The recent news that China may soon have more English speakers thanIndia has startling implications. English was seen as one of the few relative advantages we had over China. These findings come from the British Council study, ‘English Next India’ by David Graddol. I reviewed the study and found it more important (and far more readable) than the much talked about but obsolete Liberhan report and other pointless documents our government dishes out (and the media passionately reacts to) on a regular basis.
The desire for English in India is underestimated. English is not a trend, fad or an upmarket pursuit. English helps me face an interview, read the best academic books available and access the world offered by the Internet. Without English, progress for a middle-class youth is heavily stunted. However, the state and attitude towards English education leaves much to be desired.
Let’s talk about the state first. There is a tiny minority of English speakers who are extraordinarily fluent in the language, probably more than most Britons. That tiny minority is also millions of people in a country as large as India. These people had parents who spoke English, had access to good English medium schools — typically in big cities. They then gained proficiency early on, which in turn helped them to consume English products such as newspapers, books and films, thus increasing their command over the language. English is so instinctive to them that even some of their thoughts are in this language. These people, the E1s if i may call them, are much in demand. Irrespective of their graduation specialization, they can get a frontline job across various industries — hospitality, airlines, media, banking and marketing companies.
However, apart from the E1s, there are a large number of E2s, probably 10 times the E1s, who are technically familiar with the language and even understand it. However, their English communication is not at a professional level. If they sit in an interview conducted by E1s, they will come across as incompetent, even though they may be equally intelligent, creative or hardworking. They cannot comfortably read English newspapers, thus denied the chance to upgrade their language skills. They know English but have not been taught in an environment that facilitates this virtuous cycle of continuous improvement through consumption of English products. Thus, while the difference in English level of an E1 and E2 may not be too different at age 10, by age 20 it is so stark that an E1 can get many jobs while an E2 won’t even be shortlisted. For lack of proper teaching, an entire world is closed to the E2s. After E2s, there are people who don’t have access to English at all. These people need to begin with basic learning. However, E2s are an amazing number of youth across the country who just need that extra push to take them to the next level.
I’ve sat with the management of over 50 colleges, many in smaller towns, in the last 18 months. I distinctly remember an MBA college in Indore. The principal, an IIT graduate, told me, “My biggest concern is that my students don’t know how to speak proper English. Sometimes I wonder, should I teach them finance and accounts, or should we just take basic English grammar classes. For at interview time, no matter how well they can analyze a company, they will not be comfortable putting a sentence together. What were their schools doing? And why should a postgraduate MBA college be doing this?” That said, he hired 10 teachers for his 200 students for the sole job of teaching proper, MNC interview-ready English.
To convert the E2s to E1s, a complete overhaul of the English school curriculum is required. We can’t count on the teachers alone as we simply don’t have enough good ones. We must give students, even the senior secondary ones, simple, relevant and fun English course materials that they enjoy reading, watching or learning from, so they get into the self-driven virtuous cycle of consuming English products. Forcing them to read antiquated or convoluted books because some PhD in literature classifies them as good is the same as giving a primary school student a Nobel thesis in the name of science. It will scare the child and kill any curiosity for further exploration. This is a fixable problem and i hope the SCERTs and NCERT are going to pay attention to address it.
Apart from the state of English, the second hindrance is the attitude. There are two kinds — first, the snobbery. A section of people believe that English should be a high-class affair. Elitism and English are linked, and people who speak good English look down on people who don’t. Elitism hurts the inclusion process, and without inclusion the nation as a whole can never progress.
The second attitude arises when English is seen as a threat to Hindi or other local languages. It is not, but this needs to be communicated with sensitivity. Local languages are neglected, and we must do more to support them. However, that is a separate issue. English is not competing with the vernacular — but it is a skill for middle class youth to rise in the modern world. Hindi is your mother, English is your wife — and it is possible to love both at the same time.
As a developing nation, English is one of the few tools available to make Indians take their rightful place in the world. Let’s make sure we keep it sharp and share it wide.
December 6, 2009 (The Times of India)