Developing Language Skills in English: Prospects and Problems

Darwin’s theory of evolution could perhaps be well extended to languages – while other European languages like Greek turned more and more concentrated in influence if not really obsolete, English, surviving as the fittest, has only evolved. The world today is a global village, and English is its vernacular. If mathematics is the language of science, English, certainly is the dialect in which scientists put their mathematical language forms. Board room discussions of corporate directors to a fire-and-riposte rally in the interview room, English is omnipresent. Good English speech makes an educated man urbane, and a rich man sophisticated. It’s a ubiquitous utility vested into panoply of uses; earning a nine-to-five subsistence for an average IT industry worker to being the elitist nucleus of a connoisseur of English literature. 

When I was young, my parents sung in unison with my teachers about the importance of Mathematics and Science – they wanted me to be an engineer; and those subjects alone would make me one. I was never particularly encouraged to develop reading habits. I remember the first time I brought a novel home from the school library; it was Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Dare I spend more than a couple of hours at stretch reading the novel; I would find my mother glare sternly, declaring that it was enough and I better resume my study. In hindsight, now I understand their reasons; literature was merely ‘story books’ for them; and what treasures did stories hold for a family which constantly struggled through the banalities of middle class life, counting upon its progeny to bring a better sense of well-being? The world of imagination, as they believed, was for leisure; and leisure was a luxury for the ambitious middle class. Rather, they were beckoned by more meaningful subjects like mathematics. It made me queasy to see that my peers and classmates believed the same, as did my teachers. The student who scored highest in mathematics was held as the brightest, the favorite of our class teacher. English was taught and studied merely for the matter of memorizing answers and reproducing them in the examination to get marks. When I topped my class obtaining the highest marks in mathematics and physics, my parents rewarded me with a bicycle; perhaps they never seemed to notice that I always got the highest in English. Thus grew the most of us, great at churning sums and solving equations, although mediocre in communication skills, particularly so in English. While the former got my friends, myself included, into engineering and medical colleges; my peers who used to smugly sit in center of group photographs as toppers, today are faced with a ghastly realization that their head start has begun to run out and something that they always escaped from has not only caught up with them, but is thwarting their ambitions! Having sat clueless through placement group discussions has made them frustrated, and they have grown very self-conscious about how they have to search for words in a formal conversation, which to their loathing, is always in English. They need others to help them write their resume and rationale, and they hate to climb up the stage to address a gathering because they end up twisting their coat-ends in nervousness more than they speak. We have become quality engineers, great doctors, only that our voice is muted.  Given the portentous fact that English alone, from the United Nations to the United Coffee Bar, shall be the courier of our ideas and a prima facie token of our worth, the problems and prospects of developing skills in English are indeed worth contemplation.

The nature of education in our country is as diversified as the country itself. In the metropolitan cities, we have schools like the DPS chain where the students laugh in English, weep in English, fight in English, eat their tiffin in English and go home in English; their speech wearing an imitation veneer of the accent from the Hollywood movies they grow up watching. While I stood waiting outside St. Xavier’s School, Kolkata for one of my engineering entrance exams, I saw a lady emerge out of her Honda Accord. A large Gucci bag dangled by her arm while she coaxed her little girl out of the car, “Let him stay in the car, darling! Come, now! A chocolate for my Sweety when she comes home”, she said in a sing-song manner. The little girl pouted. “No, Mommy! Please let me take Toby along!” Although I had no idea who or what Toby was, it was apparent that English came as naturally to this little kid as water came to ducks. I wondered if ever a day would come when, in my village, the milkman’s wife would ask her son, in English, to pass her the milk bucket. Immediately, I smiled at how ridiculous the thought was – for not even our English teacher cared to speak to us in English, unless he was reading a chapter to the class. To date, in most government schools, English speech is a fancy thing. It is usually reserved for the Independence and Republic Day.

