Educationists often blame the State for lack of English language proficiency among students. The Tamil Nadu government’s structural transformation to make spoken English an integral part of the curriculum from the first standard onwards is laudable.
The primacy of speaking skills
Students with high academic scores, who enter the tertiary education with a low communicative competence, sadly, are graduating with almost same level of linguistic competence. The primary reasons for this sordid state are: a) reluctance to use the language for fear of shaming themselves; b) lack of opportunities in the class and with their own peers outside (the proficient ones form their own cliques and look down upon the English have-nots); c) prioritising core subjects over languages; and d) lack of any immediate need.
Obstacles and solutions
Obstacle 1: The physical setting
The 20x20 classroom with two columns of benches and desks and about 40 students, is hardly a place for speaking activities. The rows of classrooms on either side of the building, with doors and windows wide open, can never be an ideal environment.
Solution: Speaking skills cannot be developed by just listening, reading, or writing. Learners become speakers of English only by speaking. Moving them out to an open space, be it the terrace or the playground, will create a facilitative environment to engage in authentic communication.
Obstacle 2: Nature of tasks
The “activities” generally set in the classroom are textbook-based, which promote formal academic English, rarely relating to everyday spoken language.
Solution: Tasks must encourage learners to speak spontaneously and they have to be informal and life-oriented. They should also be Indianised, even localised. Westerners usually have continental breakfast with bacon, croissants, sunny-side up omelette, and sausages. But this would alienate our learners, whereas idly, dosa, and sambar vada would make them salivate.
Obstacle 3: Various formats
Speaking activities are mostly carried out at the individual level. A 40-minute class can provide time just for a handful of learners.
Solution : Individual presentation is perhaps the most difficult task, so it ought to be preceded by group, followed by triad and pair tasks, in that order. Individual tasks must be introduced only after sufficient practice, to minimise the phobia of speaking. Different formats offer equal opportunities to all, so, the perennial issue of articulate students dominating the class is eliminated.
Obstacle 4: Teachers’ English skills
Teachers at the primary level confess their hesitation to teach English, as they never had any real exposure. And, whatever English they learnt is lost as they never get a chance to deploy it either at home or at school. This is the insurmountable challenge encountered now — how could teachers with nearly nil linguistic competence facilitate learners to acquire it?
Solution: Incorporating multimedia contents such as films, videos, podcasts, songs and any other printed texts can be input materials for the speaking tasks so that the teacher dependency is minimised.
The writer is National Secretary, ELTAI, Professor and Head, Dept of English (Formerly), Anna University Chennai.
