Lessons from History of English language learning in India

Dr Lt. S.Ravibalan, Associate Professor & Head, Mrs S.Supriya, Assistant Professor,

Department of English, S.I.V.E.T.College, Chennai 73.

sraba45@gmail.com & skrsh2006@gmail.com

The word “Change” always by default echoes a negative tone. It may be fatalism in an individual’s
life, pandemics, epidemics and wars to the society or even to the whole world. But in reality, a
change is needed in all aspects of one’s life. Change is inevitable in Language learning and teaching
also. Language learning has found its roots in this world out of necessity and English teachers have
played a vital role by responding to immediate demands posed by globalisation, multilingualism or
even digitalisation. Devious methods, frameworks and approaches have been brought into effect in
English language learning. The Change in English language learning has pushed the youth into real-
life internationalised society and has given better prospects in the modern corporate sectors. The
demands of the labour market are a great challenge to India because of its population and a real
serving economy for the mass. It has created a lacuna within a wide range of student communities in
India.

The teaching methodology of English as a remote language needs a summary of the historical
developments it had over the last 250 years. This could be supported through periods instead of
method s which have dominated professional thinking for the last six decades. The current
conception of confronting English is quite reflecting a USA-centric perspective but of course, the
United Kingdom version of history alone helps to understand the explicit geographical
contextualization and a replacement direction for the history of English as a remote Language (EFL).
Since the 1900s pedagogy and the field of teaching methods has been active. New approaches and
methods proliferated throughout the 20th century. Some achieved wide levels of acceptance and
recognition but were replaced by methodological orthodoxies like the Direct Method, Audio- lingual,
and also the Situational Approach and Communicative pedagogy. Later in the 1970s alternatives to
mainstream approaches evolved with little implication in learning and teaching. They were The Silent
Way, Counselling-Learning, Suggestopedia, and Total Physical Response, Multiple Intelligences,
Neurolinguistic Programming, and the Lexical Approach.

1. The Classical Period (1750–1880)

The Classical Method of teaching in Latin and Greek was predominant and served because of the
instructional Language. English played a comparatively part. By 1800 the utilitarian use of Latin and
Greek as the medium of instruction and communication lost their importance and the native
vernaculars dominated across the continent. The quality classroom or the Grammar-Translation
Method was prevalent. It helped students to read the literature of the foreign language, with little
practical outcomes in conversational fluency.

2. The Reform Period (1880–1920)

The influence of the new science of phonetics started with pedagogy and linguistics. This era
promoted the teaching of auditory communication because of the main pedagogical priority that laid
the inspiration for all language activity. It Associated methods of teaching like The Natural Method,
The Berlit Methods z method and also the Direct Method framed by Sauveur, Heness and Vietor.

Natural Method: Given Text provided all the detailed classwork on pronunciation and therefore the
oral/ communicating activity of intensive question-and-answer pattern evolved. Grammar was
treated inductively and was restricted to the language within the text. The teachers and professional
peer groups accepted Viëtor’s ideas in a full-scale that spanned across the European continent. This
Movement was in vogue among language teachers by the tip of the century. The Berlitz Method
came about because of chance, specific circumstances, and a creative mind. While teaching in
Providence, Maximilian Berlitz hired Joly, a young Frenchman as his assistant. However, upon Joly’s
arrival in the U.S., Berlitz found out that his new assistant did not speak a single word of English.

Berlitz Method:

Berlitz on account of his ill health appointed an assistant to teach English to his French students. But
his assistant was bereft of English words and their nuances. Joly was asked to use gestures to act out
his meaning, encouraged to use vocabulary in context so that his French students could begin to
understand the meaning. This led to a completely new and highly effective method of
communicating in an animated exchange manner.

