Throwing out the Baby with the Bathwater?

(Previously published in the MIDWEEK REVIEW of The Island on Wednesday 11^th March 2009)

As for English, which we recognise to be another important tool of rural empowerment, its penetration across the country and especially into the rural hinterland has been held back by constraints of a very different nature. English was and still continues to be perceived and delivered as a gateway to elite status and an emblem of class and privilege. The curriculum and teaching methods followed in our country which places importance not on its use for communication but on its rules of grammar, and make a fetish of dictum, perfect grammar and pronunciation, have only served to maintain it as the exclusive preserve of a selfish privileged class and a tool of social repression.

(From the speech delivered by President Mahinda Rajapakse at the launch of 2009 as the Year of English and IT at the Presidential Secretariat on February 13, 2009)

The observation contained in the above passage and the context in which it was made should engage the attention of all those who are interested in the teaching of English in this country, particularly, parents, teachers, and educational authorities among them. That a privileged but egoistic elite have always been and still are trying to impede the acquisition by the less fortunately circumstanced sections of the society of a knowledge of English is a popular, oft-repeated charge among certain English language teaching professionals. This class are said to jealously guard English as their exclusive possession, because it is the main source of their power, prestige, privilege, and position; they resent any inroads made by the lower classes into their domain by gaining a knowledge of English. At the same time, the very declaration of a year dedicated for English and Information Technology is a measure of the importance attached by the state to the teaching of the two subjects, which, in our educational context, are obviously correlated; not only does this context underscore the seriousness with which English language teaching is treated by the present administration, but also hints at the sociolinguistic dimension of that activity.

The purpose of this article is primarily not to critique the view expressed in the speech referred to, but to make some cautionary comments on it lest it should be erroneously interpreted to suggest that certain vitally important elements of the English language can be ignored in teaching it. Such an eventuality would be to the detriment of the students who need and want to learn English.

The teaching of English in this country is thought by those who subscribe to the above view to be dominated by curricula and methodologies that cater to a certain rarefied ‘poshness’ in terms of ‘perfect’ grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary; this alleged conspiratorial insistence on ‘perfection’ in the areas of language mentioned is supposed to have put English beyond the reach of ordinary people.

(I must make some clarification at this point. My choice of a passage from a speech given by the President as the epigraph to this article is solely based on the fact that I see it as the latest articulation of a prevalent view in the field of teaching English in our country about which I have my personal reservations. It is not intended to detract in the least from the well deserved public approbation of the President’s deep commitment to the success of the teaching of English. His dedication to this cause is unquestionable as evidenced in the very pragmatic way in which he is trying to deal with the problem by being instrumental in inaugurating a Year of English and IT, and by inspiring a job-oriented ‘English as a life skill’ project with Indian help before that .)

IF we have substantial evidence to believe that there really is at present a ‘high class’ conspiracy to sabotage the English teaching programme by making an unconscionable demand for linguistic ‘perfection’, then I too would unhesitatingly condemn such a reactionary stand for two main reasons: 1) to try to monopolize an invaluable and indispensable resource like a good knowledge of the English language to the disadvantage of a vast majority of the population is a violation of democracy as well as social justice, and 2) as commonly known, there is no universally accepted or acceptable ‘perfect’ form of English, or of any other language for that matter, in terms of grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc.

What I am concerned with in this essay, as I have already said in different words, is the danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater! This is because any attack on an alleged unreasonable demand for ‘perfect’ grammar, pronunciation, and dictum could easily degenerate into a facile advocacy of an ‘anything goes’ attitude among teaching circles towards those vital aspects of language.

More meaningful and more effective measures than just denouncing what is seen as obsessive attention to the necessity of ‘perfect’ grammar, pronunciation, etc. have been implemented over the past sixty-five years in order to restrict or overthrow altogether the undue influence of the ‘elite’ class: the introduction of free education (1944), the change of the medium of instruction (1945), the dethronement of English and the concurrent restoration of the national languages to official status in the post-1956 years, and the take-over of private schools (1961) figure prominently among these. Even at present such changes are taking place. (When democracy, common decency, and commitment to an egalitarian society are fostered, class distinctions will vanish.) It is a fact, however, that the ‘elite’ still remains dominant, though their dominance is not so absolute as it used to be in the past. Whether that dominance is today affecting the national task of teaching English is, however, doubtful.

