This is a list of communicative practices to explore at a later date:
1. Methods of self teaching English. These might include (as one student in the County classroom indicated) the use of English subtitles in Hindi movies to improve vocabulary and grasp of spoken English. This is another attempt to "get to speaking through writing." It could also be interesting to consider given that the primary target audience for subtitling is presumably a diasporic one that does not have a complete comprehension of spoken Hindi.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Preliminaries (2)
Ideas for Hinglish project essay on class/expertise
English in India is characterized by gaps between speech and writing.
Such gaps open up sites for the construction and deployment of expertise, for class warfare, for cultural politics, for what A. Aneesh calls "algo-power" (perhaps, though look at book and read Upadhya article.)
Example 1. the Aarushi murder case and the fact that it pivoted around the (mis) interpretation of an SMS message.
Example 2. the free-market language classroom and its reinsertion of writing-driven pedagogy into classes that are aimed at cultivating facility in spoken English. (juxtapose this with the Delhi university English hons. admissions issue.)
Example 3. Slumdog millionaire and its adaptation from page to screen (issue of subitles, of Jamal's English speech, of unlikeliness of the villain ordering a sandwich, of the Cathedral School accent of Salim, etc.)
Example 4. Political speeches of the babalog
[not sure how many of these examples I'd need for the article]
Ideas/Theories to take into account:
-theory that English in India has been a modulect and that it has always been written or at least "entextualized"
-orality/literacy/entextualization
-continua of biliteracy (?)
-recognition of certain kinds of expertise (Boyer and Lomnitz) and assertion of other kinds of (non-validated) expertise as a challenge
-trans-idiomatic environments and spaces of multilingualism
Where does language ideology fit into all this?
Written sometime in April
English in India is characterized by gaps between speech and writing.
Such gaps open up sites for the construction and deployment of expertise, for class warfare, for cultural politics, for what A. Aneesh calls "algo-power" (perhaps, though look at book and read Upadhya article.)
Example 1. the Aarushi murder case and the fact that it pivoted around the (mis) interpretation of an SMS message.
Example 2. the free-market language classroom and its reinsertion of writing-driven pedagogy into classes that are aimed at cultivating facility in spoken English. (juxtapose this with the Delhi university English hons. admissions issue.)
Example 3. Slumdog millionaire and its adaptation from page to screen (issue of subitles, of Jamal's English speech, of unlikeliness of the villain ordering a sandwich, of the Cathedral School accent of Salim, etc.)
Example 4. Political speeches of the babalog
[not sure how many of these examples I'd need for the article]
Ideas/Theories to take into account:
-theory that English in India has been a modulect and that it has always been written or at least "entextualized"
-orality/literacy/entextualization
-continua of biliteracy (?)
-recognition of certain kinds of expertise (Boyer and Lomnitz) and assertion of other kinds of (non-validated) expertise as a challenge
-trans-idiomatic environments and spaces of multilingualism
Where does language ideology fit into all this?
Written sometime in April
One trajectory for the essay?
Current perceptions in India have it that English is being democratized and is coming within the grasp of more and more people beyond the elite. A massive language shift is underway, and even so there are many loud voices saying that it is not happening rapidly enough (Nilekani?)
But what is less likely to be remarked upon is that the various “supply and demand” forces at work here are not just increasing the number of people who know English but are reconfiguring a field of (multi)linguistic diversity in which spoken and written English have long occupied quite distinct niches. (Jacob)
This development flies in the face of many scholars who have addressed the sociolinguistics of English in India) through such concepts as “modularity,” “interlanguage,” and “auntie tongue syndrome.”
Incidentally, such notions appear to reiterate—i.e. to harden and crystallize rather than to dissect and examine-- widely held “common sense” ideologies about English in India (or Indian English). We might call the hegemony of such views Second Language Ideology, after the Standard Language Ideology that has been so trenchantly examined by linguists.
Such notions generalize from the written use of the English language in India, leaving spoken forms of the language largely unaddressed. True, colonization entrenched the written form of the language and made it authoritative. (Thus, these notions make eminent sense for thinking through official letter-writing, petitions, etc. and even in certain oral contexts, where speech is “entextualized” in set formulations and registers such as legal or bureacutic settings.)
But such approaches, which have seen many recent and up to date rearticulations, seem moribund and obsolete all of a sudden. This is because the forms of language shift mentioned above are not just quantitative but qualitative. Specifically, what is noteworthy is not just the fact that more and more people in India are setting out to acquire English: it is that more and more people studying it with a view to speaking it (rather than writing it, or using it for purposes other than the expressive function.) If in the past, to have a command of English was described as “English janna”; now there is a significant shift to “English bolna.”
Written April 10.
But what is less likely to be remarked upon is that the various “supply and demand” forces at work here are not just increasing the number of people who know English but are reconfiguring a field of (multi)linguistic diversity in which spoken and written English have long occupied quite distinct niches. (Jacob)
This development flies in the face of many scholars who have addressed the sociolinguistics of English in India) through such concepts as “modularity,” “interlanguage,” and “auntie tongue syndrome.”
