Friday, May 11, 2012
Making the General English Paper Compulsory for A/L Students
Making the General English Paper Compulsory for A/L Students
(Previously published in The Island/Sri Lanka)
The Higher Education Minister’s decision to make the General English Paper compulsory from this year onwards for all A/L students seeking admission to universities should be hailed as a good initial step in the right direction, i.e., towards ensuring that all our university students whose mother tongue is Sinhala or Tamil acquire a good command of English as a second language to enable them to access the ever expanding reservoir of global human knowledge and culture. Yet, the move is bound to be a controversial one because such a decision is most likely to affect the rural students who are at present faced with a severe scarcity of resources for learning English including teachers. But, according to newspaper reports, the Secretary to the Ministry has offered (what should be considered) a temporary solution: candidates who have been deprived of a chance to learn English can mention that fact in the paper (though it is not clear to me how this information is going to be relevant); and, poor performance at the English test will not affect their prospects of admission to the university. Such concessions are meant to initially prevent students from being put at a disadvantage on account of their lack of English. But before long the compulsoriness of general English language proficiency for all university entrants must be asserted in earnest, for that is what is important.
(Since a key concept in this essay is what is known as “a second language” it would be appropriate to offer a widely accepted definition of the term: “A language which is not a person’s mother tongue, but which is learned in order to meet a communicative need…” – David Crystal, The Penguin Dictionary of Language, 1998. We have our extremely well developed indigenous languages for all our communicative needs within the country. However, in the highly globalized world of today we need to be able to communicate with the rest of the world in almost all possible scenarios: education, work, business, science and technology, media, culture and entertainment, diplomacy, and what not. Relevance of English for us is foremost in education. In our particular context, with our historical background, we find English to be the easiest and most useful medium available for global communication. Mastery of English as a second language gives us the ability to function in all the above spheres as well, or nearly as well, as we can in our first language. This is what the patriotic pioneers of language reforms envisaged fifty-five years ago.)
The ministerial decision to make the General English Paper compulsory for the A/L is a welcome move because it is predicated on the acknowledgement of the vital importance of English for higher education and global communication in the modern world, which provides a meaningful reason for the students to undertake the ‘hassle’ (as at least some of our students seem to view it) of learning English. To present English in a strictly utilitarian role will make it meaningful to the widest proportion of our student population. Although much English is in evidence in the country – in the media, education, business, banking, science and technology, sports, entertainment industry, and every other sphere of national activity – English as a fully fledged medium of communication is still limited to a small proportion of the population. English words may be freely sprinkled in the conversation of even the remotest village dwellers; in fact, this has been the situation for as long as I can remember, that is, for over fifty years at least, such ‘use’ of English cannot be taken as reflecting a widely prevalent general knowledge of English among the public. This means, in the opinion of many, that English is not so widely used as to assume national status; but the recognition of the fact will not detract from its real importance for us: its importance as a second language. The Higher Education Ministry’s move seems to envisage such a role for English, and this will go down well with the students and their parents from both linguistic communities. With the restoration of Sinhala and Tamil to their due level of prominence (to the status of official languages), English which had been usurping that position was rendered less important for them; not that it had been of very great significance to the majority of the population until then as it was something inaccessible. The change of medium of education from English to the national languages greatly benefited them. Among other things it made a good education attainable to many children regardless of their social class, who had been deprived of that opportunity before.
Prior to the introduction of free education, the only kind of education which was of any value was English medium education. But under colonial rule this was restricted to a minuscule privileged class for imperial purposes. Through the central school system that the pioneers of free education initiated, a small proportion of talented rural youth were able to enjoy such an education. Still, English continued to privilege a small minority, and disadvantage the majority of the country’s population. Free education through the English medium for all the children of the country was unthinkable for many reasons. Sinhalese and Tamils with several millennia old sophisticated, highly evolved, and still vibrant literary traditions couldn’t be expected to abandon their own linguistic heritage in favour of an utterly alien language like English even in the course of a few centuries.
Although the Higher Education Minister’s decision might smack of a degree of arbitrariness, it will prove beneficial in the long run. The success of the move will, however, depend on its acceptance by the principal stakeholders, the students themselves. It is impossible to believe that they don’t know the value of English. Why is it then necessary to force them to appear for an English test as a minimum requirement at the higher education stage? In fact they have had over ten years of instruction in English at school. Even in the remotest rural schools the students don’t totally lack facilities to learn the language. The failure of students to gain at least an elementary knowledge of English is mainly due to lack of motivation among other causes. Making the subject compulsory is a good way to motivate them. Then the teachers’ work will also be easy.
The most effective way to teach any subject including English is to make the learners responsible for their own learning. Students must be made aware of the fact that there is much English around them: TV and radio have English language programmes; there are English language newspapers; there are billboards, posters, banners advertising things or announcing events, etc. Teachers and parents should encourage children to use these resources, without depending too much on school teaching. Learners of English need not entirely depend on books these days because the Internet offers rich resources for learning and practicing English.
Therefore, a knowledge of English as a second language is, contrary to popular belief, something well within easy reach of all our students from the kindergarten onwards provided an essential attitudinal change is brought about. Unfortunately, this is not generally recognized. Making English compulsory will push the learners towards an appreciation of this fact. It must be made a compulsory subject from Grade 3 upwards.