What, after all, is this ‘elite’ variety of English that should be rejected in favour of a ‘dehegemonized’ English that is claimed to be more accessible, and more ‘learner-friendly’ to our students? The latter remains to be defined, too. Even if such questions could probably be dealt with satisfactorily, their relevance to the practical business of teaching English is, I think, minimal, because the fact is that, most fundamentally, English remains one language all over the world in spite of its hundreds of identifiable varieties. At the very basic level, what we should teach is this one English language in our own way, that is, the way all of us Sri Lankans who know English have learned it.

Probably we didn’t learn it the way we were taught; or maybe we learned it both because of the way we were taught or in spite of it. I think that we acquired English by using it to ‘communicate’ although we were not aware of this at the time, and also, in parallel with that, by making a conscious effort, as second language learners, to understand how the vital elements of the language such as its phonology, grammar, and lexis, and numerous other linguistic and nonlinguistic factors that help generate that communication.

(Here I am using the word ‘communicate’ very broadly to include all the functions and purposes for which we use language.)

The whole of the past century saw an endless search for the perfect method of teaching languages, but no such method could be devised. However, in the course of this long search for better and better ways of language teaching various ‘approaches and methods’ have been developed. These are generally based on their authors’ assumptions and beliefs about the nature of human language, the psychology of language learning, and their (i.e. the authors’) determination of a set of principles derived from these for the purpose of practical teaching, as Richards and Rodgers explain in their classic ‘Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching’ (2001, 2^nd ed.) The same writers define an approach as ‘a set of beliefs and principles that can be used as the basis for teaching a language’. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is such an approach. Their definition of a method is ‘…a specific instructional design or system based on a particular theory of language and of language learning… (with) …detailed specifications of content, roles of teachers and learners, and teaching procedures and techniques.’ Audiolingualism and Counselling-Learning are two examples of methods. The obvious difference between an approach and a method is that the latter specifies content, goals and objectives, and provides clear guidelines for the teachers, making things comparatively easy for them, whereas the former is more general, and more flexible, lending itself to varying interpretations relying on the teachers’ own knowledge, experience and ingenuity. Hence approaches usually last longer than methods. According to Richards and Rodgers CLT has been accepted as the ‘most plausible basis for language teaching’ since the 1980’s. CLT, I think, is the approach adopted in our state English language teaching programme.

Strangely, the critical observation in the epigraph to this essay faults the ‘curriculum and teaching methods followed in our country’ for giving importance to rules of grammar, perfect pronunciation, etc. instead of emphasizing the use of English for communication. This contains a contradiction, because effective communication is not possible without rules of grammar, pronunciation, and the rest of linguistic, and certain nonlinguistic ingredients.

No language teaching approach or method discounts the importance of providing instruction in the following areas: pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, appropriacy, discourse and language skills. Pronunciation refers to the ability to pronounce words. Native speakers and competent nonnative speakers of English possess this knowledge, which relates to the three areas of speech, viz. sounds, stress, and intonation.. Of these perhaps the last area, intonation, is the most familiar to Sri Lankans who study English as a second language, because the falling and rising pitch of voice within a sentence is a feature found in our local languages. For example, the sentence ‘He’s from China’ may be uttered as a statement of fact with a falling tune that gives a sense of finality, or it may be uttered as a question with a rising tune. Stress is a different matter. Speakers of Sinhalese stress words only if they want to emphasize them. In English stress is an essential feature. We have word stress and sentence stress. Each word or word phrase has one primary stress, e.g.. NEVer, BUS route. English word stress can be even phonemic (i.e. it is used to change the meaning of a word), e.g. perMIT is a verb, but PERmit is a noun This is not found in our language. Therefore it must be taught to our learners of English. However, since among Sri Lankan English speakers themselves failure to produce this sort of stress may not be much of a problem. A question of intelligibility may arise when we converse with outsiders. Some English speech sounds are quite unfamiliar to us; sometimes we can not even hear them, let alone articulate them, unless we deliberately learn them. The Arabic language does not have a phoneme ‘p’, it has only ‘b’. So an Arab student of English can easily confuse ‘p’ for ‘b’, since both sounds have the same place of articulation (being bilabials), the difference between them being that ‘b’ is voiced, and ‘p’ voiceless. Such a learner must expressly be taught this English phoneme ‘p’. So, pronunciation is an element that must be taught to second language learners.