Incidentally, such notions appear to reiterate—i.e. to harden and crystallize rather than to dissect and examine-- widely held “common sense” ideologies about English in India (or Indian English). We might call the hegemony of such views Second Language Ideology, after the Standard Language Ideology that has been so trenchantly examined by linguists.
Such notions generalize from the written use of the English language in India, leaving spoken forms of the language largely unaddressed. True, colonization entrenched the written form of the language and made it authoritative. (Thus, these notions make eminent sense for thinking through official letter-writing, petitions, etc. and even in certain oral contexts, where speech is “entextualized” in set formulations and registers such as legal or bureacutic settings.)
But such approaches, which have seen many recent and up to date rearticulations, seem moribund and obsolete all of a sudden. This is because the forms of language shift mentioned above are not just quantitative but qualitative. Specifically, what is noteworthy is not just the fact that more and more people in India are setting out to acquire English: it is that more and more people studying it with a view to speaking it (rather than writing it, or using it for purposes other than the expressive function.) If in the past, to have a command of English was described as “English janna”; now there is a significant shift to “English bolna.”
Written April 10.
Friday, April 17, 2009
Research at VETA (formerly Vivekanada Institute), Vikas Marg, East Delhi, April 2008
Madhu’s class is in the middle of First Step, the first of two-part sequence which comprises VETA’s Fluent English course. The second part of the sequence (called “Next Step”) has a stronger focus on “spoken” English and is currently being taught at this center by Shailaja (whose class I observed twice and led once).
My impression is that the population served by VETA and similar language institutes is quite accustomed to dealing with English in various written contexts: they have, after all, completed (or are in the process of completing) Class XII, and many have completed diploma and degree courses (e.g. B.A., M.B.A.), albeit more often than not by correspondence. [The prevalence of correspondence courses itself reflects the widespread nature of familiarity with English in written form.] But, as Tharu writes, “English today means, for a significant proportion of people, speaking English with some attested effectiveness in the real world.” And students with twelve and often more years of schooling already behind them (not to mention ample experience with sitting for exams in English or even studying in schools where English is the supposed medium of instruction) are flocking to places like VETA seeking competency in dealing with English in its spoken form.
One might then expect that the VETA courses would emphasize speaking English from the outset. But in fact it seems that VETA’s curriculum seeks to bridge the gap between what students are used to (written English) and what they seek (competency in speaking English) with a teaching approach based on traditional classroom pedagogies that are primarily focused on the written form of the language.
Observations:
1. Recorded File Name: 0416a
I enter Madhu’s classroom a little late, and a presentation exercise is in full swing. The topic of the individual presentations, which Madhu repeats in exactly the same way several times, is “If you are given three wishes, what will that be? And the reason.” Madhu calls on the students, asks them to stand up, and then coaxes and inspires them to speak, often switching into Hindi in order to do so. She asks the students who are waiting their respective turns not to prepare by writing down points in their notebooks, as this is apparently intended to be an extemporaneous exercise.
All the same, the presentations are shaped by the traditional pedagogical practices of memorization and choral recitation. Every presentation begins with a formulaic invocation of the topic: “Hello friends. The topic of my presentation today is what will I do if I am to get three wishes. . .” One of the student lapses into another formulaic mode, that of prayer: “Oh God, if you are to give me three wishes. . .” [3:25] Clearly, the topic is being interpreted as an invitation to construct an ideal self: many students’ wishes have to do with the welfare of the family, the country, of the self, in that order. [15:00]
After the presentations, Madhu introduces a lesson on idiomatic constructions involving questions (“the ‘w’ family – why, what, who, when, where, which”) [20:00]. She directs students attention towards their textbooks, which they open with alacrity to Chapter 11, page 43.
At one point, Rachna (a student) is confused by the word “guy,” and Madhu explains it’s meaning and use. Students will learn to use more informal English in Shailaja’s class, “Next Step,” involving “more on the spoken part.” [24:00]
Students go through several structured lessons, including one on “word pairs.” In this, lesson, Madhu introduces a series of idiomatic two-word phrases, glosses them in Hindi (which provokes guessing speculation and requests for clarification from the students in code-mixed speech), and then uses them in an English sentence. [27:00] Examples:
• “goody-goody people”; “Bahar se kuch aur, andar se kuch aur”; “This world is full of goody-goody people, but hardly a good man.”
• “haves and have notes”; “ameer-garib”; “there has always been a conflict between the haves and the have nots.”
• “hodge-podge”; “Life in big cities is quite hodge podge.”
• “ins and outs”; sare rules, har chiz; “I know the ins and outs of VETA.”
• “face to face”
• “rain or shine”
• “give and take”
• “bread and butter”
• “dilly dally”
In another lesson, called “idiom conversion,” Madhu presents idiomatic expressions in Hindi and then asks the students to translate (“convert”) them into English. It’s not clear if this exercise is based on prior reading, preparation, and memorization on the part of students. [37;00]
2. Recorded File Name: 0416b
Madhu dictates a sentence and the students write it down dutifully in their VETA-issued orange notebooks.
