LANGUAGE IN INDIA

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHER'S AWARENESS AND PERCEPTIONS
Vijay K. Sunwani, Ph.D.

INTRODUCTION

The idea for seeking an opinion of our teachers on Indian English came from English Today which in its July 2005 issue had published a report on China English. There is much similarity in the teaching and learning of English in India and in China, which I had observed during our interactions with Chinese teachers who were our course mates in MEd (TESOL) in the University of Leeds. The journal referred to has also published the questionnaires which I used to collect my data. I have adapted the questionnaire to our needs on Indian English. From being simply Indian English, it is Standard/Educated Indian English and when they talk about the variety of English most commonly used in South East Asia, Indian English is meant, so great a respectability has it achieved.

REGIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION (RIE), BHUBANESWAR

It is with this background that I decided to elicit teachers' opinion on this subject. In the RIE, Bhubaneswar we have two kinds of courses: pre service and in-service. Pre service courses are those in which prospective teachers in all school subjects are groomed. These students have no idea of classroom teaching; they are fresh from Colleges. In our English classes we have 15 students in each of the 2 parts of the B.Ed., which is of a 2-year duration in our institute. The other courses are for in-service teachers. I need not elaborate that short courses meant for them are for a group that has a vast experience in classroom teaching, with periods varying from 8 - 20 years. Since we cater to all states of the eastern region, and arrange in-service programs in many school subjects, I took the opportunity to get the views of both teachers of English and teachers of other subjects such as say, history, physics, physical education etc.

THE SAMPLE OF TEACHERS

Over a period of time I was able to gather information from 79 teachers. Of these 41 were teachers of subjects other than English, 38 were appointed as English teachers in their schools run by the state governments. Further, the responses cover a range of geographical areas: Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar, Bengal. Moreover, they are from different kinds of schools: urban, rural, tribal, private. The teachers' qualifications have not been reported since it had little to do with our objective. Suffice it to say that the survey cum interview, which I conducted personally, sometimes individually, sometimes in groups, has been a rich and rewarding experience. The analysis and discussion of the results will perhaps show us the status of English in our country and what is our teachers' opinion about it.

MANY INTERESTING REVELATIONS

Throughout our country, Indian English holds sway. However, only among a few yuppies, and the jet set group Indian English acquires a different foreign twang and it is difficult to place it in any of the categories since it has overtones of American, British and these days of Australian English since down under is the place which is attracting the young. 'Go west young man' was yesterday, today it is, 'go down under'. While the majority of the Indian populace is happy with the regional code-mixed code-switched variety of their own, this group of globe trotters lace their English with all varieties that they know. They are a crowd that stands apart, distinguishable with utterances such as let's ha' a cup of chai, or there's no gas in my gaddi, or pizza and dal is an accha combo.

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Vijay K. Sunwani

The Morphodynamics of Bengali Compounds - Decomposing Them for Lexical Processing | The Ringed Realities | In Search of Identity - A Case Study of Tamil Christians | Practicing Literary Translation: A Symposium Round 9 | The English Language Teacher's Awareness and Perceptions | Technology for Indic Scripts - A User Perspective | HOME PAGE OF JULY 2006 ISSUE | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR