NEP 2020 recommends a bilingual approach in teaching at the early stage; we would say, during the school stage, not just the early stage. “Teachers,” says NEP 2020, “will be encouraged to use a bilingual approach, including teaching-learning materials, with those students whose home language may be different from the medium of instruction.” This is the situation in the teaching of English in mother language medium schools and also in the teaching of Sanskrit, which is often not mentioned in this context. The same situation would arise when a tribal language-speaking child learns the main language of the relevant State. Bilingual teaching should be used in English medium schools as well. Unfortunately, they rigidly follow what is called the “direct method”; that is, in the case of English, “teach English in English alone.” The English medium schools in our country, in general, strongly discourage (in Odisha, some even punish) a student if he (she/they) uses his mother language in school. In his very interesting and eminently readable book, “A Little Book of Language,” published in 2010, David Crystal writes, “Over a hundred years ago, if you were heard speaking Welsh in a school in Wales, you were punished.” That is no longer the case there. We must learn something from this. The direct method may have its plus points, but being rigid about it in all teaching-learning contexts does not really help.
Let me recount an experience of mine at IIT Kanpur in this context. I was teaching a Preparatory English class. A few words about the Preparatory course system are in order here. The students belonged to a select group of some traditionally disadvantaged sections of society. They were highly motivated and hardworking. They had narrowly missed qualifying in the IIT JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) that year and were to appear in the said examination the following year. They were to receive training for that examination at some of the IITs. In my class, there were about thirty students, if my memory serves me right, and many of them were speakers of Hindi. As for the rest, they knew Hindi. Once the students requested me to teach English in Hindi. I told them that I had no issues with that, but what would eventually happen would be that they would not learn English and would run the risk of exposure to my ungrammatical Hindi.
Now, to say the obvious, a teacher must be sensitive to the students’ learning problems and must try to find a way that would help them. In any case, I had always thought (I still do) that unflinching commitment to the direct method would not satisfy the requirements of critical thinking. What I did thereafter was that, more often than before, I tried to explain a word or an idea in Hindi when I found that, despite my efforts to teach the same in English, they had problems understanding it. I knew that despite my limited vocabulary in Hindi and problems with the ne and ko (dative subject) constructions, they would have a better understanding of the English word or the concept I was teaching, and I was not wrong.
That was bilingual teaching in the classroom. Now, let me say most emphatically that my solution to the problem in my class was not innovative. Not in the least. What I did was what had been the norm in second or third language teaching in our Odia language medium (i.e., the mother language) schools in Odisha at least (but there is no reason to believe that it has been the case in Odisha alone). For decades, teachers of English have used the translation approach in the classroom when they found it necessary. Teachers of Hindi and Sanskrit have done so while teaching these languages. Given this, by recommending the bilingual approach in teaching, what NEP 2020 has done is just institutionalize this practice. Now one would expect that bilingual teaching, being now a national policy, will impact teaching in our English medium schools. Incidentally, asking students not to use their mother language at school may lead to the unintended consequence that they come to believe their mother language is inferior to English.
NEP 2020 defines the objectives of language learning differently for classical languages and the languages for the three-language formula. The former are to be learned for their rich literature and their cultural content and the latter, for attaining proficiency in soft skills, “such as communication, discussion, and debate” in these languages. For instance, English has to be taught with a functional perspective, that is, for use in real-life situations and not for knowledge of the literature in this language and its grammar. In the non-Hindi speaking States, for instance, Odisha, there are hardly any situations in real life where one uses Hindi for debates and discussions. Ramcharitmanas and Hanuman Chalisa are recited very often but are explained and discussed in Odia. The situation is very different in the case of English; there are many opportunities for discussion and debate in English in real life. So proficiency in communication, debates, and discussions in this language is a very relevant objective for learning this language. Notwithstanding the lack of discussion and debate contexts in real life in this State, Hindi and English should both be taught from the functional perspective here, as in the other non-Hindi speaking States. If one is proficient in Hindi in the above sense, it will help one in the Hindi-speaking States.
What about the mother language? Students have been engaging in informative communication, arguing, expressing agreement and disagreement, describing and explaining things, maintaining and building relationships, and the like in their mother language. All these are part of the day-to-day use of language. Since they are already communicating information, feelings, and thoughts, discussing, say, a football match their team had lost, and arguing over some refereeing decisions and the like, would it make much sense to say that they must learn their mother language to attain proficiency in soft skills? NEP 2020 does not seem to say anything about what the goals of mother language teaching at school must be, given the above.
We would look at the matter like this: one knows that the child is already using his mother language before entering school. So what would learning his mother language at the primary level mean for him? The answer is well-known. He learns how to read words, sentences, and paragraphs and how to read aloud and recite; he learns the alphabet, the correct spelling of words, how to write words, sentences, and paragraphs, and the like. Similarly, although he has been doing things which go by the name “soft skills,” he has to know how to engage in these activities in a less spontaneous and more disciplined and sophisticated way, abiding by the norms of the same. For instance, he must not talk non-stop in a conversation and must respect the right of the other or the others in the conversation to be heard. He has to learn how not to reduce a conversation into a debate and, during a debate, he must not interrupt the other participants when they are speaking and try to dominate the debate. And there is a great deal more to learn in this regard.
A thought with which we conclude. We may note that a debate in one language does not become a conversation when translated into another language and vice versa. Likewise, a description in one language does not become an argument in another. The norms of conversation, discussion, and debate are not language-specific. These are common across languages. So what is specific to languages in these verbal acts? And how do the commonness and differences influence the first, the second, and the third language teaching? NEP 2020, it seems, leaves such matters to the implementers.
(The views expressed are the writer’s own)
Prof. B.N.Patnaik
Retd. Professor of Linguistics and English, IIT Kanpur
Email: [email protected]
(Images from the net)