Language learning needs language use

by Vijaya Jayasuriya

Have you ever wondered, if you are conversant with both Sinhala and English, why our Sinhala medium channels (both electronic and print) are full of grammatical errors in their news bulletins as well as other formal messages while, quite strangely, all the English media stick to grammar rules both in writing and speaking?

Apart from the fact that this reflects our shamefully slavish mentality to play havoc with our own mother tongue while very obsequiously genuflecting before the alien, it indeed happens to be an issue deserving a serious academic study for someone's MPhil or PhD research!

There are two obviously related issues here in terms of language teaching and learning _ ("Learning" here not in the sense of the American linguistic researcher Krashen's Learning - Acquisition Dichotomy Krashen, S.D. 1981b: Second Language Acquisition and SL Learning, but in a very general sense) viz. that we cannot write good Sinhala though it is our mother tongue while we cannot speak English even if we write it more or less correctly.

H. G. Widdowson in his trail-blazing book delineates the dichotomy between what he calls 'use' and 'usage' of a language: '..... Usage, then, is one aspect of performance, that aspect which makes evident the extent to which the language user demonstrates his knowledge of linguistic rules.

USE is another aspect of performance: that which makes evident the extent to which the language user demonstrates his ability to use his knowledge of linguistic rules for effective communication...'

(Widdowson, H. G. 1978:03)

In the light of this theorising what most Sri Lankan speakers of Sinhala lack is a training in the core grammar of it while with regard to English, our students do not get sufficient exposure to the target language though they learn the formal properties of it at school to a limited extent. Criticising Lenneberg's theory of 'critical period' - that '...language acquisition comes to a shuddering halt at adolescence...' (Lenneberg, E. H. 1967), Jean Aitchison maintains that one cause for this so-called 'halt' is 'lack of exercise of the language learning faculty (of the learner) - my parenthesis. (Aitchison, J.ELT Journal 47/2:1993). Here lies a very important fact that explains why our students cannot speak English after spending more than 10 years in school with nearly 144 hours of English lessons each year. Though some of our experts without practical experience in teaching English at school level recommend English medium as a better climate for language acquisition, it would be tantamount to throwing the baby too with bath water for, a child who learns about the world in an alien language invariably gets alienated from his indigenous culture as well producing rootless Frankenstein's monsters.

Such individuals have no knowledge of our heritage of arts, literature etc. and the history making them misfits in the endeavour of national development.

A related hilarious situation is that those who espouse English medium in the same vein are proud about having evolved a separate dialect called 'Sri Lankan English', can never be proud of knowing their own indigenous languages properly or of having the slightest knowledge of their literatures.

Lifetime

Before we take up the key issue of being handicapped in the oral communication in English it would be worthwhile examining why our students fail to write good Sinhala in spite of having been exposed to it throughout their lifetime in addition to formal lessons at school. To master the grammar of a language the formal teaching of it in the classroom alone provides very little help.

Even if the teacher is a very effective practitioner who succeeds in inculcating these drab formal properties into her students' brain cells, there is no guarantee that they will remain there for the rest of their lifetime. More often than not the opposite is found to be the reality.

Hence the veritable pantomime enacted day in day out on our multiple media, particularly the electronic media where Sinhala as a language is subjected to the worst possible indignity.

Even in 'Lama Puwath' where school children are made to read out news about schools, sentences with no subject - object/complement concord is ridiculously disregarded. One such ludicrous example is where a sentence with the Phonorific subject 'priest' was ended with a predicate suitable for a female object: 'Hamuduruwo vediyaya'!

To be able to use language correctly in writing, grammatical rules should get consolidated in the minds of students and the only way this happens is keeping in constant touch with these elements subsequent to formal learning in the classroom. Once a rule is learnt the learner should encounter it repeatedly so that it becomes second nature to him.

The best and probably the only way this can happen is by reading that language extensively. The reason why our students today are poor in the knowledge of their mother tongue is therefore the pathetic deterioration of their reading habit. It is really a pity while being inheritors of a rich indigenous literature produced by an impressive galaxy of writers our students make little use of it.

Hapless

They would rather very cleverly rattle off the titles of some good-for-nothing foreign writer than name some works by Sinhala (or Tamil) authors. As I have repeatedly pointed out in these columns this hapless situation was brought about by our own educationists who simply banished sinhala literature from the school curriculum presumably at the behest of their alien masters.

Our students do not develop their speaking skill in English because the type of teaching practised at school mostly tends to place too much emphasis on 'usage' rather than 'use' of language.

Although teachers and teacher trainees are ad nauseam instructed to use English lessons as far as possible for oral communication in English, it has repeatedly become a perennial pipedream of the trainers.

By far the main reason for this situation is the gaping chasm between the trainers' expectations and what actually happens inside English classrooms. Once the teachers get ensconced in this walled-in sanctuary of theirs they feel as if anything goes, mainly because there is often no one knowledgeable enough to correct and guide them when they err.

Hence the easy way out mostly preferred rather than take pains to do an effective spot of teaching.

Supervision

What about the huge establishment of school supervision in the subject of English? This is where the hiatus between the two spheres academic and administration comes into a head-on clash.

The administrative staff in the periphery called subject directors and the instructors in charge of subjects are the supervisor - or rather the observers - of classrooms, yet one major problem is that their service mostly has a propensity to pursue administrative goals rather than academic ones-whether the notes and the schemes have been written; whether the objectives are spelt out etc etc.

This is not as a matter of fact their fault as they are not trained for what actually matters but are merely selected by a competitive exam with little relevance to teacher education. In my experience as an education administrator I have come across subject directors who had never been good teachers at all and instructors who had never written a lesson plan in their life.

Knowhow

Correcting teacher behaviour involves a high degree of academic expertise gained through theoretical knowledge plus practical know-how in order to be able to critically analyse a lesson and provide useful guidance. The resource personnel should as far as possible get the teachers to do oval work with their students.

Whatever the type of the lesson ie. reading, writing, listening or even grammar, it can be utilised to generate an optimum degree of talk with the students and among them too.

The major problem teachers complain about in generating oral interaction in the classroom is that students are not able to respond to English as they do not possess the necessary language to do so even if they understand what the teacher asks.

If teachers are equipped with ample methodological strategies during their training, this kind of failings cannot arise in practice. A good teacher should possess in her repertoire of teaching skills ways of generating spontaneous oral production by students.

In a reading lesson for example she can frame questions in such a way that they may answer quoting from the text. In any other situation like writing or grammar she can use the technique of 'prompting' by strategically providing answers in 'multiple choice' mode: 'Where did you go?' - you went to temple, or to market or to the playground, so that students may select the relevant answer.

Reading texts in our class textbooks should be planned so as to generate spontaneous motivation among students.

Following are some titles of reading texts featured in a textbook planned by the renowned Indian scholar Dr. N. S. Prabhu: Sinbad; Snake (story); Theseus of Athens (Story); The Crane (Story); Mother Theresa' The selfish Giant (Story); as against those from one of our class texts: A meeting; A message to a prize-giving; Great People; Newspapers; Communication explosion; Weather and seasons.

(The writer is a retired Deputy Director of Education and Former Lecturer in English at Pasdunrata College of Education.)