But we cannot forget the fact that, given our colonial history in which English was associated with power and privilege on the one hand, and oppression and deprivation on the other, it is difficult even today to extricate it from politics. The advantages that accrued to the masses when indigenous languages were promoted as the mediums of instruction can again be nullified by the reintroduction of the English medium, and only an already privileged minority will stand to gain from this.
The alleged JVP objections to university students learning English may be due to the threat of a return of the English that had privileged a small minority at the expense of the majority. This should not be ignored by the policy makers. If they can convince the students that this time English is being promoted not with a view to bringing back privilege and attendant injustice, but to make it an equaliser. English becomes a means as well as a mark of privilege and rank when it is allowed to be possessed by only a minority. When it becomes common property, the special advantages that it conferred on some disappear.
If all students have gained a good knowledge of English as a second language by the time they reach the A/L, it will enable them to continue their higher education in English as the authorities have decided, especially in subject areas such as science, engineering, medicine, etc where English offers better resources for mastering those subjects than the native tongues. But this should never mean a substitution of English for our native languages.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Is the Spoken English Initiative a Failure?
Is the Spoken English Initiative a Failure?
(First published in The Island/Sri Lanka on Friday 11th March 2011)
Nearly two weeks ago, I watched for myself what was being achieved in a non-urban school under the English as a Life Skill programme launched by the Presidential Task Force for English and IT. The purpose of this short write-up is to offer the interested readers some comments (for what they are worth) about the initiative based on what I observed on that occasion.
It should be admitted that my decision to take a peek at what was possibly happening was not without some misgivings. Scepticism was foremost in my mind: How could such success as is usually claimed by those involved in the project be achieved with just a single period of spoken English per week taken by one teacher with at least some forty boisterous youngsters in a class? My live contact of about two hours with the school community left me convinced otherwise. For me this was a demonstration of the validity of the commonsense view that what matters in language instruction is not how long an activity lasts, but how creative it is, or in other words, how effective it is in stimulating further language learning.
The visit took place on a Monday. It was made at short notice; except for the head of the school and the teacher in charge of the subject, it was a surprise to all others involved. I was lucky because on Mondays the morning assembly is conducted entirely in English by the children. After the assembly I was given the opportunity to chat with the children of two classes (Grades 9 and 13), which I used to test the authenticity of the English language skills that they had shown before. I regret that I was unable to spare more time for this encounter.
It is a mixed school in a village setting, though not very far from the biggest town in the region. Few children who attend this school can be said to be from well-to-do families. Had their parents been economically and socially of a higher status, most of them would have succumbed to the popular myth that town schools necessarily provide better education, and admitted them to those schools.
While some teachers and senior prefects were discretely and inconspicuously doing the little they had to do to maintain discipline, two girls from Grade Nine jointly announced each event in English, adding comments extempore, as appropriate. They started the programme with religious observances. This was followed by the singing of the school song, with the school band playing. A number of English items followed. One student presented a fairly detailed weather forecast for the day while another assisted her by holding up a large hand-drawn map of the island marked in English. The proceedings ended with the singing of the National Anthem, in which everybody took part.
As could be expected, some prior preparation must have gone into this. But the children’s performance sounded spontaneous and natural. The teacher responsible told me that different sets of students manage the assembly each week.
Later I saw the two Grade Nine students who conducted the meeting that day. I found that they were actually capable of doing any programme like that impromptu. Their classmates showed themselves to be equally confident of performing in English in a similar situation. Something that struck me, amidst all this prattle about ‘broken English’ being promoted through an inordinate insistence on speaking English ‘our way’, was that these students all used ‘good’ English; the few ‘errors’ they committed did not affect communication, and could have been easily and unobtrusively corrected by a conscientious teacher in a suitable context.
My experience with the students of Grade 13 was similar, but slightly less reassuring. In any case, I felt that they are generally better motivated and also more confident about speaking in English and learning English than their predecessors. My impression was that as the English as a life skill project gathers momentum the successive generations of students will be more and more receptive to English as a normal practical part of education. Enthusiasm about English will catch on among the students, when they realise its easy accessibility and its potential as an indispensable resource for education.
If such a high degree of success is possible in this particular school where I see no other special circumstances that could have contributed to that success than what I am setting forth below, a couple of paragraphs down, then we can easily hold out the hope that the project should fare equally well in any village school with minimum facilities available. This kind of broad assessment will not be objected to much, I hope, because speaking English is a skill that is easily and informally demonstrable.
What strikes me more than this level of success is the implicit attitudinal change that the programme has brought about among the children, parents, and teachers towards the learning of English. (I don’t think that it has anything to do with speaking English ‘our way’ though, because it makes no sense to the learners, nor even to many of the present day teachers. Have the (numerically small) general mass of Sri Lankans who are proficient in English ever spoken the language in any other way, except perhaps an ill informed minority among them who might have hankered after an imaginary posh accent? Why should the average young teachers of today who themselves lack, for no fault of theirs, any very advanced knowledge of English be burdened with standards and varieties over much? It goes without saying that it is useless to discuss different ‘forms’ of English in the hearing of the young Sinhalese- or Tamil-speaking children who are just approaching English because their teachers and parents want them to. Let them just pick up the English that is around them – the neutral English that permeates the whole English speaking world, for that’s the only English that matters to them for education, for work, and for intelligent interaction with the outside world.)