It must be realized that a language is more than merely a medium to express our ideas; only if the machinery of mental conception is linked with the loom of a particular language, can a seamless yarn of speech be produced. But the quintessential language pedagogy in most Indian schools depends heavily on the tool of translation. We conceived ideas in our own mother tongue, translated them into English, and reproduced them. And this reflected into our speech in form of embarrassing pauses and stutters. Even in my college, almost every student with a vernacular medium of schooling has his speech ridden by such fumbling and this spoils his chances wherever English occupies the spearhead of first impressions. Not only in speech, this tool of translation betrays itself even in our writings when we inadvertently omit articles (Give me ice cream, for example). It must be realized that while translation remolds ideas from one language to another; it is utterly handicapped to carry over the same essence and originality – Hamlet, for example, is best relished only when read unabridged; not even a prosaic abridgment carries the same beauty. Thus, instead of using a conspicuous, jerk-starting mental translator, we must imbue the very paradigm of synthesis of the English language itself. Translation can be used in the beginning to point the linguistic analogies, but once a threshold of familiarity with the language is reached, one must be encouraged to develop an independent and original approach to the language. Look at the world through glasses tinted English: feeling tiresome while you are writing your translation homework, peer outside the windows; does the playground beckon to you? Ah, it does! But father is at home! Reluctantly though, you continue to do your homework.
Tiresome, peer, beckon, reluctantly; as soon as you can learn to feel these words just exactly how you felt the emotions associated with them, know that your mind has begun to sprout creepers that are rapidly climbing over the linguistic tower of English. Think and reproduce. Effective speech is a conscious exercise; translation reduces it to voluntary action which is subject to its own imperfections.

A useful exercise through which the mind can be conditioned into thinking in English is through observing how people who are accomplished in this domain go about it. Watching news debates and movies is the easiest way; although a more beneficial way would be to inculcate a habit of newspaper reading. Novels and magazines also help build a solid linguistic intuition. Just like a little child grows to speak in the manner of the people around him (don’t stay among people too older to you is what my parents told me, and it was for good reason), our speech evolves in the same way. Hence, practicing continuously to talk and think in English is conducive towards the objective we have been talking about.

Reading habits, of course, shall remain the most important pillars upon which the so called linguistic tower of English stands. No matter how many movies one has watched, his or her language skills can never reach their epoch unless and until he is well read. Literature is the mirror of the society; reading works by great authors help us enrich our own vocabulary, thinking paradigm and grants us another perspective. As I have emphasized throughout this essay, language is merely a means of reproduction of ideas, but how shall one have ideas if the vision of the mind is limited by the vision of the eyes? Books, novels, epics; read, and you shall see. Sitting in your own room, The Invisible Man (H. G. Wells) takes you across different eras of the world you can never possibly go. Read Sherlock Holmes, and you shall be taken across streets of London, learning about the lifestyles of the people, their ways to earn a livelihood, their food habits, and subjects of their fear and joys. Literature is like travelling without having to move a foot! Literature is about feeling emotions without being subject to the actual stimuli; the opening chapter of D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love makes you sit invisibly behind the Brangwen cousins Ursula and Gudrun while they bicker among themselves, watching a marriage procession through their window. Reading puts you into the agile, observant mind of a sleuth; echoes in you the heart rending melancholy of a bereft lover; and makes you a witness to the glories of kings and their battles and the unflinching resilience of the human spirit to brave failures. Which of these would we experience in our own short, confined lives? God created man, and man couldn’t be everywhere, so he created literature. Having gained yards upon the horizons of perspective (and all in English), good reading habits are grist to the linguistic mills of an individual.

Reading quality literature also helps us develop an intuition about conformity with grammar. In our school days, we were made to memorize the rules of grammar, subject verb agreements, et al. While a basic understanding and knowledge of the grammar rules is indeed essential, memorizing them like calendar dates makes it such a morose, colossal task that it begins to dishearten the most enthusiastic of us. I have observed for myself that the English grammar is not rigidly cast but it rests upon pliant foundations; and most easy and interesting way to understand grammar is extensive reading: it fills us with an intuitive sense of the rights, wrongs and the cardinal sins. A modern individual is expected to be grammatically precise; yet literature enjoins us to eschew from turning into a sworn purist; for the flexibility is an inherent beauty of this language and puritanism cripples it. Had James Joyce given way to the purist scowls of his critics, we would have never seen a masterpiece like Ulysses, noted for its unconventional styles of expression like stream of consciousness.   

Unfortunately, our school curriculum has been so designed that the role of literature is limited merely to comprehension, encouraging us to mug up passages to write answers from; and commit to heart the notes that our teachers give about the poems which, allegedly, are too difficult and sophisticated to be understood on our own. How futile! Why would one need notes to empathize with the laments of Shelley, as he cries to the West Wind, “I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed!” Poetry and literature are not numbers to be crunched, neither are they dates to be memorized. They are emotions to be empathized with, ideas to be understood with a new perspective. Let us not be machines which treat every input in white and black. Literature is about life, and life has shades of gray.

