On Learning English

Prof. S. Laxmana Murthy
Retd. Professor

Dr. Kondal Rao garu has sent us his views on the teaching of English in Andhra Pradesh in three brief essays. He has expressed his anguish over what is happening to linguistic situation as such on account of misplaced emphasis on English, and also the misconceived method of imparting so called skills in communication. The English language syllabus bereft of literature is most likely to damage the sensibility necessary for harmonious development of personality and imperil the sensitivity so vital to respond to one's native culture.

I share Dr. Rao's grave concern. This has led me to share with him a few of my stray thoughts on the teaching and learning of English which I had expressed on an earlier occasion to a gathering of the English language teachers at a rural college.

I have been a student of languages all these many years. Soon after leaving High School, I was left to fend for myself as far as English was concerned. I had to hew my way with little or no help. My English would probably have been a little different from what it is, if I had the benefit of expert guidance during the formative years. I have no regrets. I had my compensation. The thrill of solitary exploration has been a reward in itself.

I have come here seizing the opportunity to share my views with you. These views are based on my own experience with the process of learning English vis-à-vis the other languages. They may be some what tangential and discursive. All that I can say of them in defense, is that they are my own.

English has been with us for the last two hundred years. Its use is pervasive. In addition to its use in Education, the other subject like Administration, Judiciary, Industry and Commerce have found in it a convenient means of communication. All intellectual discourse has been in English. The status of English is not likely to change in near future. On the contrary, its importance will enhance considerably in these days of globalization. English as a world language has come to stay.

English has been a gift to us. It has exerted enormous influence on the literature of India. Their modernization has been due to it. During the last fifty years Indian writing in English has become vibrant and boldly experimental. English press has been a force to reckon with. English rules the audio - visual media. It is an effective library language holding the key to unlock the treasure of knowledge without frontiers. Therefore, there is no ned to expatiate on its importance. It is proving the obvious.

In view of all this, we should have been comfortable with English. We should have been at home in it. There should not have been any need to hold seminars on communication skills for teachers of English. But as the things stand today, we realize that we need to design the courses of simple English, short-term teaching schedules, workshops and seminars on communicative skills. We are eager to welcome numerous innovations in teaching English. We have adopted many of them. In spite of our best endeavors the question remains : why do we fail to learn English ? What do we need to learn it ?

Let us face it squarely. We have failed to learn English. We are persuaded that the conventional methods of teaching English have been inadequate. We are convinced of the need to change. In our quest for a panacea, we have overhauled grammar, redrafted the syllabi, devised new teaching methods or techniques and roped in the audio-visual aids. The results have not been spectacular. Why have we failed to learn English? Let us examine the problem in some detail. We have to ignore the privileged sections here. They have the advantage of educated parentage, the benefit of training at the best of schools, and the atmosphere conducive to accomplish an enviable degree of competence in the language. The children exposed to good English at school as the medium of instruction are obviously in a different category. We take into consideration only those who have not had these advantages. Let me tell you this. When asked to name the most important requisite for learning good English, a well-known professor said with disarming ease, "Choose your parents carefully." The comment refers to the privileged ones. Those of us of the remote villages and hamlets, have a host of limiting situations. They come in the way of acquiring the necessary skills in communication. What shall we do ?

It is not safe to set sail without a compass. Similarly it is not a pleasant experience to begin to learn a language without being clear about our objectives. There is the need to steer clear of many hurdles as we go along. We have to assess ourselves and our native drawbacks that hamstring us. Let us begin with the language we speak-Telugu. We have the advantage of this eminently phonetic language. In it the written work is no different from the spoken one, pronunciation is no problem at all. Almost all Indian languages are phonetic. We are keen on having every letter sounded in a written word. Telugu is largely sanskritised. The more sankritised it is, the more polished it is believed to be. Most Telugu expressions are figurative. We are often rhetorical. We happily succumb to the lure of pompous words. The weakness brings in its wake the bane of vagueness. Till recently, Telugu prose was poetical. Poetry, of course, has the divine right to be vague. We have ignored for long the line of demarcation between prose and poetry. Though we have begun to notice it, we love to ignore it. We also need to realize that a language is identified by its cultural moorings.