The often criticised restriction of spoken English to one timetable period a week is because of the need to be in keeping with the existing rules and regulations. As I tend to believe, changes will be introduced in the future when it gets established as a compulsory part of the English syllabus.
The success of any project depends on the proper coordination of three essential elements: an ideology, a plan of work based on it, and actual implementation of the plan. The English speaking programme also has these three aspects. To explain the achievement level that the school I visited has attained I will need to refer to all of them.But here I am only focusing on an instance where the third element is being realised in specific circumstances.
That English was the possession of an exploitative minority of the population which oppressed the masses is too well known to need reiteration. Some sought English as a mark of privilege and status. Those times are now fast disappearing. Today we need English as a tool, as a resource. New vistas are opening before us in which our forging ahead is hampered by lack of English. What we need is a practical knowledge of English involving all the four basic skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In the past, we used to put a premium on reading and writing English in our examination based education culture. The ability to communicate in English in many live situations, especially in education and work, is being emphasized in Sri Lanka as it is in many other countries of the world. We value English as a communication tool, rather than as a mere badge of privilege.
Using a tool is a skill. The mastery of a skill comes from constant practice of the skill, not from storing factual information about it in one’s memory. According to the second language learning ideology implicit in the programme, learning (knowledge) is apparently viewed as socially created; it isn’t supposed to be acquired through individual cramming in isolation; students practice speaking with their colleagues in classroom contexts devoid of anxiety. This is a kind of constructivist approach. And learning is not expected to be confined to the classroom. Students are encouraged to reinforce their learning by drawing on outside sources as much as possible.
In the school I visited the teacher in charge of the spoken English lesson is deeply committed to her work. She has organized an abundance of interesting activities for her pupils to practice their English. The activities and materials used are specifically designed for the pupils of her school with their social background and their attainment level in English in mind in terms of the ‘Hydrabad methodology’ (that the teachers are trained in during the initial 10-day workshop that is conducted). She coordinates her work with the work of the other English teachers. There is no doubt that the spoken English teacher’s work both supports and supplements their work which is more exam-oriented.
The principal of the school is exceptionally dedicated to the cause of promoting the language skills of the students. He focuses on all the three languages. He told me that he has in Grade 13 a number of Sinhala students who can carry on a conversation in Tamil quite fluently. Where English is concerned, he told me, though he is not himself a teacher of English, he used to organize, with the encouragement of the regional director of English and with the help of his own English teachers, special activities to promote the language skills of the students even before this new initiative was introduced. He has made it compulsory for all the students to exchange a few words in English with their English teachers; he has asked the English teachers not to respond if any student speaks to them in Sinhala contrary to his advice. He needs all other teachers to speak in English with the English teachers. He encourages the English teachers to speak to him in English. It was obvious to me that the enthusiasm and the active involvement of the school head is making a great contribution to the success of the English as a Life Skill programme in this school. It is no surprise that the other teachers and parents wholeheartedly welcome this initiative.
The bright prospects for success that the Spoken English initiative demonstrates in this school, in my opinion, are due to the committed involvement of the students, teachers, school authorities, regional education officers, and parents in combination with the features of the English as a Life Skill that make it attractive to these different stakeholders. However, it should be added that for work well begun like this to continue to maintain its excellence usually calls for supportive supervision as well as recognition not only from the school and regional authorities, but also from the national educational hierarchy.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Education and Teacher Dispositions
Education and Teacher Dispositions
(First published in The Island/Sri Lanka)
Taking a fairly long walk has become an essential part of my daily routine for some time now. From the beginning I saw to it that my calf muscles start aching before I stop walking. Through experience I have determined the distance that should be covered, and the time it should take to produce that amount of fatigue in my legs in the particular terrain where I daily perform this exercise. Occasionally, circumstances intervene, and I am required to curtail my walk before I reach my ‘saturation point’, which leaves me with a sense of having cheated myself. Once I pondered over why I get this feeling, and traced its origin to these words of a favourite teacher of ours: “Don’t think that you have done an honest piece of work, be it in sports or studies, unless you feel a little exhausted after doing it”. He taught us a subject known as General Science at that time some fifty years ago, and sometimes doubled as our PT master. He was a strict disciplinarian and a committed teacher. We used to await his arrival for lessons with trepidation as well as expectation. If I am confident enough to make any claim to at least a modest degree of professionalism in whatever work I undertake, I believe I owe that confidence to what I learned from teachers like him.
Many of us have recollections like these about our favourite teachers. Often we do not remember them for the subject knowledge they imparted. We remember them for the influence they exercised on our lives through their dispositions or perceptions or attitudes as revealed through their behaviours towards us their students. Teacher dispositions are vitally important for long-term as well as short-term student success in terms of academic achievement and personality development. That is why some of our old school teachers seem to reach out to us over many decades from the past.
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) in the USA, a national organisation that helps establish the preparation of high quality teachers, specialists, and administrators by conferring accreditation to schools, colleges, and departments of education describes teacher dispositions as “Professional attitudes, values, beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviours as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities” (as quoted by Maura Kate Hallam in ‘The Language Educator’, January 2009).
