What are the problems of teaching English?

 India is a multilingual country. All the Indians do not speak a uniform language. Moreover the state governments have been laying more importance to local mother tongues and they are showing a step motherly attitude towards English. Some of the writers in local mothertongues are also raising demands of making local languages as administrative languages. In the face of all these realities the English teachers in India are facing many difficulties in teaching English. I have tried to make a list of problems of teaching English in India. They are: 

1. English sentence structure is different from that  of mothertongue. In English the place of verb is after noun but before object. But in Hindi and other languages the verb appears after object. This difference creates problem to the students to understanding, to write and to speak English. 

Ex: 

1)Rama ate a fruit.(English)

2)Rama phal khaaya.( Hindi)

3)Rama hannanu thindanu. (Kannada)

4)Ramudu pandu thine.(Telugu)

5)Raman palam saapata.(Tamil) 

6(Rama hannu khado.(Lambani) 

7)Ramanu hannanu hindanu.(Tulu) 


2. Influence of mothertongue:--

Apart from the above difference in sentence structure,  mothertongue also hinders a child from pronouncing English. For example, a Telugu child cannot pronounce paper as /peipa/, instead the child pronounces paper as /pyapar/. A Tamil child cannot pronounce the sound / l/.  Ex: when a Tamilian pronounces /l/ the tongue  instead of touching the upper jaw, it hits the upper jaw. The children with Hindi or similar north Indian languages pronounce ' speak' as / ispi:k/ , 'smile' as /ismail/  and 'school' as /isku:l/. 

3. Lack of exposure to native accent and pronunciation. The students of India do not get the opportunity to listen to the natives of English.  Whatever  ‌‌‌‌‌‌they hear from their teachers appears artificial because the students see those teachers speaking in mother tongue when they come out of the English class rooms. Majority of the Indian students never get a chance to see and converse with the natives of England. 

4. Non accessibility to English on medias like radio and television. Majority of students do not get the opportunity to listen to English on radio or television. Because majority of Indian population is poor. They cannot afford to buy televisions. Moreover, those who have televisions at home prefer to watch programmes in mother tongue than in English. 

5. Lack of conducive English environment for children in their homes, particularly in rural areas. The rural population of India is alienated from English education. The parents have very little or negligible level of English education. Because of this, they cannot help their children in their studies . Then how can we expect the parents to create English environment at their homes? 

6. Existing English teachers of primary schools in India are not yet well trained in activity based communication skills. The present English teachers in primary schools need to be trained in spoken English and basic grammar. They lack these skills. They themselves are not in a position to communicate among themselves in English. In such a situation how can you expect them to communicate with students in English? 

7. Lack of infrastructures like activity banks, dearth of supportive resource persons and resource materials. 

MohanTiptur

07/06/2024


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