A human baby’s brain is equipped with an innate language learning mechanism, which gets activated when he or she is exposed to the language spoken around. The baby learns intuitively not only the disparate vocal sounds and sound patterns in the form of words and phrases, but also the implicit set of rules for combining distinct speech sounds into words, words into phrases, and phrases into sentences. Thus the child acquires the unique human ability of generating an infinite number of sentences by using the finite set of speech sounds available in his or her mother tongue, and the similarly finite number of rules for arranging them in structural patterns such as words, phrases, and clauses. The grammar of a language is made up of this finite set of rules. It is grammar that distinguishes human from animal language.

We learn our mother tongue in the natural way referred to above. Our knowledge of the grammar of our mother tongue that we gain as children is intuitive. (When we talk about teaching grammar, we have in mind the formal linguist’s grammar that is recorded in books, which of course derives from the grammar that the native speakers naturally acquire when immersed in their specific linguistic backgrounds.

Second language learning takes place in a different environment. The term ‘natural’ was applied to approaches or methods that conformed to the naturalistic principles underlying mother tongue acquisition in young children. The Direct Method which emerged at the beginning of the last century was also called The Natural Method. Many traditional approaches including CLT advocate using the target language in communicative situations to the exclusion of the learners’ mother tongue for effective learning to take place.

Communicative use of the target language should go hand in hand with a conscious effort on the part of the learners to learn and internalize the grammatical features of the language. Both inductive (using specific observed facts to arrive at general rules to explain them), and deductive (to deduce specific instances from a general rule) are used for grammar instruction. However, the most efficient, most effective way to help the learner towards learning the grammar of the target language is inducing language awareness in them or Consciousness Raising (CR). The Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1992) defines Consciousness Raising thus:

An approach to the teaching of grammar in which instruction in grammar (through drills, grammar explanation and other form-focused activities) is viewed as a way of raising the learners’ awareness of the grammatical features of the language. This is thought to indirectly facilitate second language acquisition. A consciousness raising approach is contrasted with traditional approaches to the teaching of grammar, in which the goal is to instill correct grammatical patterns and habits directly.

Thus the CR approach is opposed to ‘correct grammatical patterns and habits’ being instilled directly. Mechanical instilling of ‘perfect’ grammar, and grammatical habits is not what we should advocate, but causing the learning of essential grammar.

‘Perfect’ forms of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary are non-existent; but the teaching of those vital elements of English must be given its due prominence in the second language instructional system including the methodologies adopted, materials prepared, and the actual day-to-day teaching done in the classrooms.

Rohana R. Wasala

Restoration of National Unity

First published in the SATMAG supplement of The Island on15th March 2008

The top-priority need of the hour is the restoration of national unity. The unity of the country developed fault lines before Independence mainly due to the imperial manipulation of communal relations through the infamous ‘divide and rule’ policy. The membership of the comprador class was shared by the different communities. In this situation the minorities stood to gain: for one thing, the ethnic representation within the comprador class did not numerically correspond to the actual racial composition of the general Sri Lankan population, the ‘communal balance’ that the privileged class represented being always prejudicial to the majority Sinhalese; for another, if there was any challenge to imperial rule, it had to be associated with the Sinhalese for it to be treated as such; it was they who always tried to defend the country against invaders both before and after the seizure of Kandy by the British through intrigue in 1815; they constituted the majority race with which the Sri Lankan polity was essentially identified, and hence the Sinhalese were always the colonialists’ potential enemy.

Having said this however, I must hasten to add that the imperialist patronage of the minorities benefited only the few members of those communities who belonged to the elite. The dispossessed of all communities, the overwhelming majority of the country’s population, suffered equally under the alien rule.