A key factor that is essential for academic success is student engagement. Engaged students are those who involve themselves in educational activities out of intrinsic motivation; they are self-reliant; they make themselves responsible for their own learning. There is a second equally important factor which contributes to student achievement: students’ perception of their own academic competence (which means positive feelings about one’s ability to be succeed academically). Students’ active involvement in the educational endeavour and their perception of academic competence are both important attitudes that play a central role in student success. These attitudes flourish in an atmosphere in which students have a sense of autonomy, and feel confident in their own capacity for success in future academic pursuits. Two factors are vital for stimulating such attitudes: supportive teachers and high behavioural expectations.
Desirable student attitudes are formed as a result of learning experiences in an educational context dominated by these elements. Social stimulation through examples and opinions of teachers, parents and peers also play a part. Canadian Professor Albert Bandura is often considered the father of the cognitivist movement (as opposed to B.F. Skinner’s behaviourism). According to his observational learning (or social learning) theory, a model’s behaviour can cause an observer’s behaviour to change either positively or negatively through the positive or negative consequences (vicarious reinforcement or vicarious punishment) of a model’s behaviour. He looked at personality as an interactive relationship among three elements: a person’s environment, behaviour, and psychological processes. Teacher dispositions affects the formation of learner attitudes.
Educators need to possess positive dispositions in addition to subject knowledge and pedagogical (i.e. teaching) skills. The NCATE mentioned above expects schools of education to assess their candidates on the principles of fairness, and the belief that all students can learn. Some researchers regard commonsense notions about teacher perceptions to be too ‘soft’ to serve as real research, insisting on quantifiable data. Mark Wasicsko, Director of the National Network for the Study of Educator Dispositions (NNSED) does not agree. He explains, on the organisation’s website, that effective teacher dispositions can be grouped into four ‘measurable’ domains as suggested below:
1. Most effective teachers perceive themselves as such. They are competent, and have confidence in their own ability. Capable teachers are usually outgoing in social interaction; they can identify with a broad range of diverse people.
2. Effective teachers believe that all students can learn.
3. Their frame of reference is broad. They relate what they do to a larger purpose. Teaching for them involves creating a disposition for learning.
4. Such teachers take cognizance of the human element.
Teacher dispositions are important in any educational setup, but they are particularly so in the English language classroom, which I wish to use here as an example to demonstrate teacher dispositions. For effective language learning to take place, as much communicative interaction among the learners as possible through English should be provided. Their ‘affective filter’ has to be lowered by making them feel comfortable, confident, and uninhibited. [“Affective filter” refers to an impediment to learning brought on by ‘affective’ (i.e. emotional) responses to one’s environment in terms of a hypothesis first proposed by Stephen Krashen in the 1970’s.] The teacher’s attitude determines much of the general atmosphere of the classroom and can either lower or raise the learners’ affective filters.
Of course, the English classrooms in Sri Lanka are not what they used to be in the past. Teachers seem to have a more inclusive attitude than before: for a long time there was a widely held notion, especially in rural areas, that only some students had the ability to learn English; many lost interest in learning it, and turned their attention to something else; even teachers gave up on them. But today English is being taught on the basis that it can be learned by all students; exclusivity associated with English in this sense is a thing of the past (No allusion is intended here to exclusivity based on class consciousness which, to all appearances, is a thing of the past as well). Different pedagogies are being tried out. The students have ample opportunity to relate the English they learn to their experience of the wider world through technology-mediated communication. In this context, teacher attitudes assume unprecedented importance.
Because learning has become learner-centred and autonomous more than ever before with the emergence of revolutionary new information and communications technologies, the teacher’s value as a mere conduit for the transfer of subject matter knowledge has substantially decreased. While teaching or instruction in the traditional sense has not become totally irrelevant, the stage manager role of the teaching professional has become more pronounced (To stage-manage in the formal educational context means to prepare the environment and plan the range of activities that the learners must perform both autonomously and in collaboration with colleagues for the achievement of a predetermined outcome through managing the interrelationships between the school setting, student attitudes and behaviour, and student achievement). In the final analysis, teacher dispositions are about bringing out the individual best in each student in the short term as well as in the long term (irrespective of the calibre of that ‘individual best’).
Sources consulted:
Maura Kate Hallam: The Language Educator, January 2009
Theresa M. Akey, PhD: “Student Context, Student Attitudes and Behaviour, and Academic Achievement” (Paper), 2005
(First published in The Island/Sri Lanka)
Taking a fairly long walk has become an essential part of my daily routine for some time now. From the beginning I saw to it that my calf muscles start aching before I stop walking. Through experience I have determined the distance that should be covered, and the time it should take to produce that amount of fatigue in my legs in the particular terrain where I daily perform this exercise. Occasionally, circumstances intervene, and I am required to curtail my walk before I reach my ‘saturation point’, which leaves me with a sense of having cheated myself. Once I pondered over why I get this feeling, and traced its origin to these words of a favourite teacher of ours: “Don’t think that you have done an honest piece of work, be it in sports or studies, unless you feel a little exhausted after doing it”. He taught us a subject known as General Science at that time some fifty years ago, and sometimes doubled as our PT master. He was a strict disciplinarian and a committed teacher. We used to await his arrival for lessons with trepidation as well as expectation. If I am confident enough to make any claim to at least a modest degree of professionalism in whatever work I undertake, I believe I owe that confidence to what I learned from teachers like him.
Many of us have recollections like these about our favourite teachers. Often we do not remember them for the subject knowledge they imparted. We remember them for the influence they exercised on our lives through their dispositions or perceptions or attitudes as revealed through their behaviours towards us their students. Teacher dispositions are vitally important for long-term as well as short-term student success in terms of academic achievement and personality development. That is why some of our old school teachers seem to reach out to us over many decades from the past.
