Launching into the English Medium through an Integrative Approach
(Previously published in the Island newspaper, Sri Lanka)
For Sri Lankans English is mainly important in the three areas of education, employment, and international communication. Here we are concerned with education. In addition to being a lingua franca in the job market and in the field of global communication, it is a subject on the school curriculum and it has great potential as a vehicle of education. In a mother tongue medium class, for part of the time, a particular subject may be taught in English to students who need to learn it as a second language, making English an explicit medium of instruction but an implicit object of study. Though, in such a context, the students’ focus is on understanding the content of the lesson, this indirectly helps their mastery of the language. The students can also use the strategy (of integrating the study of English into subject instruction) for self-access work outside the classroom.
Education is essentially the acquisition of factual knowledge, practical skills, and good moral and ethical standards, all of which are useful for participating in the life of one’s community in such a way that one contributes towards promoting the welfare of everyone, thereby improving the chances for happiness for all. Animals also undergo a process of education that is essential for ensuring their survival; but it is a very rudimentary sort of education, and is governed entirely by instinct. In the case of humans, education is an intellectual process almost entirely mediated by language.
To be described as truly educated or cultured, a person must have passed through three basic phases of intellectual development: learning, knowledge, and wisdom. Among common people though, as is well known, if a person displays one of these, they are held to automatically possess the other two as well; but here I wish to give the following highly generalized definitions of the three words: ‘learning’ means taking in or ‘ingesting’, information; ‘knowledge’ is the result of processing that information, of ‘digesting’ or internalizing it; and ‘wisdom’ is the ability to make sound (that is, both practical and moral) judgements based on one’s knowledge and experience, in problematic situations.
It is perfectly possible for an individual to be most highly educated in Sinhala or Tamil without any knowledge of English. A significant difference between English and our native languages where education is concerned, in my view, is that the first offers more resources for learning, for gathering information, a wider area of reference in any field of study. This makes it possible for a person with a knowledge of English to become a better informed person than one who doesn’t enjoy that benefit. For the development of knowledge and wisdom something more than mere information is necessary, things such as intelligence, imagination, analytical power, creativity, intuition, and a moral sense.
All the thousands of different spoken and written forms of the very complex language capability in humans are equal in their potential as languages. But because of historical, political, economic, social, cultural, and many other varied factors, certain languages possess more advanced or more widely recognized literary traditions, more sophisticated vocabularies, and more extensive user bases, etc. than others. This, however, does not mean any natural superiority or inferiority of one language to another.
In our case, while our indigenous languages are adequate for communication within our borders, and at least in theory, can be modernized to accommodate all the knowledge available in the world through translation from foreign tongues (something prohibitively cumbersome and slow for sure, though), the most convenient way for us to enable our children to acquire a sound enough education is to give them a knowledge of English.
Teaching English, therefore, is not simply a case of teaching a language for a limited purpose, for it goes beyond that. We know that Sri Lankan job-seekers today learn a number of other foreign languages as well, such as Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, German, and Italian. This is a very pragmatic and sensible endeavour. Learning one of these languages with the express purpose of finding employment in a country where it is natively used cannot, however, be compared to learning English as a second language. This is because a knowledge of English, in addition to being a valuable asset to possess in the job market, is indispensable for general education in our particular context.
The usefulness of English as a means of enhancing general education is an added incentive for learners of English. Though English is taught as a separate subject, this activity can be integrated into the teaching of other subjects. Even in a situation where the medium of instruction is not English, the subject teachers, provided they possess the ability, may be asked to teach the students the special technical vocabulary used in their domain, explain or repeat a portion of the lesson in English, and encourage them to draw on English language based resources that are available outside; this would make an English teacher out of every teacher. (This idea occurred to me in association with the ‘Language across the curriculum’ proposal that resulted from the recommendations of a government commission in Britain in the mid-70’s for native-language education in that country in terms of which every teacher was expected to focus on reading and writing in their particular subject areas and thus double as a teacher of English).