In an unequal contest between the imperial masters and the native sons of the soil held down by force the minorities, in the interest of self-preservation, sided with the former in most cases, and won special favour. Although the inclusion in the comprador elite ensured equal status and privileges for the members the minorities were ‘more equal’ than the majority. This, however, did not cause any rift among the members of this class, because they formed a distinct community by themselves, mostly Christian in religion, and English speaking, and European in manners, in a word, westernized; there was little room for any conflict among them; they preferred to disown their own native cultural roots. They served their imperial masters as a more or less homogeneous pack of collaborators, while enjoying privileges such as plum government jobs, lucrative business opportunities, wealth in various forms, scholarships for their progeny in English universities, and so on.

Though this class was a small minority in relation to the rest of the native population, it held great power, generally of oppression, over the latter. The overwhelming majority of the population consisting of the common Sinhalese, Tamils, and Muslims were generally left to live a dehumanized life of abject poverty and deprivation, an extreme instance of which is concretely presented in ‘The Village in the Jungle’ (1913) written by an unusually sympathetic British civil servant, Leonard Woolf. They lived in communal peace and harmony, as they had done in earlier times under local rulers. Just as community of interests, and free access to prosperity united the members of the elite coming from a diversity of racial backgrounds, so did the common misery of the dispossessed majority keep them bound together.

The alien rule forced on the people created artificial divisions. The divisive influence of the favouritism extended to the minority communities by the British rulers, and the corresponding discriminatory treatment of the majority community in spheres in which the rulers and the ruled in time came into close contact by way of participating in the exercise of power percolated down to the larger segment of the population in a more insidious way. The latent divisions thus induced between the majority Sinhalese and the minorities were exacerbated when opportunities for people participation in the political control of the country gradually increased as a result of successive reforms won from the colonial government through popular agitation. However, these changes, such as the Manning Reforms of the early 1920’s, the universal franchise under the Donoughmore Constitution a decade later, etc moved the ‘communal balance’ in the Legislature towards greater fairness and rationality in electoral representation, which effectively meant a greater share of power for the majority Sinhalese. This in turn entailed a dismantling of the privileged status of the minorities, a long overdue readjustment of the legitimate rights and privileges that should be available without let or hindrance to all the citizens of the country irrespective of their ethnicity. In fine, we could say that the Sinhalese were restored to their due position of ascendancy in the legislature as a result of the progressive reforms (for example, the substitution of communal representation with territorial representation, the introduction of universal suffrage, and the eventual grant of Dominion status, etc) the Sinhalese got something more, and the minorities something less than before, which only meant a restoration of a measure of justice to all communities.

But some among the Tamil elite were not ready to accept this normalization of communal balance in the legislature. They petitioned without success to their colonial masters demanding that they be allocated an equal number of seats with the Sinhalese. They seemed to consider themselves superior to the Sinhalese in race, culture, intellectual capacity and whatnot, and feared domination by them. However, the majority of the more enlightened politicians then in the legislature, both Sinhalese and Tamil, resisted these unjust racist demands by toeing a non-communal line when the question of accepting constitutional reforms granting independence was debated in 1943. They pleaded for mutual trust, understanding and unity between the majority and the minorities; they urged that the members of all communities should think of themselves not as Sinhalese or Tamils, but as Ceylonese sharing equal rights and privileges.

Mr D.S.Senanayake who gave leadership to the non-racist representatives from all communities succeeded in achieving near unanimity in the State Council in passing the White Paper on the Soulbury Constitution (that conferred Dominion status i.e. independence on Ceylon). Mr Senanayake countered racism by adhering to democratic principles, and by being consistently free from it himself. He did not approve of the Sinhala Maha Sabha of Mr S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike (1937) because of its communal basis, however predictable a reaction it probably was to the then emerging Tamil racism, like the recent advent of the Jathika Hela Urumaya in response to the common failure of the established national parties to deal with the growing disaffection of the minorities, mostly instigated by ambitious politicians, and the proliferation of minority communal parties.

