English Language Teaching in South India…

IV.      The next great mistake in my view was the wrong training given at ELT centers. Because of the insistence of the oral or direct method, ELT specialists felt that it was essential for teachers to know and to speak correct English. For this reason about half the time on a course was spent on ‘improving’ the pronunciation and English usage of the trainees. All the right things were done. Language laboratories were set up, Stannard Allen’s were bought in large numbers, the best trained staff were given the task of this improvement. It had little effect; mainly due to lack of understanding of motivation and adult learning strategies. The language laboratory produced students who could answer correctly since and for exercises 20 times out of 20, but who would happily say in their end of course speech, “We are here since five months”. No one seemed to realize the immense difficulty of changing incorrect speech habits which had been in daily use of 20 years or more.

The situation naturally worsened with this distinction between content and methodology, because after training at Bangor, Leeds or Edinburgh it was much easier to teach content than to teach methodology. The time given to methods of teaching was slowly eroded; lecturers who could not teach were loath to give demonstration lessons apart from the odd set-piece, and that usually with the higher classes. A similar state of affairs exists in Training Schools and Training Colleges throughout India, where demonstration lessons are few and far between because most of the staff are not themselves skilled classroom teachers.

CONTD.,

David Horsburgh

Former Professor, RIESI, Bangalore
was a Member of the National Teachers' Commission, Government of India
Passed away in August 1984

Courtesy: Perspectives on English Language Teaching by J. M. Ure and S. Velayudhan

Collected by: P. K. Jayaraj and R. Gangadhar, RIESI, Bengaluru