Direct Method: - Direct Method that branched out from Reform Methods helped the teachers to
follow Viëtor ideas. They used the mother tongue to clarify new vocabulary. However, translation
into the language was firmly rejected within the front by Berlitz. The confluence of faculty teaching
and adult instruction under the ‘Direct Method’ banner was utilized in the first twentieth century.
Reformers’ ideas were forgotten in favour of ideas developed for communicative teachers working
privately in language schools. In short, the maternal language was proscribed — assuming that the
teacher knew least in the slightest degree.

The Scientific Period (1920–70)

The scientific basis for teaching had its associated teaching methods devised by Palmer, Hornby and
Fries. They were Associated Teaching Methods: The Oral Method (Palmer), The Multiple Line of
Approach (Palmer), The Situational Approach (Hornby), The Oral Approach (Fries) and also the
Audio-lingual Method.

The Oral Method and also the Multiple Line of Approach -Harold E. Palmer, despite being
influenced by Berlitz, placed innovative courses on methods of acquiring knowledge and teaching
and writing through his three ground-breaking books (Palmer 1917; 1921a; 1921b). None of those
was treated with normal pedagogy and wasn’t specifically directed at English teachers,

The Situational Approach and Audio-lingual and Audio-Visual Methods: - A.S. Hornby in association
with the land Council started the journal West Germanic language teaching that pointed to the
importance of English as a remote or second language. The Situational Approach enunciated a
meaning with no pictorial support through exact or appropriate body language or gestures. It
normally explains an imaginary situation using gestures and hoping to get the scholars to get the
idea that’s been conveyed.
The invention of tape recorders within the USA enabled the assembly of the language laboratory for
intensive drilling and introducing the Audio-lingual Method. This method incorporated technology
into the language and served as an antithesis to meaningful teaching, despite their credentials.

The Communicative Period (1970–2000+)

Around 1970 Communicative instruction or ‘The Communicative Approach’ was geared toward real-
life communication. Other related initiatives like English for Specific Purposes projects and also the
development of English for tutorial Purposes began to exist. The new types of communicative
activity chimed well with the title ‘Doing things with words’ of J. L. Austin’s 1955 lecture series. “The
programmes explicitly aimed to arrange students for the linguistic demands inherent in their plans
for the longer term — that's, everything from practical job training schemes to high-level university
studies.”

Given this history, the doubt prevails even in an exceedingly common mind. Will today’s virtual and
augmented reality and academic developments are to make any difference in the field of teaching
and learning?

The difference is in its subtleties as technology must or must be used differently. It should help
promote inquiry, increase collaboration, give challenge-based learning experiences, and, above all,
give students opportunities to form – digital stories, audio tours, annotated texts, virtual
encyclopaedias, and a bunch of other projects.

English in India

India's oldest educational institutions placed a premium on Vedic education. The traditional Indian
Gurukulam System transmitted the teachings orally. Education was viewed as a continual process
throughout a learner's life.

The early education system in India rapidly deteriorated as a result of crusader invasions. Islamic
influences dominated traditional learning institutions, and therefore the Indian education system
encompassed the topics of Geography, Administration, Law, and Arabic Mathematics. British created
a scientific system of upper education, and extra subjects like languages, literature, history, and
philosophy were added. The historical development can be divided into two periods: Pre-
Independence Period and Post- Independence Period. The major incidents during pre-
independence period are: 1. Charter Act 2. The East -West Controversy 3.Macaulay’s Minute 4. The
Downward Filtration Theory. Post-Independence Period included Associate Official Language and
The Three Language Formula.

The primary objective of those educational institutions was to provide English-speaking working-
class individuals with British administrative services, the army, and commerce. British cultural
colonialism opened the trail for university education in India, originally through the East Indies
Company, then through the British parliament, and, finally, directly under British authority.