“Sales for the new book soared for a few months, then remained static.”
Other sentences follow, mostly declarative statements. “Saare words newspaper se liye hain,” she announces as an aside. However, the sentences I catch don’t appear to come from “page 3” or the sports section or even from current events. They strike me as having been lifted from “hard news” stories and then shorn of specific contextual markers.
Madhu frequently leaves off dictating to ask her students the meaning of the sentences she has just uttered. They vie with each other to answer (in Hindi), interrupting and talking over each other with near-deafening pitch and frequency. Frequently they ask how a word is spelled (“Mam, ‘soared’ ka spelling?).
Thus far, this appears to be a lesson in comprehension. But why has Madhu asked the students to write down the sentences at all? Why not simply ask them to translate (or “convert,” as I hear more frequently) directly into English? Possibly this is “merely” the influence of traditional classroom pedagogy (“path dependency”). If, however, it reflects a deliberate approach to bridging the gap between written and spoken English then it could be that writing itself is being offered here as a technique for parsing sound and meaning with the aim of strengthening verbal comprehension. Words like “hypocrite” and “resolute” are clearly new to many or most students, and Madhu’s dictation exercise might charitably be described as giving them many different kinds of “handles” on them: phonological, graphic, semantic.
The atmosphere of the classroom during this exercise is intense and highly focused. There is also a tremendous amount of side talk. I’m not talking just about conversation between students but also about (“ratified”?) side-talk in which students actively engage Madhu and to which she volubly responds, as well as side-talk initiated by Madhu herself. Examples: “Yes?” “Stop talking!” “You’re trying to create a misunderstanding between Abhishek and myself, is it?” Much of this side talk is code-mixed Hindi and English, although participants mostly make the effort to begin speaking in English. As things get more animated, however, the volume rises three or four times, Hindi (Punjabi?) pitch and stress patterns emerge, and a tendency to switch entirely into that code reveals itself.
All this talk and side-talk is unruly, even chaotic, but it nevertheless seems to be situated within a shared interpretive frame of classroom intimacy, which involves the taking of (mock) umbrage, and young male students “innocently” pushing the boundaries of appropriate behavior with their young, female teacher while remaining respectful of her (perhaps on the model of the devar-bhabhi kin relationship?) The atmosphere evokes a chord of recognition in me, though I’m not sure whether it’s from my schooldays or from other contexts I’m familiar with in India.
Madhu now repeats a string of words, each of which had appeared in one of the previously-dictated sentences, and asks the students to make new (English) sentences with them. She gives them about 10 minutes to prepare these sentences. In the meantime, she walks around the room, talking to individual students and giving them feedback on their work. She appears to be encouraging them to look back on their written model sentences and to use them as patterns or for getting ideas. In the next phase of the activity, students read aloud their sentences and are loudly and vociferously corrected by Madhu as well as their peers in the same chaotic but essentially felicitous way described above. Hindi and English are both used together for commentary and evaluation.
“Let’s take up another presentation,” announces Madhu, announcing a new activity in which students will by turn stand by the teacher’s desk and deliver brief, extemporaneous speeches. She offers a couple of alternative topics, and students enthusiastic opt for providing disquisitions on “the positive and negative points of your classmates.” “Iske liye to koi preparation ki zarurat nahin hai? Take your time.” The atmosphere remains no less intense than before, but takes on even more playful, “fun” overtones as students rib each other about the presumed subject of their respective slings and arrows, wrangle about turn-taking, and even engage in a bit of physical horseplay which Madhu smilingly curbs. (Many of these students are extremely young—a couple are sixteen year olds who have just taken their Class X exams, and I wonder whether their families view the VETA class as an alternative to exam-based tuitions or as advance preparation for the job market.) To me it appears that the intensity of the activity is counterproductive, as speech in the class keeps threatening to devolve into Hindi.
Distinct speech styles emerge. Here are two examples from the same student, the first of which is evocative of babu English while the second seems MTV-inflected to me:
“Mam, his spoken English is too fast. Please Abhishek, your communication skill is very good but I beg you humbly. . .” (while evaluating another student’s presentation)
“Khairul is a very good guy. According to my point of view. . .” (while presenting)
At the end of the class, Madhu asks my advice on whether the next day’s presentation topic should be given in advance or not. She also asks me to state what impressions I’ve formed of VETA and invites me to offer my reflections on difference between students in India and the US.
(04/16/08, Notes from two consecutive classes on the same day, both taught by Madhu)
3. Recorded File Name: 0424a
Grammar—specifically tense—is the focus of today’s lessons. Madhu writes the names of tenses on the blackboard and dictates English definitions that seem designed for memorization rather than elucidation (e.g. “past progressive tense, this simply shows the progressive nature of the action in the past.”) Examples in English are provided:
“Meera was waiting for a friend.” [3:00]
“I was having my dinner.”