The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) in the USA, a national organisation that helps establish the preparation of high quality teachers, specialists, and administrators by conferring accreditation to schools, colleges, and departments of education describes teacher dispositions as “Professional attitudes, values, beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviours as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities” (as quoted by Maura Kate Hallam in ‘The Language Educator’, January 2009).
A key factor that is essential for academic success is student engagement. Engaged students are those who involve themselves in educational activities out of intrinsic motivation; they are self-reliant; they make themselves responsible for their own learning. There is a second equally important factor which contributes to student achievement: students’ perception of their own academic competence (which means positive feelings about one’s ability to be succeed academically). Students’ active involvement in the educational endeavour and their perception of academic competence are both important attitudes that play a central role in student success. These attitudes flourish in an atmosphere in which students have a sense of autonomy, and feel confident in their own capacity for success in future academic pursuits. Two factors are vital for stimulating such attitudes: supportive teachers and high behavioural expectations.
Desirable student attitudes are formed as a result of learning experiences in an educational context dominated by these elements. Social stimulation through examples and opinions of teachers, parents and peers also play a part. Canadian Professor Albert Bandura is often considered the father of the cognitivist movement (as opposed to B.F. Skinner’s behaviourism). According to his observational learning (or social learning) theory, a model’s behaviour can cause an observer’s behaviour to change either positively or negatively through the positive or negative consequences (vicarious reinforcement or vicarious punishment) of a model’s behaviour. He looked at personality as an interactive relationship among three elements: a person’s environment, behaviour, and psychological processes. Teacher dispositions affects the formation of learner attitudes.
Educators need to possess positive dispositions in addition to subject knowledge and pedagogical (i.e. teaching) skills. The NCATE mentioned above expects schools of education to assess their candidates on the principles of fairness, and the belief that all students can learn. Some researchers regard commonsense notions about teacher perceptions to be too ‘soft’ to serve as real research, insisting on quantifiable data. Mark Wasicsko, Director of the National Network for the Study of Educator Dispositions (NNSED) does not agree. He explains, on the organisation’s website, that effective teacher dispositions can be grouped into four ‘measurable’ domains as suggested below:
1. Most effective teachers perceive themselves as such. They are competent, and have confidence in their own ability. Capable teachers are usually outgoing in social interaction; they can identify with a broad range of diverse people.
2. Effective teachers believe that all students can learn.
3. Their frame of reference is broad. They relate what they do to a larger purpose. Teaching for them involves creating a disposition for learning.
4. Such teachers take cognizance of the human element.
Teacher dispositions are important in any educational setup, but they are particularly so in the English language classroom, which I wish to use here as an example to demonstrate teacher dispositions. For effective language learning to take place, as much communicative interaction among the learners as possible through English should be provided. Their ‘affective filter’ has to be lowered by making them feel comfortable, confident, and uninhibited. [“Affective filter” refers to an impediment to learning brought on by ‘affective’ (i.e. emotional) responses to one’s environment in terms of a hypothesis first proposed by Stephen Krashen in the 1970’s.] The teacher’s attitude determines much of the general atmosphere of the classroom and can either lower or raise the learners’ affective filters.
Of course, the English classrooms in Sri Lanka are not what they used to be in the past. Teachers seem to have a more inclusive attitude than before: for a long time there was a widely held notion, especially in rural areas, that only some students had the ability to learn English; many lost interest in learning it, and turned their attention to something else; even teachers gave up on them. But today English is being taught on the basis that it can be learned by all students; exclusivity associated with English in this sense is a thing of the past (No allusion is intended here to exclusivity based on class consciousness which, to all appearances, is a thing of the past as well). Different pedagogies are being tried out. The students have ample opportunity to relate the English they learn to their experience of the wider world through technology-mediated communication. In this context, teacher attitudes assume unprecedented importance.
Because learning has become learner-centred and autonomous more than ever before with the emergence of revolutionary new information and communications technologies, the teacher’s value as a mere conduit for the transfer of subject matter knowledge has substantially decreased. While teaching or instruction in the traditional sense has not become totally irrelevant, the stage manager role of the teaching professional has become more pronounced (To stage-manage in the formal educational context means to prepare the environment and plan the range of activities that the learners must perform both autonomously and in collaboration with colleagues for the achievement of a predetermined outcome through managing the interrelationships between the school setting, student attitudes and behaviour, and student achievement). In the final analysis, teacher dispositions are about bringing out the individual best in each student in the short term as well as in the long term (irrespective of the calibre of that ‘individual best’).
Sources consulted:
Maura Kate Hallam: The Language Educator, January 2009
Theresa M. Akey, PhD: “Student Context, Student Attitudes and Behaviour, and Academic Achievement” (Paper), 2005
Monday, January 30, 2012
Mother Tongues and Multilingual Education
Mother Tongues and Multilingual Education
(This appeared in The Island/Sri Lanka before)
The term ‘multilingual education’ which embodies the idea of using at least three languages in education, namely, the mother tongue, a regional or national language, and an international language was adopted by the United Nations’ Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at its General Conference in 1999. As one of its important roles, the organization provides international frameworks and parameters for educational policy makers to guide their decisions about complex issues. Language, or rather the choice of the language of instruction, is one such area. A 2003 UNESCO position paper about mother tongue and multilingual education makes this observation: “While there are strong educational arguments in favour of mother tongue (or first language) instruction, a careful balance also needs to be made between enabling people to use local languages in learning, and providing access to global languages of communication through education.”