In a country like India, many of us speak English as our first, second, third, or perhaps fourth
language. Students who wished to learn English are allowed to practice speaking English through
academic and company training portals of our country. Many English learners in India spend their
whole lives learning English but fail to master the language.
The pressing demands and living styles have made learning English create a brand new class
structure in India. Though our Nation’s constitution upholds a secular India, it's got alleged to have
many caste oriented living styles and cultures. But this caste, ESC- English speaking Caste, has
evolved and has created systematic discrimination among the scholars and learners. The elite and
middle classes prefer to put their wards in private schools with English as their medium of
instruction while the poor and marginalised send their wards to the Government schools of their
tongue prevalent in their states. Even the ruling elite have mandated that fluency in English must be
brought into effect into the portal of upper education and to an extent within the government jobs.
The rationale behind India’s massive push for English is our belief that it's a quick-fix solution. It’s a
magic wended mantra and also the only resolution for a dignified and sophisticated living. English is
projected and assumed to shut the skill gap, offer employment opportunities and set the country on
its path to greatness. But there are nations like china, japan, Russia and other Third World nations
who have given importance to their evolved official language and have stood to the waves of
economic times. But in Indian society, a person’s socioeconomic status runs parallel along with his or
her fluency within the English language. In short, the English language is off late considered as a
dignified breadwinner’s language or Father’s tongue.

English has become the language of the elite and governance in India, even putting aside the initial
Macaulay’s charter /Minutes on Education (1835). Indians believe that their nation’s prosperity, and
their own, is wholly dependent upon not just learning English, but exclusively learning it as a primary
language.

Journey of English

“India likes Gods. And Englishmen like posing as Gods. The land language was a part of the pose and
power. Indians accepted it, too.” (Kachru, 1986, p. 5)

It originated through influenced travelled elite who entered the nation and boomed within the
centre class that was hired by multinational companies, thereby paving way for the new upper
bourgeoisie within the economical strata in society and eventually got trickled to the overwhelming
majority of destitute with an unaffordable private English education. Many states in India have
attempted to form English as the medium of instruction for all schools to assuage the strain of the
poor. However, the shortage of teachers who can even speak English is surreal. The bulk of the
teaching community preferred to speak the themes or their subjects in their respective mother
tongues.

The statistics on English speaking ability tends to be unreliable for many political reasons. About 30%
of India’s population at varying degrees have gained some semblance of reading and writing
aptitude. The reality is that any person’s development begins with education and it stems from
language. This language is a mode of communication. But a nation’s like out determines and defines
one’s identity. The books one reads, the broadcasting programs one watches, the ideas one is
exposed to, the values one holds, one’s interests, and one’s career opportunities are purely
associated with the foreign language mimics.

The push for English in primary schools within the last decade is at the present a component of the
matter. It prevails now through a simple theory.-Darwin’s theory this theory of the survival of the
fittest is brought into language learning’s that contains a link between job opportunities and
economic success. A people language has produced many several urban working classes while lower-
middle-class parents invest their hard-earned money in Cam rated English-medium schools. Some
are of uncertain quality. The very fact that India’s pedagogy system is creating voluminous graduates
who are unemployable speaks of the necessity to enhance the standard of education within the
country. Teaching portals have transformed themselves as a strong tool to make a knowledge-based
information society of the 21st Century. No doubt, Indian professionals’ great demand itself signifies
the inherent strength of the Indian educational system. But the history of the latest educational
technologies is essentially a history of unrealized promise.

Colleges were claimed to be society’s chief mechanism for individual advancement, upward mobility,
economic process, and social equity. But it hasn’t currently fulfilled the mission on account of
mimetic isomorphic patterns of the developed native English speaking countries. The sad fact is that
almost all institutions weren't designed with non-traditional students in mind- students from low-
income and underrepresented groups. Many institutions still offer an education that lacks the
flexibility in curriculum and support structures that a lot of non-traditional students must put up.
Meanwhile, the fastest-growing market segment – continuing and professional education – remains
underserved. It’s proved that a country’s overall development is usually supported by its people and
its resources. People play the foremost important role in shaping the status of the country and
education is to blame for shaping an individual. Therefore, education plays a vital role in
technological developments and may also impart various vocational skills, values, and awareness.