We want to learn to communicate with the larger world. The area of communication may be limited to our needs. Nevertheless, we want to communicate effectively, no matter how restricted the area covered by our needs is. In other words, we want to be unabashedly utilitarian. We need not be apologetic about being down to earth. That is our objective. Then we should be wary of the many obstacles which will surely vanish once we cultivate an attitude different from the one long sustained by our native tongue. We confidently pronounce every written word in Telugu. Most inconveniently we carry the same measure of confidence when we approach English. Telugu has no silent letters; English has plenty of them. Not all of them are obvious. If you are not on guard when you chance upon an unfamiliar word and hastily pronounce it, you are stepping on the perilous ground with explosives buried underneath. Look into a dictionary before you leap to pronounce an unfamiliar word. You have such wily ones as 'contradict', 'indict', 'unique', 'communique' etc. English has therefore got spelling and respelling. A recent grammar has this to say :

English is supposedly a phonetic language. That is, the letters of our alphabet stand for sounds, and the way words are spoken or pronounced is supposed to correspond to the way they are spelled. In practice, it does not always work that way. In the early years, English was more or less phonetic, but time has brought drastic changes in pronunciation while changes in spelling have not kept pace. It is the gulf that has been created between pronunciation and spelling - widened during the last several centuries by the invention of the printing press - that has transformed English from a phonetic to a most un-phonetic language.

To fill this gulf, our dictionaries respell countless thousands of words according to the way they are actually sounded in practice, and they construct elaborate phonetic alphabets that correspond to the true sounds. The dictionaries do not always succeed. Whether they succeed or not, we have to refer to the dictionaries and also get used to the laborious method of spelling and respelling of words in English. Of late, we have however come to be obsessive about the correct accent and right stress while speaking English. The courses designed and the workshops organized often prepare a list of words, conduct drills in pronuciation for the trainee teachers and the students. It devours a good deal of precious time, with no appreciable benefit. I am of the opinion that it is not possible for us to speak English like a native. It is not necessary either. The drilling referred above gives them a list of words, and even after parroting the words for long, the trained lot cannot speak all the time with right accent. Even the best of Indians trained in English by the British in days bygone were faulted for their misplaced accent despite their command of the language. Pronunciation varies. It is a fact recognized all over the world. We have heard the Japanese, the Russians and the Chinese using English. They are not unduly worried about the native accent. The variation in pronunciation of course should not lead to obscurity or failure of communication. In Telugu for instance nobody is worried about the difference in pronouncing or writing sha, shaa, sa. We ignore it because there is no breakdown of communication. In any case we are not worried about the fate of Telugu. We are more concerned than the queen in keeping English inviolate. The teaching of communication skills seems to be limited to the long drills which, after the sessions, dwindle into parroting. What is the use of so called native accent when one has nothing to communicate beyond the narrow tracks of a few sterile passages in the prescribed text ? He is like a bull tied to a post with a long rope feeling free in confinement. In fact one cannot learn any language without a measure of acquaintance with its literature. Language sans literature is pitifully weak and anaemic.

Next we encounter vocabulary. English is fabulously rich in vocabulary, for it has borrowed freely from almost all the languages of the world, and made the words thus gathered, its own. Latin and Angle-Saxon have contributed more of vocabulary than others. Greek has been helpful in coining the technical vocabulary. Spelling and pronunciation have been largely influenced by this liberal borrowing. We need to be cautious here. As I remarked earlier, Sanskritised Telugu is still prestigious. But latinised English is frowned upon. Our fondness for overblown and figurative expression is simply comic in the context of English. To be rhetorical is to be philistine. Florid language is demurred as insincere. Adjectives are suspect. Alliteration is considered crude. A good measure of linguistic discipline is insisted upon. You are required to be concrete and specific. Good communication has to be free from obscurity and vagueness. "Slovenliness in language corrodes the mind". It is one real crime according to Miss Boulton. She goes on to explain.

