English as a means of empowering learner

This refers to Selvaraj Vishvika’s (SV) article titled, “The dispossession of a voice through English in Sri Lanka’ in The Island of February 6, which attempts to focus on the problems of university students, who, she says, are forced to conform to rigid or standard grammatical structures thus inhibiting them and stifling their spontaneous voice- the urge to communicate their ideas freely.

She says, “We bring to the table “grammar”, “spelling”, and “awkward” to police the students’ language and measure their competence under a tensed and measured timeframe”. Perhaps, this kind of policing of language for accuracy may not be the one and only method being used by all teachers of English, including those who teach in universities.

Group activities that are increasingly being used in most of the classrooms enable the students to express themselves with some confidence in a relatively ‘sheltered’ environment before they are asked to speak to the whole class. However, SV’s contention that a rigid focus on accuracy over expression tends to be counterproductive, stands fully vindicated.

Perhaps, it is the longstanding test-oriented method of Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL), the elimination of which is easier said than done for obvious reasons, which has been responsible for much of the language inhibitive environments that prevail in the classroom. However, hearteningly, TESL has come a long way from the accuracy-focused approach, which was ideally suited to an equally unsound test-oriented system.

If second language learners are to get the maximum benefit from their learning experience, focus on accuracy and testing should be minimum, specially, in the first few years in school where they acquire any language naturally with no instruction at all.

It is true that we can’t do away with testing. However, in the early years of acquiring a new language, it is the exposure and the excitement of using a new language as a tool to get things done- to navigate their ‘world’ and feel the power and joy of the gradual mastery of a new language- that will drive them ahead. If the teacher directed all her efforts to make the learner’s each encounter with language as adventurous and empowering as possible, playing the role of a friendly companion rather than a cop breathing down his neck demanding conformity in every move, it would be difficult for her to stop the student’s quick progress.

Surely, we have done away with the hackneyed methods: teaching the alphabet, spelling, parts of speech, tenses, etc., decades ago. Instead of those wasteful and time-consuming means of teaching ‘about’ language, today the focus is on enabling the learners to build an ever-increasing familiarity with the language through uninhibited application, guesswork, experimentation, learning from errors – just like they master their first language as children. This is why it is crucial to give them this experience as early as possible while eliminating some of the conventional practices that dampen their interest rather than motivating them.

Let’s consider a few instances where we unconsciously inhibit them. Take reading comprehension. Instead of making them passionate readers by letting them discover its joys and inherent empowering quality, we have been making reading a demanding preparatory work for testing comprehension. The implication of setting post reading questions is to warn the students that they must read not for pleasure but for showing how much they can understand.

If they get their answers wrong, they had better pay more attention to squeeze the full meaning out of every word, phrase and sentence! The following comment of SV is spot on: “We seem to judge our students and expect them to deliver a piece of work that we only after years of experience have achieved”. What we have to do is to allow them to read more and more and gradually be at home with larger terrains of language.

It is obvious that this can be made possible by getting them to read outside class hours. For this to happen, the government has to ensure that every school has a library with a reasonable stock of books. And, obviously, the teachers have to be more proactive and find ways of motivating them to read for pleasure, which will then, automatically, enable them to be more confident and more spontaneous readers of other genres.

Dishearteningly, students are made to feel more inhibited when it comes to writing. It is true that much of our writing texts in day-to-day life are for others, who read them for various purposes and are subject to evaluation at different levels according to numerous criteria, grammar being one area which comes under strict scrutiny.

Some of us, not excluding those who are well-informed, professionals and even teachers, who often mistakenly consider a thorough grammar base as an essential prerequisite for writing. They often ask, “How on earth can you write without grammar?” However, this is the result of considering grammar as extraneous to language. Not all veteran grammarians are fluent speakers or writers.

That an average child of five or six years can speak any number of languages accurately to express herself clearly in those languages, given that she is exposed to them from infancy can be the best argument against the idea that learning grammar is essential for speaking, or, writing. If, out of some misplaced academic passion, parents tried to teach grammar to their child, she would very likely go mad.

Getting to know the grammar of any language from a book and knowing all the rules has nothing to do with being able to use that language fluently to speak or write. A student who has learned all the grammar rules of English may be able to say whether a sentence is correct or not without being able to speak or write that sentence.

It is the grammar that we automatically acquire by using the language, and not the grammar that we can learn from any source, which becomes our ‘internal’ grammar we unconsciously use to express ourselves either in speech or writing. Hence the importance of the teachers getting their students to express themselves in writing in the target language without threatening them with the red pen.

It is only in a friendly and non-threatening learning atmosphere that children can acquire the second language optimally. And, it will allow them to make their voice heard in English without it being an instrument of denial. Let them not be unduly worried about whether they use Sri Lankan English or Queen’s English. If linguists and researchers are keen to find out, let them get busy.

Susantha Hewa