The UNESCO deals with the linguistic rights issue in multilingual societies in accordance with three basic principles:
UNESCO supports ….
1) “… mother tongue instruction as a means of improving
educational quality by building upon the knowledge and experience
of the learners and teachers”,
2) “… bilingual and/or multilingual education at all levels
of education as a means of promoting both social and gender equality
and as a key element of linguistically diverse societies”,
3) “… language as an essential component of inter-cultural
education in order to encourage understanding between different
population groups and ensure respect for fundamental rights”.
The ‘multilingual’ education system we are so assiduously working to establish will most likely give rise to a situation where the sort of linguistic rights concerns we have seen raised by linguists in affluent countries with concentrations of immigrants from diverse cultures could apply in respect of our indigenous languages Sinhala and Tamil. This will be so unless we keep a due sense of proportion in the pursuit of excellence through English. In a context where English occupies an privileged position the speakers of local mother tongue languages are at a disadvantage; and it will be again monolingual education through English, not multilingual education. It could be a scenario which will call for the invocation of principles established over the past half a century by the UN for the protection of the linguistic rights of especially minority communities.
As early as 1984 Professor Tove Skutnabb-Kangas of the University of Roskilde, Denmark suggested four different definitions of mother tongue from the perspectives of origin, identification, competence, and function. Mother tongue by origin, she explained, is the first language that a person learns; mother tongue by identification is of two kinds: a) by internal identification, i.e. the language one identifies oneself with, and b) by external identification, i.e. the language that others associate one with; if competence is the defining element, then one’s mother tongue is the language that one knows best; and finally, mother tongue by function means the language that one uses most.
Professor Skutnabb-Kangas discusses her ideas again in an essay in 2008. She considers how definitions of mother tongue could be made relevant to linguistic minorities found within a multilingual society including such linguistic minorities as the deaf who need an appropriate sign language, and the forcibly assimilated Indigenous or other minority children. She thinks that the four short definitions she has described converge for a linguistic majority; but she avers that for linguistic minorities “often a combination of mother tongue definitions by origin and by internal identification is a good mother tongue definition.”
Professor Skutnabb-Kangas’s attempts in this connection reveal her concern for the protection of the linguistic human rights of minorities. The same attitude is shared by other Western linguists such as Jim Cummins of the University of Toronto, Canada, and Nadine Dutcher of the Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC. USA, who have had the experience of pitting minority languages against a dominant majority language (e.g. in Denmark the sole official language is Danish which is spoken by 90% of the population, while among the minority/foreign languages are English 86%, German 58%, and French 12%; in France the single official language is French with minority languages such as Maghrebi Arabic, Berber, Turkish, etc). They are especially interested in the language rights of immigrant populations in the affluent European and North American societies, and in allied countries where the local languages are both the majority languages and the dominant languages, and where ‘linguicism’ is identified as threatening the linguistic rights of minorities. {Linguicism is a concept and a coinage proposed in the mid-1980’s by Professor Skutnabb-Kangas. It denotes what she calls "ideologies and structures which are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of language." The words quoted are reproduced from Wikipedia.}
The suitability of what Skutnabb-Kangas suggests as a good definition of ‘mother tongue’ for minorities (“a combination of mother tongue definitions by origin and by internal identification”) to contexts where the language of power is also the language of the majority as in the European and North American countries is clear: it recognises the right of individual members of linguistic and cultural minorities in such societies to adopt, out of the diversity of languages available, the language that is closest to them as their mother tongue.
Sri Lanka’s multilingual situation is the reverse of that found in Europe and North America because the language of the majority (Sinhalese) cannot be called the dominant language here. Both Sinhala and Tamil are official languages, and English is designated in the constitution as a link language. Those who can speak English form a little less than 10% of the population (9.9%). Only about 10,000 people out of a population of roughly 20 million are said to use English as their first language. (“First language” here must be taken as identical with mother tongue, for if the term ‘first language’ is defined as the language someone mainly uses to function in in day to day life, as in education, scientific research, professions, and commerce, then this figure should be substantially higher since English serves as the first language in this sense for many educated Sri Lankans whose mother tongue is Sinhalese or Tamil, which is their usual home language.) The significant thing, nevertheless, is that English dominates the linguistic scene in our society. So, whereas in UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc English dominates as the language of the majority, in Sri Lanka it dominates as the language of a minority. In other words, we have the case of a (numerically) minority language usurping the place of a majority language.
In the Sri Lankan context, however, the term ‘minority language’ when applied to English can be misleading in view of this reality. Though it is the language of a numerical minority, in terms of its influence particularly in such fields as education, research, business, and international communication, it functions as a ‘majority’ language pushing the indigenous languages into ‘minority’ language status in that sense. This dominance of English is not one of choice, but the result of a complex of historical, political, and economic factors specific to our country reinforced by the impact of the phenomenon known as globalization.
