English for status

Opinion
By Vijaya Jayasuriya

'There are disadvantages'

'That's fine!

Status is a strange requirement of the human mind. Wealth, luxury vehicles, big houses and even expensive – looking clothes are symbols of status. 'One upmanship' is directly linked to status, in which people vie with each other to get ahead in abilities, possessions and even looks.

The quotation above is a fine example of how the understanding of a statement has ruined the status of the interlocutor due to lack of knowledge in English. Mr. H.A.R.A. Manis, described in his 'Opinion' letter titled 'why English?' ('The Island: 1st instant) how he had been dumbfounded by a 'bogus accent' assumed by a young female over the phone. It was after a mild reproof by Mr. Manis (the very name of a highly-regarded teacher during our schooling days) that the girl had reverted to her senses and switched to her normal accent of English. I myself have come across today's young people who painstakingly try to assume an artificial (sometimes American) accent, clearly with a view to impressing (or bamboozling) the listener.

This particular trend adopted by our youth today, similar to other tricks like displaying material supremacy, is an attempt at gaining status vis-a-vis those whom they encounter in speech. How effective is this, is the all important question having high relevance English education, for which parents today leave no stones unturned. What kind of end should the ordinary student pursue to learn this internationally top-most language?

Aims of learning

There is little wonder why young people have a tendency to long for the glory attached to a high proficiency in English. We, in our youth, spent hours with friends seated on rocks by the sea trying to communicate in English, using the modicum of words and phrases we had managed to master, by reading books and newspapers and even tuning in to radio, our sole medium of mass communication as the television was not even heard of at the time.

At a time (during the fifties and early sixties) when Sri Lankan society was well-known for fluent speakers of English, we could gain impetus for this exercise the. There was one Mr. Perera who never failed to speak to anyone he happened to meet using his rapid flow of English. If we chanced to travel in a passenger bus to school (or back) very often this interesting individual got into it and began to talk to us in English, which we barely understood and responded in Sinhala when our smattering of English failed to respond to him. Why we liked this gentleman was that he tried to correct us like a teacher when we made howlers. Much later we happened to learn he had been an estate superintendent in his young days, and was hobnobbing with foreigners while on duty.

Another instance of fluent English speech, bringing status for the speaker in spite of his stigma as a madman is the case of 'Silva pissa' living in our village during the fifties when we were boys in early teenage. He wore clean white coat and trousers and walked fast along streets displaying his fluency in English, often speaking about what he read in English newspapers. People had a high regard for him as they got him to translate letters and telegrams (liberally used in those days) they received in English, and gave him food which he ate seated on a ledge outside houses.

Fluency

Even when entering the teacher training college, we were only able to manage a simple conversation while having had adequate proficiency in the language to pass the entrance examination; though ironically, practising teachers who had entered with no such exam were very fluent speakers of English, thanks to whom we improved our speaking skills.

For fluency in English its proficiency is indispensable. The tragedy for the younger generation today is that they try to replace fluency with absurd accents in a ridiculous endeavour to be prominent among other people, but fail to impress those who 'know the ropes' as it were.

Fluency in a language is really the effortless flow of one's expression of ideas in that language, which primarily requires a comprehensive repertoire of the linguistic resources of that language, namely its stock of words and sentence structures at the basic levels. In fact, almost up to 'O' Level in the school English courses, what is taught is a basic stock of these sentence patterns mainly as coming under the tense forms, together with some restricted hand-picked examples, which the students are compelled to master by oral repetition prompted by the teacher ie. 'He was appointed as a clerk ', ‘They were appointed as nurses' etc etc.

Literature

Those who attained status through the study of English are essentially having at least the first degree with English as a subject. Studying English as a subject beyond GAQ (General Arts Qualifying) level necessitates the scholar to make a thorough study of various portions of English literature, i.e. some parts of its poetry and fiction, exclusively works by English authors.

Reading mainly the fiction books-novels and short stories – one gets acquainted with the kind of language intimately relating to human life, i.e. how people behave and talk. These invariably familiarise the reader with ways and means of expression in a broad spectrum of ideas in the target language. The more important aspect of the study of literature, is that the student is expected to express himself by the use of the same vocabulary items as well as sentence patterns which compels him to master the language.

Wider reading

Study of literature, unlike any other subject under any of the wide range of courses, instils in the student a deep desire to read more and more of the kind of books not only by the authors he had already studied, but also a vast number of other writers in the same country.

This happens because the uncommon nature the subject of literature in any language, has the fascination of the story-line that makes the reader continue reading, as well as the analysis of a wide range of characters which no other subject offers.

What made us young boys in the fifties read fiction by Sinhalese authors such as W.A. Silva and Martin Wickramasinghe no doubt encouraged us, with the proficiency in English gained later, to pursue the study of English novels by leading writers such as Charles Dickens.

Reading serious literary works with effective character portrayal is a study of human nature which is what learning literature at higher levels requires, but even those with lesser literary quality, provides ample cope for the reader to learn linguistic resources like vocabulary and sentence patterns that are essentially bound up with real life communication. For example a sentence in a dialogue like 'she pleaded with him not to leave her behind, yet he refused her plea and left her in the lurch' enriches the reader's repertoire so that he finds himself automatically expressing his own ideas using such resource thus: ie, 'I don't plead with her for help; 'They reused to help me etc etc.

Lack of reading

This secret of how to become a fluent speaker by voluminous reading (together with oral practice as well) is a valuable guideline that our younger generation has pathetically missed out in their pursuit of status gained through English.

The mental picture that still lingers in us adults, of a good number of passengers ensconced on their seats in long-distance buses and even in those plying within Colombo city, deeply engrossed in reading a book has turned out today to be a thing of the past, a spectacle only those fortunate enough to live those days were able to witness. Also, they were avid readers of newspapers almost daily which they carried thrust in their armpit if not in a travelling bag. Though today’s younger generation will painstakingly pursue information technology by means of modern gadgetry, they hardly ever touch a novel or a short-story book.

What they sadly neglect are the two resources provided by reading literature – the wide range of language resources directly linked to real life, and also the valuable chance of repeatedly encountering these in wide reading, making them inculcated in memory to flow out rapidly making the readers fluent a speakers of the language which in its wake brings to them the much-sought after social status!