Many subject teachers and even their students might not fancy this as feasible, considering it just a waste of time when they should be devoting all their time for covering the syllabuses and doing revision in preparation for the vital business of performing well at the examinations. But such an attitude is due to their failure to understand that they will be able to kill two birds with one stone if they use English as a medium of learning at least for part of the time: for such an exercise would be a case of “using English to learn it”; although the focus is not on language teaching or learning, language development will automatically result; that is, eventually the students will be learning not only a particular subject, but also English. Their enhanced proficiency in English will enable them to draw on outside resources to further enrich their knowledge of the subject as well as that of English, and thus a virtuous circle will be set in motion.
In terms of methodology this can be called a form of Content-Based Instruction (CBI). (To be talking about ‘methods’ and ‘approaches’ may sound a little anachronistic; but it beats me how we can perform a vital activity like language teaching without constantly being on the lookout for new ideas and new theories for increasing our efficiency, and this may include revisiting old practices with fresh insights as well as exploring new possibilities.) CBI consists in teaching subject matter in the language that is being learned with no effort to teach the language by extracting it from the content for separate treatment. It draws on the principles of communicative language teaching, where the focus is on real communication rather than on any other linguistic unit of organization such as grammatical structures, functions, etc. Various models of CBI have been in use since the 1980’s at elementary, secondary, and university levels.
Like CBI, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is a communicative approach. In TBLT, however, teaching is organized around the completion of tasks that require the meaningful use of language, e.g. reading a text and labelling a map, completing a passport application form for a person who needs help to do that, phoning, etc. The general English language courses conducted in Sri Lankan schools may be described as based on a broad communicative language teaching approach with elements of CBI and TBLT included, the former predominating. The CBI element is realized in terms of theme-based units such as those under the headings the family, the environment, and wildlife, etc., where language acquisition is achieved through focusing on understanding the content of each unit presented in English.
However, my main focus here is how CBI could be exploited in integrating English language study into mainstream subject areas at the higher education level. This is particularly relevant at a time when many of our students in university education who have not been introduced to the English medium yet are likely to find themselves at the threshold of a critical switchover for which they may be hardly ready. (Though this idea is not new to the initiates it may be useful to the new entrants to the higher education domain.)
The proposed change of medium for all university students should not be a critical issue if English teaching at the school level was a success. For all intents and purposes, a move has been made towards introducing English as the general medium of education for all levels. Some secondary schools offer the students a choice between English and one of the native languages as the medium, but it is not going to be an easy change for obvious reasons such as the lack of teachers competent enough to teach in English, good textbooks, a high enough language proficiency level among the students, etc. In spite of this, my fervent hope is that the apparently mandatory switchover that is to be effected sooner or later will at least be an additional motivating factor for them to learn English with a sense of renewed urgency.
This provides a good context for intensifying the application of CBI approaches in English classrooms. The English courses must have a future orientation; they must involve English language instruction designed to prepare students who are passing the initial stages of their education in their mother tongue for a complete switchover at least at the higher education level. A situation where English and local language mediums co-exist can be utilized to introduce a strategy of ‘mainstreaming’, i.e. mixing second language English learners (that is, those studying in native medium classes) with English medium students of the same grade for English lessons and for some subject lessons as well (delivered in English), where cooperation is encouraged between the two groups: in other words, the English medium students with a better proficiency level in English are made to work with peers who have a lower level of proficiency on collaborative tasks such as pair work, group work, discussions etc. CBI principles and the related mainstreaming strategy referred to above might become even more practical during the preparatory university English language teaching courses.
The cooperation between the English teachers and the subject teachers, if such a partnership is available, can be highly productive in any intensive English teaching context. Working together they can design parallel courses in their respective areas of specialization for the new students undergoing intensive English language training: the subject specialists deliver a course of lectures with a specific content, while the English specialists extract the language elements involved in comprehending that content, and embody these in their course. Students can also draw upon outside sources for self-access work based on activities involving content comprehension and associated language practice exercises; autonomous learning through the extensive use of modern technology is one of the surest ways for students to augment their knowledge of particular subjects and their mastery of the medium simultaneously.
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