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.