The actual elucidation of the concept behind a given tense and discussion of the examples occurs almost exclusively in Hindi:
“Jo action past mein shuru hua aur chalta ja raha hai, usko progressive kahenge.”
Madhu moves on to the future continuous tense, pausing her dictation when students appear to be having trouble taking it down at her pace. (The pausing is also reminiscent of the gaps that teachers traditionally build into their speech when they are eliciting choral recitation or repetition from their students.) She uses the blackboard to write a formula for generating sentences in the given tense (something like “‘will’ plus ‘to be’ plus ‘ing’ plus action”) as if by recipe. A student asks her a fairly abstract question in Hindi about the future continuous tense—he seems puzzled at how one might be able describe an action that will commence and continue in the future from the vantage point of the present—and Madhu, grasping his incomprehension, “converts” the same example between English and Hindi to show that the future continuous tense is not so counter-intuitive after all:
“Tomorrow at 4pm I will be sitting in the train.”
“Kal char baje mein train mein baithi hoongi.” [11:08]
Next, Madhu goes on to talk about the present perfect continuous tense: [14:08]
“Yeh sabse simple tense hai. It is used for an action which began in the past and is still continuing.” (If so, why is she presenting this after the more complicated tenses?)
The class seems to follow a sequence from “theory” to “practice” that I remember from my own schooldays. Having defined, explained, and illustrated the various tenses, Madhu now engages student participation in “converting” Hindi sentences into English sentences in a specified tense, which involves a rather reflexive deployment of loan translations [26:25]. The class is as animated as it was the previous week, and it’s clear that some students have an extremely high level of competence in written Hindi (i.e. notwithstanding my “read” on their backgrounds as lower-middle class, they are intensively schooled and highly literate).
Madhu’s footing with regard to the material she is presenting varies quite a bit depending upon the lesson and nature of classroom activity. For instance, she issues commands and evaluations in an authoritative tone of voice during an activity called “error spotting” (which focuses on proper and improper use of prepositions), but her stance or tone is quite different when trying to coax a hesitant student into participating or when refereeing individual presentations.
Lateness, Banter, and the Exchange Value of English.
A couple of students come in late and Madhu asks them for an explanation. In eliciting excuses from them in English, she turns their potential incivility into a “teaching opportunity.” Remarking on the continued absence of another student [name tk], Madhu mentions the VETA fees that he is wasting. [3:48] Later he comes in, a fairly well-dressed and good-looking young man who would probably be called “smart.” He has a pronounced measure of the bantering, boundary-pushing attitude described above. At one point, when an upcoming test is mentioned, he asks what the prize money for correct answers will be. [12:42] The potential inappropriateness of this is mitigated by the fact that joking references to the monetary value of English in terms of correct answers, salary, job prospects, etc. are made a couple of times by Madhu herself. [13:15] At the end of class, this theme re-emerges as students banter about forfeiting Rs 20 or Rs 50 for each mistake in an upcoming quiz. [56:00] Surely such references to the commodified exchange value of what is being taught and learnt in the classroom flies in the face of more traditional ways of construing teaching as a “gift” to others, a selfless form of dharma.
The same student (S1) engages in side-talk throughout class, some of which is addressed to Madhu while some is (more impolitely) addressed to other students sotto voce. Once during “error spotting,” he interrupts Madhu as she is presenting a sentence with a propositional error:
Madhu: We are proud [pause] on our country.
S1: to be an Indian. [loudly]
My reading is that the student presents a corny nationalist slogan (of the satellite TV ilk) with a flourish as if to hijack Madhu’s lesson for the purposes of ridiculing cant. (I may be over-interpreting this, of course.) He also pre-empts her lesson by using the correct preposition, as if to say, “I don’t need you to teach me this.”
Madhu ignores him, but the student (S1) soon creates another diversion by interrupting an exchange between Madhu and another student (S2):
S2: He didn’t express himself well on English.
Madhu: Why ‘on English’?
S1: Because English is a platform. [loudly]
This strikes me slyly witty. The word “platform” evokes the idea of self-projection or self-promotion, which lies at the heart of why people want to learn English. At the same time, it also evokes the world of information technology. It is a quintessential new economy “buzz word.” Even as he comments on that fact, S1’s defence of the S2’s use of “on” simulates an earnest involvement with the lesson’s topic, namely correct prepositional use.
4. Shailaja’s classes and a conversation with Madhu (from memory)
Shailaja’s class was the first I observed at VETA and the one which most scandalized me, starkly raising for me the issue of “quality control” in the English language teaching market. Two specific instances stick in my mind, both of which had to do with Shailaja’s encouragement of students to experiment with English vocabulary. Sounding a bit like a breezy fashion expert advising her clients on how to accessorize successfully, she modeled this experimental stance in the following ways:
Bar bar ek hi bat ko kyun dohraoge. Kuch badlav bhi to lao apni boli mein. Agar jewelry ki bat ho rahi hai to kabhi kabhi kisi naye shabd ka prayog karo, jaise ki “ornament” ya phir “bric a brac.”
