Communicating in English

If we leave the teaching of English to "teaching shops" or to incompetent teachers, India cannot claim to have a large number of English-knowing people.

THERE is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Tushar Kanti Ghosh, the redoubtable old journalist who brought out the English language paper Amrita Bazar Patrika from Kolkata. The paper was a household name among many Bengali families, but its language was frequently rather rocky. At a reception in the 1940s, the Governor of Bengal is supposed to have told him: "Tusharbabu, I understand many read your paper, but I must confess it often does some violence to the English language." "That, Your Excellency," Tushar replied, "is my contribution to the freedom struggle."

Independence and the years that followed saw several demands for the foreign language, the language of the colonial powers, to be removed but it stayed, for a variety of reasons. In any case, the debate on English as a language of India is now over. The burgeoning of call centres, but beyond them the rapid growth of the economy requires that those who work in its various sectors, particularly Information Technology and in the increasingly globalised corporate world, know English and know it well. For a time the requirement was only at the higher levels, but now it is spreading right down to the shop floors. The world of Adidas, Reebok, Subway, Levi's, Swarovski, Pierre Cardin and the rest translates into outlets where all those who work in them must be able to speak English.

This is where the problem starts. Not with having too few who can speak English but with having an increasing number of young men and women who claim to, and do, speak some kind of English but one that is barely recognisable as that language. Every metropolis in the country and, indeed, the major cities and towns have a growing number of self-styled academies, colleges and schools that claim to teach English. From what one gathers, they have young people clamouring to get in and learn the language they know will lead to some kind of a decent career. No one checks these teaching shops, nor can they really be checked because they claim no affiliation to any university or other recognised academic institution.

Those who emerge from these places speak a kind of pidgin English, but what is really alarming is that their limited grasp of the language inevitably limits their comprehension of material written in English. The consequences are obvious. At its worst it could mean grave, even disastrous, mistakes in a production line, for instance, when instructions given verbally or in writing are misunderstood. It is said that it was a lack of comprehension of the instructions or messages given either by the pilots or the air traffic control staff that led to the Alliance Air crash in Patna a few years ago.

Having had to recruit a number of persons recently for a television station for work that involved fluency in English, one came up against this problem and its various dimensions. The ones from the teaching shops could hardly get a sentence straight; they even found it difficult to understand simple questions. One of the persons interviewed had applied for the post of video editor, but his curriculum vitae showed that he had been a journalist for a number of years. On being asked why he had switched from journalism to technical work, he said quite frankly that he had been a journalist for a paper brought out in Punjabi, but when he came to Delhi, he realised that if he was to get anywhere he had to be able to work in English. Since his English was of the teaching-shop variety, he chose to learn a technical line of work.

But this is only one part of the problem. The other is the quality of English being taught in recognised schools. (One will not mention colleges because very few college students actually learn English there; it is assumed they know the language, and those unfamiliar with it will get nowhere trying to learn it until they unlearn what they were taught in school.) There were scores of young people interviewed who could just manage a few correct sentences - all the rest of what they said was hopelessly wrong. Again, the problem was only partly to do with gross grammatical errors; the other part was their pathetically limited vocabulary. The combined result was, again, very limited comprehension since they had neither the words nor the ability to use them, and ideas need both to be understood and expressed.

Inevitably, one has to look at the teachers who are teaching English in schools across the country. One has come across too many of these whose knowledge of the language is appalling, and they obviously pass on their terribly wrong English to their students. To take the question one step further, how do these people get their qualifications to become teachers of English? Clearly, they have some kind of qualification, a diploma or a certificate at the very least, but in most cases only the usual B.A. degree. Who awards these degrees and diplomas? At what point does the compromise with correct English start? It clearly starts somewhere, with some examiner, some indifferent teacher who has no idea of the consequences of his or her indifference.

The matter cannot be written off as one of the many problems that some benighted committee or the other will ponder over while bulkier files considered more important are pushed up and down the bureaucratic ladder. We are talking here of a seriously faulty means of communication. Just because a handful of students from English medium schools are reasonably fluent in the language, all is not going to be well. The key is not with this handful of students but with the vast majority of those who are, on paper, being taught English in schools all over the country. That is where the language degenerates, and if that degeneration is not taken in hand urgently, India's claim to having a large number of `English-knowing' young people - which is a major factor in a number of global investment decisions - will soon be exposed for the myth that it is.

One just has to look across the Indian Ocean to Singapore. If it is today one of the developed countries of the world, a first world country, this is, to a very great extent, because it took care to ensure that its young - Chinese, Malay and Indians - were taught correct English, an English that gave them a large enough vocabulary to allow them to express themselves accurately and to comprehend received ideas and concepts correctly. And even with this example right next door, we seem to be content to leave the teaching of English either to teaching shops or to incompetent teachers, ensuring that the bulk of children leaving school with certificates that say they are able to read, write and speak English can do none of these in a manner that will be acceptable in today's competitive world.

China, we are told, has started with determination the teaching of English in schools. Given its system of governance and its intense commitment to whatever it takes up as a mission, it is only a matter of time before there is a regular flow into the job market of young Chinese whose English will be much better than that of Indian children.

Today's world is one of communication, which means, to a very great extent, knowledge of English. The most sophisticated telecommunications systems, the most advanced super computers - everything depends on a knowledge of English. True, the Japanese work in their own language, but they too have realised that they simply cannot do without English. And for those countries without an industrial and technological base that has grown in their own language, as in the case of Germany, France and Japan, there really is no alternative to English.

And not any kind of English, not in today's world, but an English that is correct and comprehensive. In Tusharbabu's world, perhaps, any kind of English would do, but that like a lot of things has gone and must be put behind us, firmly. It remains to be seen what can be done about this growing problem.