The Role of English in India

Paper: 12 English Language Teaching – 1

KAUSHAL DESAI

Kaushaldesai123@gmail.com

PG Enrollment No: BU13141001177

MA Sem.: 3

Roll No: 12

Department of English, Maharaja Krishnakumarsinghji
Bhavnagar University
Bhavnagar(Gujarat-India)

Abstract 

The role of English in India is now conducted with new generation and English as a globe in whole the world e pretend to learn and think. English is a skill to get a healthy job and survive in the international world. We cannot ignore the way that the English language has emerged as a powerful agent for change in India. India is a multilingual country but the spread and growth of English language is now on the top. And in India we see English education is now expanding very futile way. ELT is the curriculum that gives us techniques of this process and how in India it is become fashion and the thing of learning. When SLA comes in learners of English, that time we have to discuss the globalization world and one cannot ignore the world of E-learning. After that it is also necessary to include the term of CALL that now is so important in role of English that L2. TESOL is the base in which English in India is on the trek to call as Role of English in India is educated fruitful with it.

Keywords: ELT, SLA, TESOL, Skills, Education, Globalization, E-learning.

English is the language that can do people to enable to give stand in the world. After highlighting certain theoretical aspects of the notion “objective of language teaching,” we discuss the functionally determined sub categorization of languages into first language, second language, foreign language and also classical language. We then focus on the objectives of teaching English as a second Language in India. her is some terms that comes in our way to discuss.

♦ L2: Second Language

♦ ELCS: English Language Communication Skills

♦ TESOL: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages

♦ SLA:  Second Language Acquisition

            English in India today is a symbol of people’s aspirations for quality in education and fuller participation in national and international life. The level of introduction of English has now become a matter of political response to people’s aspirations, rendering almost irrelevant an academic debate on the merits of a very early introduction.  The global objectives of language teaching can be defined as helping children learn a language or also languages to perform for a variety of functions. These range from the sociable use of language for phatic communion and a network of communicative uses to its use at the highest level of “Cognition”, “Catharsis” and “Self expression”. Underlying these functions are two fundamental functions: helping children learn how to ask questions, the most important intellectual ability man has yet developed, and helping children use this language effectively in different social networks. (Vyas)

            Here one can say that ater the colonial era, English was used throughout Indian by very few speakers and Hindi was still preferred. Since English was the reminder of the colonial power of England, there was a resistance against its spread and use during this time. English could not be the symbol of national identity due to its foreign and colonial nature. The tendency to replace English with an Indian language was part of the nationalistic ideology since the 1920's. However, this tendency didn’t succeed because of the international salience of English. A large number of educated people spoke English. While English is regarded as an official language alongside Hindi nowadays, many Indians do not accept it as the national language.

Now, if we talk about four skills so;

Each of the four skills: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, is composed of a hierarchy of sub skills what is necessary is to identify the sub-skills that are to be strengthened and expanded in the process of teaching a first language, a second language or foreign language. In India we classes are also working on English language as it is call as SCOPE class. The objective of teaching a language or languages is not simply to make the learner the major language skill but to enable the learners to play their communicative roles effectively and to select language according to the roles they are playing. Every social person is a bundle of personae, a bundle of parts, and each part having its lines. If you do not know your lines, you are no use in the play.” A well qualified, energetic and inventive teacher can be a “living” model and act as the best audio visual aid.

The use of English in India is on the basis of the social needs of people. There are four distinct functions of English in India: auxiliary, supplementary, complementary, and equative.

♦ Auxiliary function: English, sometimes called a “library language ”, is used primarily for acquiring knowledge rather than communication which leads to the promotion of passive bilinguals.

♦ Supplementary function: English is used for restricted needs such as daily routine conversations with tourists. Mainly used by unstable bilinguals.

♦ Complementary function: English is used along with the mother language in social contexts. This function results in creating stable bilinguals.

♦ Equative function: English is an alternative language in all domains. Ambilinguals are the users of this function.