Halki si neend ko “siesta” bolte hain. Ghar mein jab khana kha kar dopeher ko do ghante ke liye so jate ho to use “nap” kaha jata hai, or rat ko cheh-aath ghante ki neend ko “sleep” kehte hain. Magar kam pe bethe-bethe jab aankh lag jate hain thodi der ke liye to “sieste” bolenge.
They day Shailaja was unexpectedly absent and I ended up filling in for her, we ended up talking about how one might use English on a foreign trip. (One of the students who was planning an overseas vacation to Singapore requested this topic, and I am intrigued to find that a short course entitled “English holiday” is also a part of VETA’s curriculum.) Students were as usual very animated and asked lots of questions about how Americans would say this, that or the other and whether the English they spoke in Singapore resembled American or British English. I was (and am) puzzled by the “foreignness” that was ascribed to English in this particular classroom context. It seemed as if the people in the room did not really think of English—or at least of spoken English— as an Indian language and did not feel any special familiarity with it, notwithstanding the large number of English loans and fair amount of code-switched phrases they employed as a matter of course.
In my conversation with Madhu, I learned that she’s in her early 20s, one of three sisters, and a graduate of English (hons.) from Kirori Mal College. She expects to be married within the next few years. She was very sweet and seemed younger and more uncertain out of class than within it. Our conversation, which took place outside the classroom while the students inside worked on written exercise, was periodically interrupted by Madhu’s darting off and peering in the room to make sure that her students weren’t cheating. She seemed to regard this as something that would happen in the normal course events unless special steps were taken to check it.
My impression is that the population served by VETA and similar language institutes is quite accustomed to dealing with English in various written contexts: they have, after all, completed (or are in the process of completing) Class XII, and many have completed diploma and degree courses (e.g. B.A., M.B.A.), albeit more often than not by correspondence. [The prevalence of correspondence courses itself reflects the widespread nature of familiarity with English in written form.] But, as Tharu writes, “English today means, for a significant proportion of people, speaking English with some attested effectiveness in the real world.” And students with twelve and often more years of schooling already behind them (not to mention ample experience with sitting for exams in English or even studying in schools where English is the supposed medium of instruction) are flocking to places like VETA seeking competency in dealing with English in its spoken form.
One might then expect that the VETA courses would emphasize speaking English from the outset. But in fact it seems that VETA’s curriculum seeks to bridge the gap between what students are used to (written English) and what they seek (competency in speaking English) with a teaching approach based on traditional classroom pedagogies that are primarily focused on the written form of the language.
Observations:
1. Recorded File Name: 0416a
I enter Madhu’s classroom a little late, and a presentation exercise is in full swing. The topic of the individual presentations, which Madhu repeats in exactly the same way several times, is “If you are given three wishes, what will that be? And the reason.” Madhu calls on the students, asks them to stand up, and then coaxes and inspires them to speak, often switching into Hindi in order to do so. She asks the students who are waiting their respective turns not to prepare by writing down points in their notebooks, as this is apparently intended to be an extemporaneous exercise.
All the same, the presentations are shaped by the traditional pedagogical practices of memorization and choral recitation. Every presentation begins with a formulaic invocation of the topic: “Hello friends. The topic of my presentation today is what will I do if I am to get three wishes. . .” One of the student lapses into another formulaic mode, that of prayer: “Oh God, if you are to give me three wishes. . .” [3:25] Clearly, the topic is being interpreted as an invitation to construct an ideal self: many students’ wishes have to do with the welfare of the family, the country, of the self, in that order. [15:00]
After the presentations, Madhu introduces a lesson on idiomatic constructions involving questions (“the ‘w’ family – why, what, who, when, where, which”) [20:00]. She directs students attention towards their textbooks, which they open with alacrity to Chapter 11, page 43.
At one point, Rachna (a student) is confused by the word “guy,” and Madhu explains it’s meaning and use. Students will learn to use more informal English in Shailaja’s class, “Next Step,” involving “more on the spoken part.” [24:00]
Students go through several structured lessons, including one on “word pairs.” In this, lesson, Madhu introduces a series of idiomatic two-word phrases, glosses them in Hindi (which provokes guessing speculation and requests for clarification from the students in code-mixed speech), and then uses them in an English sentence. [27:00] Examples:
• “goody-goody people”; “Bahar se kuch aur, andar se kuch aur”; “This world is full of goody-goody people, but hardly a good man.”
• “haves and have notes”; “ameer-garib”; “there has always been a conflict between the haves and the have nots.”
• “hodge-podge”; “Life in big cities is quite hodge podge.”
• “ins and outs”; sare rules, har chiz; “I know the ins and outs of VETA.”
• “face to face”
• “rain or shine”
• “give and take”
• “bread and butter”
• “dilly dally”
In another lesson, called “idiom conversion,” Madhu presents idiomatic expressions in Hindi and then asks the students to translate (“convert”) them into English. It’s not clear if this exercise is based on prior reading, preparation, and memorization on the part of students. [37;00]
2. Recorded File Name: 0416b
Madhu dictates a sentence and the students write it down dutifully in their VETA-issued orange notebooks.
