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In the last half century or so, universities have tended to grow too big,
grasping every opportunity for new courses or activities, often in a
topsy-turvy process of ad hoc development. As a result, fragmentation
has become more prominent. While the faculties appear to have become
ghettoized, less interactive and far removed from the synergistic
community of scholars, students in our institutions have become isolated
within their subject areas and cross-disciplinary contacts have become
difficult. In most professional institutions in the country, undergraduate
teaching has become a subordinate activity, with high-flying professors
and researchers becoming more removed from contact with students
and even with peers, and from real involvement in teaching and the
vital ongoing task of reassessing the undergraduate curriculum. There
is no longer a shared vision of goals of undergraduate education or of
the means to achieve them. We have been witness to a proliferation of
degree courses of uneven quality and uncertain purpose, or a laissez-
faire approach to curriculum that has led to career courses based on
faddism or an incoherent jumble of electives.
Nevertheless, the changes over the last few years have been so rapid that
“it makes a completely different linguistic world to live in,” to quote
David Crystal. The internet has already altered all our previous
concepts to do with language. In fact, there is a lingering doubt in view
of the realities of IT-dominated developments in the last ten years or
more. Many of us find ourselves, or what we have been doing all these
years, irrelevant. I suspect the fast growth of electronic publications,
including books, journals, newspapers and magazines, and voice-
recognition software, may soon make some of our arts, for example,
writing, an ancient art form. While the printed word is facing a grave
challenge as a medium of expression, voice chips may soon become
indispensable for understanding and responding to verbal instructions
and communication.
For the generation born after 1985, the internet and mobile phones are
not just media; they have become a social environment in which one
settles and lets out one’s energies. It is a parallel world, with a lot of
virtual alternatives. For teaching communicative strategies in such a
new situation, we would need to know more about, and understand well,
the various connections between language use and successful
communication, about lexical tools of communication, about the
potential of various Englishes in the present age, and the selective
information needs in the present day society.
CHALLENGES
To some of us this may appear elitist, but this elitist reality coexists
with the sad fact that a larger section of our population is functionally
illiterate. A much larger percentage of our educated youths, high school
and college graduates, despite their diplomas and degrees, cannot even
fill out a simple application form, or write a formal letter. Most of them
manage to ‘communicate’ with a limited vocabulary and an unstable
syntax. Smart ones among them who have access to computer and
laptop increasingly depend on the latest version of Microsoft’s Word
programme for checking spelling, syntax, grammar, and even
paragraph structure. Yet, they fail to write well or express themselves
appropriately. Why? I suspect excepting a very small section of the
population, the large majority learn English the wrong way. Many of us
know well how English in various schools is being taught as no man’s
subject, or as an every man’s subject, or an extra hand’s subject. This is
not a positive or happy situation. I am also concerned, as I have always
maintained, English learning has to be strengthened at the school level
without which there can’t be improvement at college level.
NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCES
With sensitivity for the language (to me, language use is more a matter
of pleasure and beauty than of rules and structure), I would like to
assert that the yardsticks of the British or American native speakers, or
their standards as reflected in GRE, TOEFL or IELTS etc, or their kind
of tongue twisting, are simply damaging to the interests of non-native
speakers. We have to develop our own standards, instead of teaching to
sound like Londoners or North Americans. No nobody needs to speak
the socalled standardized English (that makes inter- and intranational
communication difficult). David Crystal too appreciates this reality and
favours ‘local taste’ of English in India and elsewhere. The problems of
teaching, say spoken English, relate to lack of intercultural
communicative competence.
If one has to work abroad and use English with others there, one has to
be sensitive to the culturally governed ways of speaking or talking to
each other. The speech community’s (the language culture of the group of people)
ways of communication cannot be taken for granted, when one seeks to
learn or teach spoken English. People fail or suffer discomfort or
embarrassment in negotiations in business or political affairs, or
achievement of personal goals due to incompetence in persuasion,
negotiation, mediation, or interaction. It is their performance, their
intercultural interactional competence which matters; it lies in
managing social interaction, and not just communication, or use of right
grammatical form, syntax, vocabulary, or even certain polite phrases.
It is with this sensibility for English language and its teaching in various
contexts that I speak to you this morning. Yet, as I say all this, I keep in
mind the ground reality: that is, poor literacy skills, fluency, and even
comprehension; poor communicative ability, with limited experiences in
writing, speaking and listening unless, of course, teaching of English as
a Second, or additional language improves from school level and need
for a supportive classroom climate and positive student attitudes
towards learning at postsecondary level is recognized. Also, both
teachers and students need to be aware of what to do, how to do it, and
when and why to do it, as part of practicing self-regulation strategies.
The ELT community as also the other stake holders in the country
should, therefore, revise and reformulate appropriate strategies and
policies, with tolerance and multilingualism at the core, to remain
relevant in the coming decades. The objective of looking back, in a
seminar like this, is to move forward with a reasoned perspective for
taking measures to develop communication abilities and higher
discourse competence, with a broadened inter- and cross-disciplinary
bases, for learning to understand (rather than memorize) and apply in
ones own contexts.
ECLECTIC APPROACH
I hope at the end of the Seminar, having shared with each other what
some of you have done and how, we will emerge more enlightened and
aware about what more we need to do to succeed in the days ahead.
Mutual interaction should help us envision a possible policy framework
required to support teaching for economically valuable language skills
at tertiary and/or professional level.