Problems and Predicaments:

We believe that to show and learn a language, there is a need for highly skilled instructors /tutors.
Unfortunately in some primary schools, a coach (tutor) is assigned to show all subjects. That results
in an aversion and perversion among students towards the education of the English language. Within
the name of a category as a teacher, such teachers’ language pedagogy is rather thin on the bottom.
Most teachers teaching English can do little rather than a quiet read from a textbook. This pedagogy
is decorated and demands even more relevant notes or bazaar guides. English is taught as an issue
to the scholars who are comfortable in their natural language. The teacher is also qualified and has a
minimum of a decade of teaching experience but many fail to talk error-free sentences. This is often
a true “medium confusion” with “teaching done neither in English nor in his/her natural language.”

English teaching in government schools, rural and semi-urban government colleges in most of the
states in India are done with the medium of instruction in English. The classroom language is that the
local language or first language. Lack of confidence and improper training within the language has
led to differentiation in teaching. They could be experts in their material but the communication
level decides the catering levels and wishes.

Educators and educationists have long been attentive to this example. Corruption may explain the
matter to an extent, but within the main teachers’ qualifications certification trumps learning.

State governments have begun to realise a people deficit and are attempting to mend the matter
with short in-service training programmes conducted either by the British Council or by CSR
(corporate social responsibility) divisions of business corporations. But in point of fact, the skill levels
needed to be a coach of a language aren't so easily or quickly acquired. Their incompetency level in
communicating has left the kids to doubt and is inclined to reticence inside a category. They’re
forced towards a sham understanding of their lessons or just copying from the blackboard and
memorising them. This deprives a toddler of proper education. Many children find that they need to
leave their schooling without the fundamentals of old-fashioned reading, writing and arithmetic, in
any language.

Learning a language, any language, is about gaining a skill that’s necessary to realize an education.
It’s not an education in itself. English is proposed as a corrective against existing social
disadvantages. But these disadvantages accentuate obsession, pride, complex and eventually to
reclusion. English in India has ignored what's impossible to be ignored. Policymakers both at the
national and state levels should reverse these trends by rethinking mass education from the angle of
youngsters and their socioeconomic situations.

Now, all Indian children are forced into a faculty system designed for a little proportion of the
population that has an inter-generational education advantage. But the need is an education system
that helps them acquire language skills too soon, and learn in a very manner that may allow them to
shut the gap with the educationally advantaged.

Learning a second language isn't easy especially Learning English as a second language even outside
of an English-speaking country. A learner faces many issues in learning English as a distant language,
especially in learning English as a second language. Both learners and therefore the learner struggle
with notable difficulties. The difficulties are found hidden both inside the learner and learned.

1. Unqualified Teachers: - There's a mismatch between the instructors teaching style and the
learner’s expectations of how the subject is going to be conducted. The teacher’s mind-set denotes a
system of non-public beliefs, assumptions, knowledge and attitudes on account of his previous
experiences with school, teaching and learning. Its inventory is organised systematically and
hierarchically, but its contents might not always be explicit or conscious. The teacher’s mind-set is
accessible for reflection and awareness-raising. Teachers’ actions and interpretations of classroom
events are supported by their mind-sets. Teachers must possess certain qualities, like openness,
flexibility; self-criticism and a way of adventurousness (Bach 2013, 305). They also need efficacy and
competence orientation, learner orientation and support, promotion of active and independent
learning, variation in methods and social constellations, consolidation and intelligent practising and
therefore the last with sensitivity and adaptiveness.

2. Limited Learning Environments- Limited academic skills within the language are prevalent
because of limited previous education; the shortage of effective study habits; interference of a
learner’s linguistic communication, particularly if the learner is employed to a non-English alphabet.

3. Recalcitrant attitude among students- The learner, whose first and second languages were non-
alphabetical, had never been taught the sound/letter rules system of English. Mere rendition of the
alphabetical pronunciation is rampant. This plays a pivotal role in poor classroom attendance (both
in online as well as offline modes), fickled motivation to find out and practise English, and eventually
to a lack of progress.