“Sales for the new book soared for a few months, then remained static.”
Other sentences follow, mostly declarative statements. “Saare words newspaper se liye hain,” she announces as an aside. However, the sentences I catch don’t appear to come from “page 3” or the sports section or even from current events. They strike me as having been lifted from “hard news” stories and then shorn of specific contextual markers.
Madhu frequently leaves off dictating to ask her students the meaning of the sentences she has just uttered. They vie with each other to answer (in Hindi), interrupting and talking over each other with near-deafening pitch and frequency. Frequently they ask how a word is spelled (“Mam, ‘soared’ ka spelling?).
Thus far, this appears to be a lesson in comprehension. But why has Madhu asked the students to write down the sentences at all? Why not simply ask them to translate (or “convert,” as I hear more frequently) directly into English? Possibly this is “merely” the influence of traditional classroom pedagogy (“path dependency”). If, however, it reflects a deliberate approach to bridging the gap between written and spoken English then it could be that writing itself is being offered here as a technique for parsing sound and meaning with the aim of strengthening verbal comprehension. Words like “hypocrite” and “resolute” are clearly new to many or most students, and Madhu’s dictation exercise might charitably be described as giving them many different kinds of “handles” on them: phonological, graphic, semantic.
The atmosphere of the classroom during this exercise is intense and highly focused. There is also a tremendous amount of side talk. I’m not talking just about conversation between students but also about (“ratified”?) side-talk in which students actively engage Madhu and to which she volubly responds, as well as side-talk initiated by Madhu herself. Examples: “Yes?” “Stop talking!” “You’re trying to create a misunderstanding between Abhishek and myself, is it?” Much of this side talk is code-mixed Hindi and English, although participants mostly make the effort to begin speaking in English. As things get more animated, however, the volume rises three or four times, Hindi (Punjabi?) pitch and stress patterns emerge, and a tendency to switch entirely into that code reveals itself.
All this talk and side-talk is unruly, even chaotic, but it nevertheless seems to be situated within a shared interpretive frame of classroom intimacy, which involves the taking of (mock) umbrage, and young male students “innocently” pushing the boundaries of appropriate behavior with their young, female teacher while remaining respectful of her (perhaps on the model of the devar-bhabhi kin relationship?) The atmosphere evokes a chord of recognition in me, though I’m not sure whether it’s from my schooldays or from other contexts I’m familiar with in India.
Madhu now repeats a string of words, each of which had appeared in one of the previously-dictated sentences, and asks the students to make new (English) sentences with them. She gives them about 10 minutes to prepare these sentences. In the meantime, she walks around the room, talking to individual students and giving them feedback on their work. She appears to be encouraging them to look back on their written model sentences and to use them as patterns or for getting ideas. In the next phase of the activity, students read aloud their sentences and are loudly and vociferously corrected by Madhu as well as their peers in the same chaotic but essentially felicitous way described above. Hindi and English are both used together for commentary and evaluation.
“Let’s take up another presentation,” announces Madhu, announcing a new activity in which students will by turn stand by the teacher’s desk and deliver brief, extemporaneous speeches. She offers a couple of alternative topics, and students enthusiastic opt for providing disquisitions on “the positive and negative points of your classmates.” “Iske liye to koi preparation ki zarurat nahin hai? Take your time.” The atmosphere remains no less intense than before, but takes on even more playful, “fun” overtones as students rib each other about the presumed subject of their respective slings and arrows, wrangle about turn-taking, and even engage in a bit of physical horseplay which Madhu smilingly curbs. (Many of these students are extremely young—a couple are sixteen year olds who have just taken their Class X exams, and I wonder whether their families view the VETA class as an alternative to exam-based tuitions or as advance preparation for the job market.) To me it appears that the intensity of the activity is counterproductive, as speech in the class keeps threatening to devolve into Hindi.
Distinct speech styles emerge. Here are two examples from the same student, the first of which is evocative of babu English while the second seems MTV-inflected to me:
“Mam, his spoken English is too fast. Please Abhishek, your communication skill is very good but I beg you humbly. . .” (while evaluating another student’s presentation)
“Khairul is a very good guy. According to my point of view. . .” (while presenting)
At the end of the class, Madhu asks my advice on whether the next day’s presentation topic should be given in advance or not. She also asks me to state what impressions I’ve formed of VETA and invites me to offer my reflections on difference between students in India and the US.
(04/16/08, Notes from two consecutive classes on the same day, both taught by Madhu)
3. Recorded File Name: 0424a
Grammar—specifically tense—is the focus of today’s lessons. Madhu writes the names of tenses on the blackboard and dictates English definitions that seem designed for memorization rather than elucidation (e.g. “past progressive tense, this simply shows the progressive nature of the action in the past.”) Examples in English are provided:
“Meera was waiting for a friend.” [3:00]
“I was having my dinner.”