A new manifestation of the West’s capitalist domination of the world, globalization is an inescapable fact of life today. It may be an unmixed blessing for business people and industrialists since it opens extensive markets for industry and commerce. Yet it’s not so for others. Though it’s mainly to do with business, it draws the nations together in all important spheres including education, leading to general progress in those areas. But globalization is not always for their benefit. Among the iniquities that it brings in its wake is its tendency to increase the gap between rich and poor nations. Political instability, terrorism, and civil unrest either caused or compounded by economic hardships encourage large movements of people as helpless refugees or desperate job seekers from poor countries to rich countries.
The movement of populations is thus usually from the poor countries to the rich. The resultant cultural diversity of societies in the host countries is viewed in opposite ways by sections of the local populations: some tolerate it, some don’t. In Canada, for instance, according to Jim Cummins of Toronto University the neo-fascists want immigrants expelled or at least excluded from mainstream society, while the more liberal groups want them to be assimilated. Professor Cummins feels that exclusion and assimilation are similar in that both regard cultural diversity as ‘a problem’ that should be made to disappear.
In Cummins’s view, this way of looking at the phenomenon of cultural diversity that is dominant in EU and North American countries can have disastrous consequences for children and their families. The reason is that assimilation policies tend to discourage students from retaining their native language and culture for fear that it would hinder their ability to identify with the mainstream culture. The subliminal message that is conveyed to them is that they must renounce their allegiance to their home language and culture if they want to be properly integrated into the host society. This involves a violation of UN-recognized human rights (related to language) of communities affected.
Apropos of the multilingual situation in Sri Lanka, there is no question about transforming our education system from monolingual to multilingual status. Probably, however, what multilingual education in our specific context does or should mean is still not clear to many though they think they know. The popular perception seems to be in terms of a so-called quality education through the medium of English with or without a knowledge of Sinhala and Tamil (the mother tongues of 95% of the population). (I’m not saying that this notion corresponds to the policy of the official trilingual plan now underway.)
It has been long established that for a child’s proper education, particularly in the first years, the mother tongue/the home language is the best medium of instruction. Cummins refers to his own writings, and those of others such as Baker and Skutnabbs-Kangas among more recent researches in the field to confirm the importance of the mother tongue for the education of bilingual children. As educators these authorities hold that “children's cultural and linguistic experience in the home is the foundation of their future learning and we must build on that foundation rather than undermine it; every child has the right to have their talents recognized and promoted within the school”. School education should not squander “the linguistic, cultural, and intellectual resources they bring from their homes to our schools and societies”. Though these statements were made in connection with multilingual societies different to ours, the importance of the mother tongue for children’s education, and through it to the society at large is the same.
(This appeared in The Island/Sri Lanka before)
The term ‘multilingual education’ which embodies the idea of using at least three languages in education, namely, the mother tongue, a regional or national language, and an international language was adopted by the United Nations’ Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at its General Conference in 1999. As one of its important roles, the organization provides international frameworks and parameters for educational policy makers to guide their decisions about complex issues. Language, or rather the choice of the language of instruction, is one such area. A 2003 UNESCO position paper about mother tongue and multilingual education makes this observation: “While there are strong educational arguments in favour of mother tongue (or first language) instruction, a careful balance also needs to be made between enabling people to use local languages in learning, and providing access to global languages of communication through education.”
The UNESCO deals with the linguistic rights issue in multilingual societies in accordance with three basic principles:
UNESCO supports ….
1) “… mother tongue instruction as a means of improving
educational quality by building upon the knowledge and experience
of the learners and teachers”,
2) “… bilingual and/or multilingual education at all levels
of education as a means of promoting both social and gender equality
and as a key element of linguistically diverse societies”,
3) “… language as an essential component of inter-cultural
education in order to encourage understanding between different
population groups and ensure respect for fundamental rights”.
The ‘multilingual’ education system we are so assiduously working to establish will most likely give rise to a situation where the sort of linguistic rights concerns we have seen raised by linguists in affluent countries with concentrations of immigrants from diverse cultures could apply in respect of our indigenous languages Sinhala and Tamil. This will be so unless we keep a due sense of proportion in the pursuit of excellence through English. In a context where English occupies an privileged position the speakers of local mother tongue languages are at a disadvantage; and it will be again monolingual education through English, not multilingual education. It could be a scenario which will call for the invocation of principles established over the past half a century by the UN for the protection of the linguistic rights of especially minority communities.
As early as 1984 Professor Tove Skutnabb-Kangas of the University of Roskilde, Denmark suggested four different definitions of mother tongue from the perspectives of origin, identification, competence, and function. Mother tongue by origin, she explained, is the first language that a person learns; mother tongue by identification is of two kinds: a) by internal identification, i.e. the language one identifies oneself with, and b) by external identification, i.e. the language that others associate one with; if competence is the defining element, then one’s mother tongue is the language that one knows best; and finally, mother tongue by function means the language that one uses most.
Professor Skutnabb-Kangas discusses her ideas again in an essay in 2008. She considers how definitions of mother tongue could be made relevant to linguistic minorities found within a multilingual society including such linguistic minorities as the deaf who need an appropriate sign language, and the forcibly assimilated Indigenous or other minority children. She thinks that the four short definitions she has described converge for a linguistic majority; but she avers that for linguistic minorities “often a combination of mother tongue definitions by origin and by internal identification is a good mother tongue definition.”
