Some more MYTHS concerning the Teaching of English in India

About twenty-five years ago, L. A. Hill, who was Chief Education Officer of the British Council in India, wrote an article in which he talked about certain ‘myths’ connected with the teaching of English in India. The article was published in Teaching English, at one time a British Council sponsored journal. It is not likely that many among the present generation of English teachers have been this article which sheds a lot of light on the English language teaching situation in the country. Re-reading Hill’s ELT ‘mythology’ has always been a rewarding experience because of running commeour. Hill lists fourteen myths with a running commentary. Whether he has added some more myths to this list is not known, though anyone who has observed the ELT scene in India can add a few more to Hill’s fourteen. The passage of time and all the new theories, and techniques, syllabuses and textbooks and the changing patterns of education, English language policies and teacher training programmes have not altered the situation to any appreciable degree. Lest we should forget, let me, for the benefit of those who have not read Hill’s ELT mythology list them in the order in which they occur. The myths will be stated in full with extracts from Hill’s comments thereon.

MYTH NO. 1:   That students can learn to appreciate great English literature and derive cultural and spiritual benefit from it by being made to read texts that they cannot understand.

 

Hill’s Comment:          … How can a student feel the beauty of rhythm, the assonance and the other sound effects in a poem; how can he appreciate the felicities in the author’s selection of words, use of inversion, etc., and how can he respond to the other beauties of the author’s style if the text is full of words and grammatical patterns that he cannot make head or tail of?

 

CONTD…

S. Velayudhan
Former Director, RIESI, Bengaluru
was Head of the Department of English,
University of Calicut, Kerala

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

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