Cool it when students goof in tricky English language
LET’S KEEP our cool in teaching English. It is a tricky language indeed. Its linguistic features contrast heavily with our native tongue, which students have to contend with. Yet, all is not bleak as we move on to brandish English as a tool for knowledge acquisition in school. Hasn’t Philippine literature in English attained a distinctive status? Editorials in English galore? Newspaper columns in English to share ideas and connect with global issues?
Students’ nonchalance to, if not defiance of, English must have been fueled by too many rules in correct usage, nagging posters to “Speak English” amid the hum of the vernacular, fines for speaking the mother tongue, and the absence of classroom activities that are relevant, communicative and fun. Such communicative activities have to gradually conform with acceptable standards of English usage and the idiomatic touch in expressing ideas.
As part of the learning process, students beyond the grades commit lapses in English. This is expected among 30 to 50 students in a class subjected to the quartile deviation of performance in a normal curve. Neither is the grade school assumed to have laid the groundwork for English at a higher curricular level. Learning English is developmental; it merges and expands with the thinking process. A simultaneous buildup of knowledge in other subjects therefore becomes a necessity for the context of communication and knowledge acquisition. There must be a sensible substance for anyone to talk about.
We need not argue with teachers who claim that “English is so very hard to teach.” At the same time, it pays to reflect and inquire from students themselves why they find English “hard to learn.” Could it be the stress experienced by non-native speakers of English for adopting a foreign language as a learning tool in school? Could it be the urgency imposed on the young to demonstrate instant acquisition of a language never spoken at home, or at play, or in everyday interaction within the neighborhood, and even among classmates? Could it be the absence of the appeal to content in the lessons? Could it be the focus on identifying the parts of speech? Or could it be the need for the English teacher to create or contrive situations in class that draw student participation in interactive activities using English? What spurs students to speak, read and write in English? Answers and reactions to the foregoing questions should be solicited from students themselves.
Not again the deafening blast about deteriorating English! Who’s to blame? Who’s to pick up the cudgels to restore English at an acceptable level?
It is a noble mission, of course, for teachers of English to help students install by themselves the language machinery for the acquisition of knowledge in school and beyond. Rather than pointing an accusing finger to culprits of English deterioration, let us view such deterioration as “below-par proficiency” in English which challenges teachers, students, educators and schools all over the country to jointly rehabilitate, revitalize and reinvigorate.
—ALICE S. GO, Baybay City, Leyte