The past one century of ever increasing communal bias in politics has significantly decelerated our country’s development, and devastated it through mindless violence, wanton destruction of life and property, and the attendant human misery. Opportunistic politicians of all communities, instead of uniting to work for the common good of all have been steadily withdrawing into xenophobic isolation from each other for the pursuit of parochial ends. The emergence of Tamil concerns about alleged Sinhala racism earlier in the last century, the formation of the Sinhala Maha Sabha in 1937 in reaction to Tamil agitation, the creation of the Ilankei Tamil Arasu Kachchi (Sri Lanka Tamil State Party) spuriously called the Federal Party in English, the call for Muslim autonomy fifty years ago as recently claimed by a Muslim politico (probably he was referring to the Muslim League which joined the UNP when political parties were formed in preparation for the parliamentary system of government that was to be introduced with independence), the founding of various other minority parties with communal names and agendas have marked stages in the regressive slide into deeper communal disunity. By now we have had enough experience to realize that this tribalistic method of settling the communal issue is definitely a contradiction and a non-starter.

That national unity is unrealizable through confrontation between the majority and the minorities is now obvious to all. Yet there are no signs that this is being appreciated by politicians. It seems that they fear the prospect of going out of business when there is communal peace and harmony. They flourish in conflict situations, and therefore relish every opportunity available to enjoy that desire. They create conflicts where there is none.

Strictly speaking there is no ‘ethnic’ problem in Sri Lanka. One cannot think of any special privileges that the Sinhalese enjoy as the majority or any particular disadvantages that the minorities are subjected to because of their ethnicity. If some individuals complain that they are treated like second class citizens, this is a feeling common to many irrespective of ethnicity, for there is, in practice, class discrimination to a certain extent; but such inequity is due not to ethnic prejudice, but to disparities in the distribution of wealth. Most problems that the minorities face plague the majority, too. Such problems as communication difficulties that members of minorities sometimes experience, e.g. the absence of Tamil language name boards in a majority Sinhala area or the non-availability of Tamil speaking officers in a government office are ephemeral issues associated with an inefficient administrative system, rather than a policy of deliberate racial discrimination, and can be easily resolved by a reformed civil service.

Migrant populations, especially those with a coloured skin, in the white dominated developed countries sometimes experience racist prejudice at the hands of a few native individuals. Yet the governments and the vast majority of the people of those countries do not subscribe to racist ideologies. There is strict rule of law in those countries. For the most part the minorities are free from discrimination. Good governance in those countries generally counters any lurking racial prejudice that could rear its head occasionally.

In Sri Lanka many of us, the ordinary citizens, suffer harassment because of the absence of good governance. Just take the well publicized unsavoury incidents that took place in several government hospitals recently. The child abduction case at Kalubowila, the rape and murder of a young female garment factory employee at Negambo, the death of a little girl bitten by a snake at Ragama, the hospitalization of a trainee nurse due to an injection that a specialist doctor administered to her as a punishment for some lapse on her part, and a rash of clinical misadventures in a number of other hospitals due to rank ignorance or utter negligence…are some of these. Neither the trade unionists representing the health workers, nor the relevant health authorities have yet shown any appreciable concern to compensate the victims or to get the wrong doers punished. I have here referred only to what happened in some of our hospitals recently. The situation in other spheres of public service is not any better. We are all victims of this kind of maladministration. This is a problem that all communities must make a collective effort to put right.

The surest way towards facilitating a settlement of the present ethnic unrest in the political sphere is to re-establish a state of national unity, create an efficient public service and good governance, and bring about economic development ensuring equitable distribution of wealth among all citizens. Most of all, our political leaders must be democratic, and must eschew narrow, tribalistic slogans and the mindsets that they represent, and unite the population as one nation (something the bulk of the ordinary people have virtually done already).

What is necessary is not a rewriting of history, but a rereading of it. Let us analyze the available evidence dispassionately, and understand what really happened, and why. The past is a fait accompli; we cannot put the clock back, but we can learn lessons from the past. If some of our national leaders behaved in a racist manner and others in a more enlightened way, let’s understand the circumstances that led them to such conduct and forgive them or praise them as appropriate, and be determined to emulate the example of the worthy, but be careful not to repeat the errors of the misled.

The principal error that our predecessors committed was communalizing politics by creating communal parties. Such parties only succeed in dividing a polity. Division unnecessarily saps the energy of the country. Like the minorities the majority has problems. Few, if any, of these are due to etnicity. Neither the majority nor the minorities can solve their problems by themselves without mutual help. The minorities and the majority must pool their resources, instead of pitting themselves against each other in order to solve their common problems. There are only common problems, because the welfare of the one is the welfare of the other.