Some people have a passion for long words. To the half educated, long words are a sign of education. We have only to think of the pretentiousness and the mistakes of Miss Malaprop. The morbid Latinist can never call a spade a spade; it must be always an agricultural implement. The kind of language is pompous and tiresome.

We cannot take liberties with words. It is like playing with fire. It is said rightly that "stilted language is a favorite device of the people who wish to avoid responsibility by obscuring the meaning." Speaking in a different context, Emerson remarked, "Cut these words and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive; they walk and run It is a shower of bullets." We should heed the warning.

What is the cause of obscurity ? In answer to this, let me read out to you what Somerset Maugham has said :

… Cause of obscurity is that the writer himself is not quite sure of his meaning. He has a vague impression of what he wants to say, but has not either from lack of mental power or from laziness, exactly formulated it in his mind and it is natural enough that he should not find a precise expression for a confused idea. This is largely due to the fact that many writers think not before, but as they write. The open originates the thought.

Clarity of mind ensures clear and simple expression. Simplicity is the chief virtue of English both spoken and written. Long winding and complicated structures are not at all necessary. It is good to evaluate the thought and present it in a logical order. When the thought is logical, it goes without saying that mind is clear and expression simple. All great writers are simple. So are all great teachers, Swami Vivekananda said, "the greatness of a teacher consists in the simplicity of his language". Jaques Barzun a well-known professor of English in his "We who Teach" has remarked, "The truth is that simple English is no-one's mother tongue. It has to be worked for."

In view of what I have said, the feeling that what is meant for Telugu is poison for English is inescapable. We may have to sweat hard to get out of the unhelpful influence of mother tongue. I hasten to add, however, that a degree of competence in one's mother tongue will certainly be of advantage while learning English, because all efforts to acquire knowledge proceed from the familiar to the unfamiliar. One has to focus on the differences and distinctive features of the language concerned. Its historical, linguistic and cultural backgrounds bring into being and foster the features unique to it. We should make judicious and cautious use of mother tongue. It is unwise to eschew the use of mother tongue as medium of instruction while teaching English. How can a poor boy in a remote hamlet learn English through English ? The so-called material production and the teaching methods are devised largely with urban students in view. India for these planners obviously lives in cities, since they say that they are meant for use in Indian schools. We should realize that literal translation in communication is pernicious. We should impress upon the students to learn English with strict discipline. I have seen scores of teachers and students writing poetry in English. Unfortunately most of them have written poetry because they have failed to write prose. English prose writing demands unremitting and assiduous practice. We should aim at it.

One could acquire communicative skill in two ways. The first is to learn just enough to meet a specific need. It is like water stored in a pitcher. Its use should necessarily be frugal and restricted . It gets depleted over time since its stock is limited. The second is to acquire it for its own sake, to use a phrase no longer in fashion 'for the nourishment of soul', as a gift of "Grace Abounding". It is like a spring fed stream. Its use is limitless and its flow continuous. Wide reading, deep reflection and unwearied application in a spirit of humility characterize the pursuit.

Only then does it dawn on us that language is "a temple in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined." In Sanskrit they called the language kamadhenu - the divine cow of plenty.

English for a specific purpose has a role to play. But it should be such as to motivate the learner to set out on a long and solitary journey to explore the infinite variety of English and its vast possibilities. The acquisition of communicative skill is the first step in this direction. One should realize that one has many miles to go.

Communication is, in fact, a meeting of minds. Interaction necessarily results from it. It is dependent on shared experience. It is rich or poor in direct relation to the quality of minds that meet.

Listening, Reading and Writing are essential for promoting communication skills. Indian tradition has prescribed three steps for realizing the truth of experience in life, namely - SRAVANA, MANANA, AND NIDIDHYASANA - you have to listen, reflect and subject it to profound and repeated meditation. Linguistic discipline too requires this method.

In the context of the Upanishads, the student is led to the teacher in a forest retreat. The teacher imparts instruction to him for a few years and finally bids him go with the words. "TAPASA TAT VIJIJNASASVA --'realize that by you tapas'. A teacher cannot help him there. As teachers, let us lead the student to that stage and leave him to be on his own in his long and exciting quest.