Professor Skutnabb-Kangas’s attempts in this connection reveal her concern for the protection of the linguistic human rights of minorities. The same attitude is shared by other Western linguists such as Jim Cummins of the University of Toronto, Canada, and Nadine Dutcher of the Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC. USA, who have had the experience of pitting minority languages against a dominant majority language (e.g. in Denmark the sole official language is Danish which is spoken by 90% of the population, while among the minority/foreign languages are English 86%, German 58%, and French 12%; in France the single official language is French with minority languages such as Maghrebi Arabic, Berber, Turkish, etc). They are especially interested in the language rights of immigrant populations in the affluent European and North American societies, and in allied countries where the local languages are both the majority languages and the dominant languages, and where ‘linguicism’ is identified as threatening the linguistic rights of minorities. {Linguicism is a concept and a coinage proposed in the mid-1980’s by Professor Skutnabb-Kangas. It denotes what she calls "ideologies and structures which are used to legitimate, effectuate, and reproduce unequal division of power and resources (both material and non-material) between groups which are defined on the basis of language." The words quoted are reproduced from Wikipedia.}
The suitability of what Skutnabb-Kangas suggests as a good definition of ‘mother tongue’ for minorities (“a combination of mother tongue definitions by origin and by internal identification”) to contexts where the language of power is also the language of the majority as in the European and North American countries is clear: it recognises the right of individual members of linguistic and cultural minorities in such societies to adopt, out of the diversity of languages available, the language that is closest to them as their mother tongue.
Sri Lanka’s multilingual situation is the reverse of that found in Europe and North America because the language of the majority (Sinhalese) cannot be called the dominant language here. Both Sinhala and Tamil are official languages, and English is designated in the constitution as a link language. Those who can speak English form a little less than 10% of the population (9.9%). Only about 10,000 people out of a population of roughly 20 million are said to use English as their first language. (“First language” here must be taken as identical with mother tongue, for if the term ‘first language’ is defined as the language someone mainly uses to function in in day to day life, as in education, scientific research, professions, and commerce, then this figure should be substantially higher since English serves as the first language in this sense for many educated Sri Lankans whose mother tongue is Sinhalese or Tamil, which is their usual home language.) The significant thing, nevertheless, is that English dominates the linguistic scene in our society. So, whereas in UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc English dominates as the language of the majority, in Sri Lanka it dominates as the language of a minority. In other words, we have the case of a (numerically) minority language usurping the place of a majority language.
In the Sri Lankan context, however, the term ‘minority language’ when applied to English can be misleading in view of this reality. Though it is the language of a numerical minority, in terms of its influence particularly in such fields as education, research, business, and international communication, it functions as a ‘majority’ language pushing the indigenous languages into ‘minority’ language status in that sense. This dominance of English is not one of choice, but the result of a complex of historical, political, and economic factors specific to our country reinforced by the impact of the phenomenon known as globalization.
A new manifestation of the West’s capitalist domination of the world, globalization is an inescapable fact of life today. It may be an unmixed blessing for business people and industrialists since it opens extensive markets for industry and commerce. Yet it’s not so for others. Though it’s mainly to do with business, it draws the nations together in all important spheres including education, leading to general progress in those areas. But globalization is not always for their benefit. Among the iniquities that it brings in its wake is its tendency to increase the gap between rich and poor nations. Political instability, terrorism, and civil unrest either caused or compounded by economic hardships encourage large movements of people as helpless refugees or desperate job seekers from poor countries to rich countries.
The movement of populations is thus usually from the poor countries to the rich. The resultant cultural diversity of societies in the host countries is viewed in opposite ways by sections of the local populations: some tolerate it, some don’t. In Canada, for instance, according to Jim Cummins of Toronto University the neo-fascists want immigrants expelled or at least excluded from mainstream society, while the more liberal groups want them to be assimilated. Professor Cummins feels that exclusion and assimilation are similar in that both regard cultural diversity as ‘a problem’ that should be made to disappear.
In Cummins’s view, this way of looking at the phenomenon of cultural diversity that is dominant in EU and North American countries can have disastrous consequences for children and their families. The reason is that assimilation policies tend to discourage students from retaining their native language and culture for fear that it would hinder their ability to identify with the mainstream culture. The subliminal message that is conveyed to them is that they must renounce their allegiance to their home language and culture if they want to be properly integrated into the host society. This involves a violation of UN-recognized human rights (related to language) of communities affected.
Apropos of the multilingual situation in Sri Lanka, there is no question about transforming our education system from monolingual to multilingual status. Probably, however, what multilingual education in our specific context does or should mean is still not clear to many though they think they know. The popular perception seems to be in terms of a so-called quality education through the medium of English with or without a knowledge of Sinhala and Tamil (the mother tongues of 95% of the population). (I’m not saying that this notion corresponds to the policy of the official trilingual plan now underway.)
It has been long established that for a child’s proper education, particularly in the first years, the mother tongue/the home language is the best medium of instruction. Cummins refers to his own writings, and those of others such as Baker and Skutnabbs-Kangas among more recent researches in the field to confirm the importance of the mother tongue for the education of bilingual children. As educators these authorities hold that “children's cultural and linguistic experience in the home is the foundation of their future learning and we must build on that foundation rather than undermine it; every child has the right to have their talents recognized and promoted within the school”. School education should not squander “the linguistic, cultural, and intellectual resources they bring from their homes to our schools and societies”. Though these statements were made in connection with multilingual societies different to ours, the importance of the mother tongue for children’s education, and through it to the society at large is the same.
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