleges and schools? The answer is a big NO!
The UGC is a funny
oceanic quagmire. Look at the syllabus for NET (National Eligibility Test) that
qualifies one to teach English. They start with Beowulf! Leave alone Chaucer!!
Now, how can the blessed Englishes (this expression is pretty much acceptable
nowadays and it refers to the different varieties of English) of these writers,
or for that matter, of even Dickens and Hardy, help today’s teacher to teach
contemporary English? If they can’t, you just can’t blame them because they
have never been taught nor trained to teach English language.
I once talked to
the Chairman of the NCERT while the big shot (in a small barrel) was here for a
blessed exercise in futility which they call a seminar (without anything really
like even an apology of substance and seminal in it) and suggested introduction
of MA in English Language or MA in English Language Teaching instead of MA in
English Literature. What was his response? I was more amused than amazed when
he said, “How can you bypass Oliver Twist’s ‘I want some more!’ and give a
Master’s Degree?” I bypassed him for the rest of the seminar!
Look at the number
of English medium schools, in Raipur, in Chattisgarh, in Madhya Pradesh, in
Maharashtra and in many other states in India and just have a look at the
language proficiency of the majority of average students. These students then
look to the mushroom of Spoken English Classes all over India to be able to
pass for ‘the smart guy’ good enough to take on the competitive world.
Have you ever
bothered to know why most teachers, in our schools (English medium schools
included) and even colleges and universities, can’t speak ( or write) like the
way, Irfan Pathan or Gambhir, even Sehwag and many other cricketers do (leaving
Gavaskar, Harsha Bhogle and Ravi Shastri alone).
I think, we must
take this problem seriously. The HRD Ministry should sit with people who are
not just ‘politically correct’ but who are, in reality, ‘academically correct’
and who have genuine national interest in their hearts and minds.
ELT (English
Language Teaching) is a well developed discipline and one of the top ELT men in
the world is an Indian: N S Prabu, known for his 1987 Second Language Pedagogy.
It is, indeed, a pity that despite Prabhu, despite ELT work and training at
CIEFL Hyderabad and other ELT Centres in the country, despite NCERT and despite
so many SCERTs and despite British Council Language Centres in New Delhi and
the recently set up in Hyderabad, English Language Teaching in India is in such
a bad shape.
My humble
suggestion is: Treat English as a Foreign Language when it comes to giving a
degree in English Literature. And, allow only MAs in English Language or in
English Language Teaching to teach English as a Second Language.
The teachers of
English should possess a high level of language proficiency. They should also
have an up-dated knowledge of Materials Production (text-book writing and all),
Testing & Evaluation and current trends in ELT, Contemporary Descriptive Grammar
and Modern Linguistics & Sociolinguistics.