4. Excessive usage of linguistic communication within the Classroom – A learner comes from a
language background that doesn't use phonemic coding like an alphabetic/spelling or
phonological/orthographic rule system that governs sounds and their representation by letters and
letter sets or sequences in English words and lacks practising it outside the classroom. (Henry, 1988,
as cited in Ganschow et al., 1998). Krug, Shafer, Dardick, Magalis, and Parente (2002)

5. Students Become Too Dependent on the Teacher. Students become too obsessed with the
teacher. Teachers of English are viewed with demi-god status. They need to begin to teach with a
contextual perspective and also the manner or method which is to be used for implementing a
student-centric method. But mostly it gets nullified. The Teachers of English fail to stoop down from
their high notional pedestal of data transmitters and feel their primary job isn't to show but to
dictate notes. This has resulted in the dependency of scholars/students on teachers.

6. Domination and Demoralisation of strong students within the Class. These learners may also
bring complex psychology and multi-layered personalities to the training of the new language, both
within the classroom and within the natural environment.

To conclude, the policy planners in India did not verify the coordination between the academic
planners and also the teachers and it's become a true bane to tutorial planning in India. The
unilateral decisions by the govt. have narrowed down the teachers to show in situations where
they're forced to follow syllabus design, materials production and examination reforms. But when it
comes to a reformation generally they baulk. Teachers have felt a kind of frustrating experience in
teaching through the traditional textbooks which have made them be mere dictators of Notes. The
change within the pecking order from teacher-centric to student-centric has made their resistance in
themselves. The choice of the policymakers to introduce the new media into the classroom is
laudable but the hurried manner in its execution is a smaller amount desired because the teachers at
the grass-root levels weren’t involved. The major concern of future English learners education rests
solely on the teachers to introduce them to a variety of teaching methods appropriate for balancing
out content demands, teaching objectives and also the needs of any group of learners. Similarly,
future teachers should be familiarised with the broadest possible repertoire of methods for critically
reflecting on their methodological practice. They have to bear in mind efficient time management
and classroom leadership, know the way to form a productive atmosphere and know-how strategies,
implement versatile motivation and last but not least a transparent structure with clarity in catering
to the requirements of the scholars.

There is hope yet. Every cloud encompasses a solace. In this case, teachers who have attended a
course of study in their subject might need a kind of escapade from the realities of their jobs. But the
glimmer of sunshine at the tip of the tunnel of future English education is to achieve success by
bringing within the media into the classroom. It shall demonstrate within the near future that the
media will be made a component of one’s teaching practices despite the usage percentages.
Politicians and policymakers may well be worried about the falling standards of English in India and
particularly when it's about learning the language. They may say that we are in dire straits but”
When it involves teaching English, we don't seem to be in desperate straits as we are to possess
people teaching English with a pass.”

Citations

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Teaching 4(4): 98–103; 4(5): 121–28; 4(6): 150–56.
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Berlitz, M. D. 1898. The Berlitz Method for Teaching Modern Languages, English Part. 1st book, 10th
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Palmer, Harold E. 1921b. The Oral Method of Teaching Languages. A Monograph on Conversational
Methods. Cambridge: Heffer.

Palmer, Harold E. 1924. Memorandum on Problems of English Teaching in the Light of a New Theory.
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Palmer, H. E. 1925. The Classical Method and the Direct Method. Bulletin of the Institute for
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Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Krishnaswamy, N. & Sriraman, T. (1994). English teaching in India. Madras: T. R. Publications.

Krishnaswamy, N. & Burde, A. S. (1998). The politics of Indians’ English: Linguistic colonialism and the
expanding English empire. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Carter, K. (1990). Teachers’ knowledge and learning to teach. In W. R. Houston (Ed.), Handbook of
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