            Actually, The English language has been localized to match the needs and experiences of Indian people which are called Indianization. English plays a significant role in the educational system and national life of Indians. Now a day I can say that during the post-colonial era in India, the face of teaching English has changed. Some schools made students speak in English. While in other schools, English was taught only as a subject within the curriculum. At university as well as post-graduate level, English was the medium of instruction and examination. 

            In the concepts of modernization and internationalism were invoked and English became the language of both modernization and internationalism and by implication the Indian languages became associated with’ tradition’ which by definition was assumed to be anti-modern and backward looking. Once this was taken to be true, the next step in the argument was to define the role and relationship of English vis-à-vis the Indian languages. This need gave birth to ‘language-planning’ which was in fact the linguistic analogue of a particular politics.’ Language planning’ operated with a whole set of lexical weaponry that gradually created a new mythology. Major Indian languages become in this discipline,’ Regional Languages’-and even Hindi is a regional language which has been accorded the status of an official language of the Union and some status.

Now, I want to discuss about few matters and that is we can see in our present life of English. English, the other official language did not suffer from this disability. Its major strength is argued to be the fact that is cannot be identified with anyone region and therefore, English is one pan-Indian’ language that would promote National Integration, as regional would. So while the Indian languages, as regional languages, English a ‘foreign’ language, promote unity and integration. Centralism has an inherent appeal for the intellectuals at a time when an impatient unitary centralism was the dominant political ideology. To further buttress this argument, a whole mythology got built up around the role of English in which the central metaphor is the metaphor of the’ window’:

 ♦ English is the language of knowledge (science and technology),

 ♦ English is the language of liberal, modern thinking

 ♦ English is our window on the world

 ♦ English is the link language

 ♦ English is the library language; English is the language of reason

 ♦ English is the lingua-franca.

            Further, we are going to discuss about teaching techniques and its role in India. Teaching, shifting theoretical inputs, wide disparity of practices in different parts of the country, and lack of agreement about the desirable principles and methods are some of major problems that the English teaching has faced all along First, there has been little agreement in attitudes to language –learning, on question such as.

I) Extent and use of language drills.

ii) The use of simplified texts or specifically prepared texts or specially compiled texts.

iii) Amount and range of required reading to be prescribed

iv) Role of grammar in language learning and whether grammar should be at all taught, and lastly.

v) The error-approach the whole philosophy of ‘errors’ and teaching as essentially a re-medical process. There is also considerable confusion about instructional objectives. Basically it is difficult really to distinguish clearly the differing levels of for the first language and second language, uniformly. That is, the expected levels of attainment in the case of an Indian second language and English as second language cannot be the same.

Again, even for English, one can order the skills in different orders of priority! Should it be ‘listening – reading – speaking – writing or ‘reading – listening – speaking? Even when the efforts have been made to delimit the second language objective, one is not convinced by the recommendation, because the reasoning behind them it is not very clear. Also, sometimes the discrete categories get up are not really discrete language. Consider for example the competence in comprehension. Three levels of competence may be distinguished:

a) Gathering only information about the facts.

b) Developing crucial understanding of the ideas, the learner comes across when he listens or reads.

c) Creative understanding of ideas and values and their creative interpretation.

            In the conclusion part I can say that Trough other language the individual level English continues to be ‘the language of opportunity’ and ‘the language of upward social nobility’. The role of English in India is vast and its become growth of the knocking door in the whole world and we can take examples of writers like Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi and many more who make impact on English writing and now it is trend to read big novels too. So that’s a good sigh. But if we talk particularly about English so as we discussed so many things so our attempt to deal with is topic is clear.  

Works Cited

Brown, G., and G. rule. 1983. Discourse Analysis, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. 1973. A Communicative Grammar of English, London: Longman.

Vyas, Foram. Teaching English as Second language in India. 2011. <http://foramvyas401011.blogspot.in/2011/11/teaching-english-as-second-language-in.html>.