Nothing has a more direct influence on our writing style as the habits of our reading. Most of us, either due to our upbringing or due to our difference in tastes and interests, are poorly read. The writing on the wall dictates that a person who has not read much will never write much. Even if you are a poorly read person but with raging, ingenious ideas, your writings shall merely be bland if anything at all, just pearls of wisdom scattered everywhere on the paper but eventually of little acclaim. Just as a diamond needs to be cut and polished to shine brilliantly, our mind needs to be serrated under the stone of books and angled and jagged through the incisive writings of others before it can be used as a blazing literary spear which can stab through the conscience of its readers and suffuse its message right into their hearts. Good reading habits string those scattered pearls of wisdom into a fine garland that adorns every sheet of paper it is put across. Needless to say, great writing skills are of great demand in the modern world. A poorly written resume can cost you job opportunities, and a minor glitch in a professional email can get you fired from your job! Whether we like it or not, it is required of us to have a good level of competence when it comes to writing style, and it can only be developed through good reading habits supplemented by lots of practice in writing.

Talking about practice, I noted that only a handful of us are in a consistent habit of maintaining a diary or a journal. Either we are held up by activities that appear more interesting, or we never cared to give it a try. A very personal relationship between the mind and the pen blossoms inside the pages of one’s diary, and like every relationship, it only grows more and more intimate. This intimacy opens the floodgates through which a deluge of emotions pours down in ink, resulting into a very beautiful, personal style of effortless writing. It also helps as a writer if one gets associated with campus magazines, writing reports and essays on current events and developments. Just like the handwriting of an infant, the writing style of an individual begins from a clumsy, unstructured and inchoate potpourri of ideas; but time and practice placate it into a lucid, meandering flow.

Rome was not built in a day, and the adage goes apt for one’s vocabulary. Just as no twins are identically same, no two synonyms are identical either. Since words constitute sentences and sentences constitute writing or speech, it is of fundamental importance to have a good stock of words in one’s mind. A precise knowledge of words and their meanings lead to our own mental development; we can think and express more precisely, which is the next step from a good writing to a scholarly lucubration. However, often I have seen students trying to jump fences and cut corners; using a thesaurus as a writing aid; replacing commonly used words with what they perceive as fanciful, ornamental substitutes; which is only retrogressive. Like the calloused palms of an old farmer, a sumptuous vocabulary comes after ages of voracious reading. Writing with a thesaurus at one's side is not writing, but merely an ostentatious antic, a greatest sacrilege of its kind; to be understood as a literary magician while you are merely pulling tricks. Key to a good vocabulary? Read, read and read. Take notes. Use the new words in your own writings. Finally, read, read, and read.

The key to fluent speaking in English is no different from what has already been discussed, except that it needs more practice. One needs to counter inhibitions, complexes, confidence issues before one can be lay his claim to the skills of Mark Antony. Group discussions, Job interviews, presentations – every professional arena is replete with instances where one has to rise and speak for himself. A good speaker has an impressive personality (and conversely so), he earns more admiration socially and more opportunities professionally. But again, it is a gradual process. One must turn a blind eye to jests by lesser enlightened peers (they exist everywhere) who love to mock at one’s efforts at developing good speaking skills. Taking part in debates, declamation contests, and extempore speeches right from the school level helps one get rid of the stage fright which a newbie is typically gripped with. 

Pronunciation is another factor that greatly troubles most of the students who have grown up more or less with their tongues swathed in a vernacular or a dialect. While there does exist a branch of linguistics called Phonetics, and a standardized method of pronunciation laid down as RP (Received Pronunciation); they are to be perused only by a student who harbors a desire for a greater, quasi-perfect finesse. One should not concern himself unduly unless the accent is laid with a heavy vernacular twang, as for most of us, the exposure that regular speaking (along with watching others speak on television, news and movies) gives usually serves as a natural rectifier of accent.

English is a funny language. It has grammar that has more exceptions than rules; it demands of us often to spell differently than we write; it says things it does not mean (hanging out, for instance), and it always seeks short cuts (ain’t it?). But the beauty of English lies in the very fact that it does not seek to conform to the conventional yardsticks of a beautiful language. This is the trait that has helped English last, evolve and proliferate in influence over centuries. If we are to seek acceptance in a much Anglicized era of today, we must be well versed and adept in the tongue that the world speaks in. Learning, writing in, speaking in and understanding English is not difficult; only that one needs to be patient and persistent. If a nursery kid from Kolkata could speak English, I can write with certitude that all of us, no matter what our background has been, can be adept in this language that has come to be recognized as the lingua franca of the successful.

References: Based solely upon personal introspection.