The actual elucidation of the concept behind a given tense and discussion of the examples occurs almost exclusively in Hindi:
“Jo action past mein shuru hua aur chalta ja raha hai, usko progressive kahenge.”
Madhu moves on to the future continuous tense, pausing her dictation when students appear to be having trouble taking it down at her pace. (The pausing is also reminiscent of the gaps that teachers traditionally build into their speech when they are eliciting choral recitation or repetition from their students.) She uses the blackboard to write a formula for generating sentences in the given tense (something like “‘will’ plus ‘to be’ plus ‘ing’ plus action”) as if by recipe. A student asks her a fairly abstract question in Hindi about the future continuous tense—he seems puzzled at how one might be able describe an action that will commence and continue in the future from the vantage point of the present—and Madhu, grasping his incomprehension, “converts” the same example between English and Hindi to show that the future continuous tense is not so counter-intuitive after all:
“Tomorrow at 4pm I will be sitting in the train.”
“Kal char baje mein train mein baithi hoongi.” [11:08]
Next, Madhu goes on to talk about the present perfect continuous tense: [14:08]
“Yeh sabse simple tense hai. It is used for an action which began in the past and is still continuing.” (If so, why is she presenting this after the more complicated tenses?)
The class seems to follow a sequence from “theory” to “practice” that I remember from my own schooldays. Having defined, explained, and illustrated the various tenses, Madhu now engages student participation in “converting” Hindi sentences into English sentences in a specified tense, which involves a rather reflexive deployment of loan translations [26:25]. The class is as animated as it was the previous week, and it’s clear that some students have an extremely high level of competence in written Hindi (i.e. notwithstanding my “read” on their backgrounds as lower-middle class, they are intensively schooled and highly literate).
Madhu’s footing with regard to the material she is presenting varies quite a bit depending upon the lesson and nature of classroom activity. For instance, she issues commands and evaluations in an authoritative tone of voice during an activity called “error spotting” (which focuses on proper and improper use of prepositions), but her stance or tone is quite different when trying to coax a hesitant student into participating or when refereeing individual presentations.
Lateness, Banter, and the Exchange Value of English.
A couple of students come in late and Madhu asks them for an explanation. In eliciting excuses from them in English, she turns their potential incivility into a “teaching opportunity.” Remarking on the continued absence of another student [name tk], Madhu mentions the VETA fees that he is wasting. [3:48] Later he comes in, a fairly well-dressed and good-looking young man who would probably be called “smart.” He has a pronounced measure of the bantering, boundary-pushing attitude described above. At one point, when an upcoming test is mentioned, he asks what the prize money for correct answers will be. [12:42] The potential inappropriateness of this is mitigated by the fact that joking references to the monetary value of English in terms of correct answers, salary, job prospects, etc. are made a couple of times by Madhu herself. [13:15] At the end of class, this theme re-emerges as students banter about forfeiting Rs 20 or Rs 50 for each mistake in an upcoming quiz. [56:00] Surely such references to the commodified exchange value of what is being taught and learnt in the classroom flies in the face of more traditional ways of construing teaching as a “gift” to others, a selfless form of dharma.
The same student (S1) engages in side-talk throughout class, some of which is addressed to Madhu while some is (more impolitely) addressed to other students sotto voce. Once during “error spotting,” he interrupts Madhu as she is presenting a sentence with a propositional error:
Madhu: We are proud [pause] on our country.
S1: to be an Indian. [loudly]
My reading is that the student presents a corny nationalist slogan (of the satellite TV ilk) with a flourish as if to hijack Madhu’s lesson for the purposes of ridiculing cant. (I may be over-interpreting this, of course.) He also pre-empts her lesson by using the correct preposition, as if to say, “I don’t need you to teach me this.”
Madhu ignores him, but the student (S1) soon creates another diversion by interrupting an exchange between Madhu and another student (S2):
S2: He didn’t express himself well on English.
Madhu: Why ‘on English’?
S1: Because English is a platform. [loudly]
This strikes me slyly witty. The word “platform” evokes the idea of self-projection or self-promotion, which lies at the heart of why people want to learn English. At the same time, it also evokes the world of information technology. It is a quintessential new economy “buzz word.” Even as he comments on that fact, S1’s defence of the S2’s use of “on” simulates an earnest involvement with the lesson’s topic, namely correct prepositional use.
4. Shailaja’s classes and a conversation with Madhu (from memory)
Shailaja’s class was the first I observed at VETA and the one which most scandalized me, starkly raising for me the issue of “quality control” in the English language teaching market. Two specific instances stick in my mind, both of which had to do with Shailaja’s encouragement of students to experiment with English vocabulary. Sounding a bit like a breezy fashion expert advising her clients on how to accessorize successfully, she modeled this experimental stance in the following ways:
Bar bar ek hi bat ko kyun dohraoge. Kuch badlav bhi to lao apni boli mein. Agar jewelry ki bat ho rahi hai to kabhi kabhi kisi naye shabd ka prayog karo, jaise ki “ornament” ya phir “bric a brac.”
