China may eclipse India in English race

China is not only tormenting India with verbal threats and incursions on the boundary and abusing New Delhi for backing the ‘separatist’ Dalai lama but is on course to overtake the former ‘crown jewel’ of Great Britain as the country with a larger population of people who ‘use’ English, a British Council report, scarcely reported in the Indian media, says.

If true, it might force Indians who have been making the rather dubious claim that the country has the world’s largest population of ‘speakers’—reportedly over 300 million--of the Queen’s language to take a reality check.

Perhaps the British Council forecast, based on a study called ‘English Next India’ by the researcher and author David Gradoll, would be a prized document for the long-time Hindi chauvinists like Mulayam Singh Yadav who maintain that English is responsible for ‘enslavement’ of free Bharatvarsha that is India and, consequently, the cause of most of the domestic ills.

Their jubilation, however, may be undermined and not last eternally if the report leads to a logical consequence of the end of India’s supremacy as a software power and IT hub because both these enterprises thrive only with the help of a large force of ‘enslaved’ Indians. The author of the report is very clear that China is well on way to forging ahead of India in the number game of people who use the English language. At least 20 million Chinese learn the English language each year.

The British Council report cannot be dismissed as another ploy to keep Indians as ‘slaves’ of English. Some of reasons mentioned in the report that point to a decline in the number of ‘users’ of English in this country do sound genuine. Number one on that list is a ‘huge shortage’ of teachers and ‘quality’ institutions, which are responsible for the decline even though the demand for English language skills in India has been constantly growing. Oddly, the demand for ‘English medium’ schools too has been constantly growing in the country.

‘The rate of improvement of the English language skills of the Indian population is at present too slow to prevent India from falling behind other countries which have implemented the teaching of English in primary schools sooner, and more successfully,’ says the report.

It perhaps hits the nail on the head, though it may also invite some protests, especially from those who have been spreading the myth that more Indians ‘speak’ English than the combined population of the countries like the UK, USA, Canada and Australia where English is spoken by the ‘natives.’ The National Knowledge Commission says that the number of Indians who use the English language is not more than one percent. On the other hand some reports say that China had 200 million people who could ‘use’ English—way back in 1995.

Whatever the numbers in India or China, the fact is that while Indians who have read the rudiments of English grammar at school level may be indeed very high—maybe 300 million—the number of those who can actually speak and write the language of the former colonial masters with ease and fluency is much less. It must be true or why else does one find mushrooming of institutions in metropolitan towns and flood of books and other aids in the market that guarantee ‘fluency’ in the Queen’s language.

Those who make use of these facilities are people who have taken lessons in English in their schools and colleges. Despite that they are unable to speak, write or ‘use’ the language. In fact, there are ‘graduates’ and ‘post graduates’ in India who have taken their college examinations in the English language and yet lack proficiency in it.

China and some other non-English speaking countries, particularly in the former Eastern bloc, have taken to learning English with earnestness. The learners of English in these countries are generally serious about acquiring the skill to ‘use’ and speak English. They work hard to have a good command over the language. Often they succeed in avoiding to a large extent the inflection of their mother tongue when speaking English. Many of the new learners of English are able to speak in accents readily understood in the English-speaking world.

The approach to learning English in India is on the whole lackadaisical. No attention is paid to the correct pronunciation of even frequently used words, spelling errors (now considered as irrelevant with the advent of the personal computer) is overlooked as a minor lapse and talking liberties with grammar is not seen as a cardinal sin.

Teachers of the English language in colleges and universities and those who have to interact with students who have at least a graduate degree in English will have found many of them unable to write or speak correct English. What is worrisome is that no effort is made to correct the faults in writing or speaking the language, either at school or later at college.

The point of a casual approach towards learning English can be illustrated with some examples.

Listen to the members in the country’s highest seat of power—the parliament. Many of the members who insist on speaking in English actually struggle—some call it ‘murder’--with the language and fail to make an impact. Talk to some of the senior bureaucrats who are expected to be rather ‘well versed’ in English and gauge their discomfort in expressing themselves in the alien language. Anyone who has had a conversation with boys and girls at one of the many call centres in the country would have discovered that it is not uncommon to find that some of them have to labour hard to speak in English.

These examples will, no doubt, strengthen the campaign of the likes of Mulayam Singh Yadav against the ‘foreign’ language. But their fight is phoney since they will not even think of sending their own wards to a government-run school where teaching of English is a token exercise.

Most, nay the majority of Indians accept that while it may be unpleasant and even ‘slavish’, knowledge of English is a must for finding good jobs and career advancement. But half learning the language is not going to serve any purpose. It is time the country woke up to the perils of falling standards of English language learning in the country—if only to keep at least one advantage India has over the next super power!

- Asian Tribune -