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| Sunday, 02 April 2006 |
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English: The haves and the have-nots by Kumar David They say, 'If you flaunt it, you haven't got it', but this seems untrue of the swell of English usage in China. However, what is true is that over here in Sri Lanka, 'We had it and we blew it'. India is now being called the elephant in the Anglophone amphitheatre as it evolves towards the position of largest English speaking country in the world, true as a second language - but then, the song goes, "In America, they haven't used it for years". What is the state of 'English as a second language' proficiency here at home?Let me give you two examples from China first. I will boldly assert that on average, the English of post-graduate students in China's best two or three dozen universities is better than that of their counterparts in Sri Lanka's dozen or so universities. Gap is widening And my experience has been mostly with science and technology buffs, clumsy linguists at best, rummaging around technical papers and surfing the web, not versed in articulation. In topics like management and business studies the gap between them and us is wider. And the gap is widening as universities and government in that country, but above all students themselves, race to grasp the instrument that will open the door to a world of exploding knowledge. The second example in CCTV-9, China's 24-hour international, English language channel, which has been on the air for more than an year and going from strength to strength in presentation and content. That China had the audacity to dare launch its 24-hour version of BBC World Service or CNN is obviously a political statement; a statement that it is positioning itself as a global superpower not a regional giant, but that's not the point here. The point is that the recognition of English as a necessary instrument in this global venture tells us something that we, in our excess of nationalist zeal, have been imprudent enough to abandon. Who pays the price? Who is paying the price for this folly? Not the sons and daughters of electioneering nationalists who manage to gather enough English, here and there, to get by. No, it is the kid from the poorer classes in whose face our nationalists have slammed the door. The door is shut at two levels, one utilitarian the other profound, both vital. The pain in the bright eyes of the monolingual kid with four A-level passes or the envy and anger of the fresh graduate when IT opportunities, knowledge-based economic openings, and such else, are beyond their reach, is only too easy to share. Yes, we have missed the boat as far as the mass audience for simple English is concerned, but we have not missed it forever. With the right attitude and plenty of resources, Sri Lanka can start again, almost from scratch and rebuild to the stage where the majority of young people, say a generation from now, will have second language competence in English. In a more profound sense, international language ability is an antidote to cultural bigotry and insular blinkers about the big wide world out there. Cultural small-mindedness promotes racial and religious intolerance - the kind of thing on which we have fed, belly full, for half a century. Come peace, then, without a language link between communities, amicability and pulling off long term co-operation in practical affairs between the Sinhalese and Tamil people will be an uphill task. (Congratulations to the Muslims who have been smart enough to beat this problem a long time ago!). In theory there are two ways to build the language link, in practice only one will work. It can be decreed and resources made available to make Sinhalese and Tamil compulsory in all schools, and in an ideal world, in a generation from now, bilingualism will prevail - in theory. But it won't happen. There are inadequate benefits, especially for Sinhalese kids, and to a degree for Tamil kids living in the North as well, to make it worth they're while to invest in the effort. The second more obvious way is to enhance mass level working English skills because of the life-long benefits it gives the learner, and in passing as it were, to solve the problem of a link language. This really is the only way to get about it. Let me end on an anecdotal note. Fifty years ago my redoubtable English teacher Sena (the schoolboy epithet will suffice) would bring Champion, Eagle and such like schoolboy magazines to circulate. Stories of goalkeepers and tales of secret adventures in Jamaica would enthral us - but his game plan was something else, to inculcate the reading habit. Competence for all And why did Orville and Bulto pace up and down in front of the class reading from some classic text at their noses; what was their motive? Well, may be there was to be an exam at the end of the year, but they also had a pretty shrewd idea that if some line of prose or purple passage entered our blood-stream it would lie there dormant, germinate slowly, and the perhaps come to fruition years later. We can't do things that way anymore. Sri Lanka now needs simple 'English as a second language' competence for all, if not O-level, at least A-level school leavers. To achieve this we need the appropriate strategies; but as I said before,
we need both resources and attitudes. |
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