Halki si neend ko “siesta” bolte hain. Ghar mein jab khana kha kar dopeher ko do ghante ke liye so jate ho to use “nap” kaha jata hai, or rat ko cheh-aath ghante ki neend ko “sleep” kehte hain. Magar kam pe bethe-bethe jab aankh lag jate hain thodi der ke liye to “sieste” bolenge.
They day Shailaja was unexpectedly absent and I ended up filling in for her, we ended up talking about how one might use English on a foreign trip. (One of the students who was planning an overseas vacation to Singapore requested this topic, and I am intrigued to find that a short course entitled “English holiday” is also a part of VETA’s curriculum.) Students were as usual very animated and asked lots of questions about how Americans would say this, that or the other and whether the English they spoke in Singapore resembled American or British English. I was (and am) puzzled by the “foreignness” that was ascribed to English in this particular classroom context. It seemed as if the people in the room did not really think of English—or at least of spoken English— as an Indian language and did not feel any special familiarity with it, notwithstanding the large number of English loans and fair amount of code-switched phrases they employed as a matter of course.
In my conversation with Madhu, I learned that she’s in her early 20s, one of three sisters, and a graduate of English (hons.) from Kirori Mal College. She expects to be married within the next few years. She was very sweet and seemed younger and more uncertain out of class than within it. Our conversation, which took place outside the classroom while the students inside worked on written exercise, was periodically interrupted by Madhu’s darting off and peering in the room to make sure that her students weren’t cheating. She seemed to regard this as something that would happen in the normal course events unless special steps were taken to check it.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Preliminaries
There's a debate surrounding English language teaching in India and how it should be transformed to meet the demand for English. Should it start in Class I? Should the focus be on developing basic skills in the student's L1 and than transferring them to L2? But-- and this has to be my question-- whose expertise is being valorized within this debate and whose is being marginalized?
English has become a pan-Indian symbol condensing mobility, hope, aspiration, and salvation. While emphasizing this important and new social fact, I can't afford to let it erase historical and recent forms of differentiation within the Indian sociolinguistic field. This means distinguishing amongst a wide range of ideologies and milieux that would complicate any sense that English has a self-evident status at the top of some equally self-evident hierarchy of languages. A denatured version of Bourdieu's "language market" concept could be helpful here in focusing attention on how multilingualism (including multiliteracy), linguistic agency and language ideology varies across specific settings or contexts? (Of course, using the concept in this way entails recognizing and overcoming the limitations in Bourdieu's own formulation: his identification of the market with national borders, his inattention to the constitutive role of ideologies, etc.)
As Tharu writes, "English is no longer some powerful but remote mystery lying hidden in the world of textbooks and examinations . . it lives in sizeable tracts of urban India." To what extent does the setting of the English teaching classroom reflect this shift? What kinds of ideas about English seem to inform or shape pedagogy and classroom interaction? For instance, how is English thought of as accessible (is it remote or intimate?) or as potent (does it makes one confident? intelligent?)
Prior to globalization, the most important language markets (such as the national and state examinations systems) cultivated written performance in English, but now spoken language skills are being emphasized and sought after. (Where does phonology, which, as ELT scholar Tharu writes, was always a focus of pedogical attention, fit into this shift?) In many settings, displaying proficiency or expertise in spoken or "communicative" English often takes a phatic form and while the primacy of engaging with the language in the written mode is being reconfigured, it is not clear that it is being displaced.
English has become a pan-Indian symbol condensing mobility, hope, aspiration, and salvation. While emphasizing this important and new social fact, I can't afford to let it erase historical and recent forms of differentiation within the Indian sociolinguistic field. This means distinguishing amongst a wide range of ideologies and milieux that would complicate any sense that English has a self-evident status at the top of some equally self-evident hierarchy of languages. A denatured version of Bourdieu's "language market" concept could be helpful here in focusing attention on how multilingualism (including multiliteracy), linguistic agency and language ideology varies across specific settings or contexts? (Of course, using the concept in this way entails recognizing and overcoming the limitations in Bourdieu's own formulation: his identification of the market with national borders, his inattention to the constitutive role of ideologies, etc.)
As Tharu writes, "English is no longer some powerful but remote mystery lying hidden in the world of textbooks and examinations . . it lives in sizeable tracts of urban India." To what extent does the setting of the English teaching classroom reflect this shift? What kinds of ideas about English seem to inform or shape pedagogy and classroom interaction? For instance, how is English thought of as accessible (is it remote or intimate?) or as potent (does it makes one confident? intelligent?)
Prior to globalization, the most important language markets (such as the national and state examinations systems) cultivated written performance in English, but now spoken language skills are being emphasized and sought after. (Where does phonology, which, as ELT scholar Tharu writes, was always a focus of pedogical attention, fit into this shift?) In many settings, displaying proficiency or expertise in spoken or "communicative" English often takes a phatic form and while the primacy of engaging with the language in the written mode is being reconfigured, it is not clear that it is being displaced.
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