This is the peaceful way of settling our problems. All of us Sri Lankans, common inheritors of the great Indian cultural traditions of sympathetic understanding, tolerance, accommodation, nonviolence, peacefulness, and cosmopolitanism (for which we are sometimes derided as ‘docile’ by foreigners) will thus be able to create a brilliant future for our children.

Rohana R. Wasala

English for Higher Education

First published in the MIDWEEK REVIEW supplement of The Island on 1st April 2009. The following is an extract from the concluding part of a paper the author presented under the title ‘English for Academic Purposes in Sri Lankan Universities: Some Reflections’ representing the ELTU, University of Peradeniya at the 1^st Annual International Conference of the Sri Lanka English Language Teachers’ Association held at Hotel Galadari, Colombo in partnership with the British Council from 1^st to 3^rd September, 2000. It forms a short summary of the paper. In a very brief version of a long paper – removed from its original context – some oversimplification of the issues raised is inevitable. Also, naturally, the views expressed would sound out of date after a lapse of nearly a decade, and might even differ from the author’s own current perceptions. However, it could still retain some potential for stimulating constructive thinking among those interested. Hence the decision to offer it for The Island readers thus, at the beginning of 2009 ‘The Year of English and IT’.

…To summarize, the importance of English for education is today undisputed. The contemporary role of English is different from its historical one as an instrument of imperial sway. English education then was intended to produce the subordinate officers the British needed to run their administration and businesses. English never became a commonly used language among the majority of people. In Sri Lanka, like in India, it has always remained the language of the minority.

The supremacy of English was undermined by the changes that followed Independence. In the 60’s and 70’s the importance of English was effectively discounted. However, its indispensability, especially for education, is now widely recognized, and English is being restored to a dominant position again, this time though, not as a weapon of oppression, but as a means of educational and technological advancement. Today English is taught in Sri Lanka for a strictly utilitarian purpose The ESP (English for Special Purposes) aspect of ELT (English Language Teaching) receives attention at all levels of instruction, from the primary to the tertiary.

At the university, EAP (English for Academic Purposes) is a necessity. To argue that the subject knowledge and the competence in English that the students gain from their subject lecturers are adequate for higher education is untenable. In such a situation, the students will always fall short of their masters’ levels of attainment. Those who argue that we must teach general English to university students instead of EAP seem to ignore the fact that we cannot afford the luxury of time and resources that such a long course of language instruction (at the higher education stage) will entail.

EAP provides a shortcut to such proficiency in English as will enable the learners to pursue their academic studies in English by concentrating on the specialized grammar and specialist vocabulary relevant to the specific fields of study.

The school TESL (teaching of English as a second language) programme needs to be generally informed by an ESP element. In the final two years, the ESP component should be given prominence so that the school English teaching programme will provide a good foundation for the EAP courses at the university. The current proposal to introduce English as an optional medium of instruction in government schools and to teach at least some subjects in English as a beginning is a timely one.

In terms of methodology, EAP naturally implies a functional communicative approach. The EAP courses must be content-based and learner-centred. As adult learners with a high degree of motivation and also with a sense of language awareness and familiarity with communication gained through contact with their first language, our students must be encouraged to assume responsibility for their own learning.

The most important contribution that EAP makes is to initiate the students into a process of self-development in which they assimilate language through using it communicatively to gain subject knowledge.. This includes not merely competence in language, but the development of academic strategies, processes and concepts as well.

In the Sri Lankan EAP context proficiency in English is not limited to academic reading. It comprehends all four (major) language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). The students are expected to develop the ability to listen to lectures in English, to verbally communicate with their peers and teachers, to read in the library, and to write acceptable and precise English within the context of their specific academic disciplines.

The success of any EAP programme will ultimately depend on the cooperative interaction between the students, the ELT instructors, and the subject specialists. The English instructor and the subject lecturer must respect each other’s academic autonomy and each should be careful not to encroach on the other’s territory.

Because most of our new university students lack the basic mastery of English that would qualify them for an exclusive EAP course, we have to remedy this by supplementing our ELT programme with a brief, initial ‘core English’ phase….

Rohana R. Wasala