English for university students : a ‘better late’ option

It is heartening that at least in some schools, teachers and principals help young students in no small measure by getting them to read every day outside of their formal language classes. In one such school, there is a mechanism where students have to read a Sinhala/Tamil book and an English book, alternately, every morning before they start formal studies. This is reading for pleasure and surely, it has both short-term and long-term gains. It is only by introducing such radical and innovative methods that can initiate children to language- be it first or second language- we can address the tertiary level second language problem effectively, thus freeing the undergraduates from the grueling work of mugging up English for exams and careers

By Susantha Hewa

Dr. Kaushalya Perera’s (KP) article “The promise of ‘English for all’: Gloomy contextual notes and unsolicited advice” which appeared on 19 December, among other things, favours the need to allow more hours for English in university timetables. Of course, this seems to be the best option within the framework of university curriculum. However, as she herself has mentioned in her article, the problem is best addressed before the students come to university by providing the necessary facilities to schools, including qualified teachers. Trying to force English down their throats at the university is not the strong suit of English education in the country. It is a ‘better late than’ option.

What we have to understand is that students at around twenty wouldn’t come to university to study English, unless they offer English at the degree level. All other students work hard to enter university to get qualified for employment and as we know they aim at among other things medicine, engineering, law, accountancy and management. For most of these students, English is only an unpleasant decoction.

But for them, especially for those who are less proficient, the English period is a “waste of time” – something which robs their precious time otherwise spent on something like a kuppi class that will help their chances for better results in their core subjects. As teachers are keen on teaching English, we may say that those who are weak in English can benefit all the more by coming to English classes. However, paradoxically, students of low English language proficiency see this as a bane. Perhaps, they correctly feel that this is not the time to learn English as a Second Language, however much we try to make English alluring.

In a sense, trying to take more of their hours to English is to punish them for no fault of their own. As we all know no second language can be taught; rather, it has to be acquired by being engaged in that language to work and get things done. This is why it is universally accepted that you ‘learn’ or more accurately, acquire language by working with it; not by ‘studying’ it like you do other subjects.

So, by trying to take more hours for English at the university, however competent and resourceful the teacher may be, will be a poor substitute for the language acquisition experience that should have been offered to them in their primary and secondary Grades. It may satisfy the dedicated university teacher of English, but expecting the same degree of enthusiasm and commitment from the student may be a fond illusion. As a rule, acquiring English is farthest from the mind of the average undergraduate.

However, English cannot be a ‘new language’ for any child in our country. Private tuition classes conducted by unqualified teachers, most of whom hardly read or write in the target language beyond their job-related comfort zones, can do precious little to improve the gullible students who come to their classes to get every word, sentence and grammar rule explained in their mother tongue. That even university students prefer such tuition thriving on the swabhasha mode of sorts – explaining everything including grammar in idiomatic Sinhala (or Tamil) – to activity-oriented classes at university shows the ignorance of even the average educated citizen of the mechanisms of proper second language acquisition.

The focus on the popular twosome of “IT and English” skills at the tertiary level – the very grouping of two different disciplines as though they are joined at the hip — shows the utilitarian approach taken towards IT and English at the university level and even before that. However, what most people forget is that learning IT and a second language (English, here) are as different as cheese and chalk in their modes of realisation.

An undergraduate learning IT-skills easily, is not necessarily the one who will show equal facility in learning English. It’s not the same game. In such a no-frills academic setting, thinking of teaching English and IT as occupying the same basket- envisioning them to be two sides of the same coin will be a mistake. There is no doubt that students studying IT would automatically get exposed to English. However, for best results, this kind of exposure should be given to them much before they embark on higher education.

It is heartening that at least in some schools, teachers and principals help young students in no small measure by getting them to read every day outside of their formal language classes. In one such school, there is a mechanism where students have to read a Sinhala/Tamil book and an English book, alternately, every morning before they start formal studies.

This is reading for pleasure and surely, it has both short-term and long-term gains. It is only by introducing such radical and innovative methods that can initiate children to language- be it first or second language- we can address the tertiary level second language problem effectively, thus freeing the undergraduates from the grueling work of mugging up English for exams and careers. If this kind of wholesome training can happen at the school level, these students can be better groomed at the university level to make them more sober citizens than automated workers to drive the world’s market economy.

Perhaps, it is here that Prof. Liyanage Amarakeerthi’s book titled, Vishvavidyalaya yanu kumakda? (What is university?), which KP mentions in her first paragraph, has relevance. Amarakeerthi, in this book, makes an attempt to see university, not as a place for manufacturing workers in hordes to fit the market needs, but as a place where there should be a “liberating” education, which he calls, a Nidahaskaraka adyapanaya, with a broad curriculum where students are trained to think critically. On page 12, he quotes Fareed Zakaria, an Indian-American journalist, author and public intellectual, who says that a wholesome education (liberating or nidahaskaraka adyapanaya) is, basically, one which induces students to think. Delaying proper Second Language teaching till the tertiary level cannot be conducive for creating such a wholesome academic environment in university.