“Teaching of English: A plea for practical Attitude”-R.K.SINGH

“Teaching of English: A plea for practical Attitude”-R.K.SINGH

My views on “Teaching of English:  A plea for practical Attitude”-R.K.SINGH

     English in India is a potential national resource.it is important to develop tolerance and positive attitudes towards English

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

♦ 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.

            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.

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 the link language

 ♦ English is the lingua-franca.