Deborah He
Soomin Jwa
WR98 K1
16 Sep. 2015
Summary
Pallavi Polanki’s article “Operation Mind Your Language” addresses the issue on the lack of English teachers in Afghanistan. As more and more Americans go to Afghanistan, the demand for English increases greatly. The government not only need English speakers to work as their consultants, but also need qualified English teachers to teach children English. Many students are sponsored by the Afghan government to join a program of NCERT, National Council of Education Research and Trainning, to study English language. The government provides scholarships for them to get trained on how to become English teachers. It is a precious opportunity for those students to learn English in India. Some
of the females even have difficulties to go to school back home because of the insurgents. Many of the Afghan students have strong desires to help building the country and making it better. “ ‘As you know, USA nowadays means United States of Afghanistan. English has become our native language, Whereever you go in Afghanistan, you will face Americans’ ” (Polanki 168). It is interesting how he defines USA as United States of Afghanistan. It indicates how important English language is to people in Afghanistan. I like it when the author put funny phrase in the article which helps to capture readers’ attention. “English speakers are highly sought after in the job market. According to the Afghan Ministry of Education’s statistics, nearly 50 per cent of the 12,000 public schools are in need of over 20,000 qualified English teachers” (Polanki 168). The data in this quote is really interesting. It shows the lack of qualified English teachers in Afghan schools. That is why the government sponsors so many students to go to India to learn English. “ ‘Before I came here, I thought India was a very dangerous place. I had only seen Bollywood films. But now, I’ve changed my mind. People of India are quite relaxed and they don’t interfere ’ ” (Polanki 170). This quote tells a Afghan girl’s view of India before and after she got there. It is interesting how her view changes when she actually sees the country. It also shows the great power of movies. I am not quite sure what she means by “they don’t interfere”.
After the lecture by Harryette Mullen, I had different interpretations of the poems “Bilingual Instructions,” “Elliptical,” and “Why You and I.” Mullen’s poetry truly caught my eye more than any other poets poetry in this short amount of time because she is rule breaking and different. Before the lecture, I read these two poems multiple times, which allowed me to come up with my own thoughts and ideas of what the poems meant but when Mullen spoke out about the true meaning of her poems I found that my thoughts and ideas were not exactly correct.
There are words heard with either a positive or negative connotation. These positive and negative connotations that are placed with certain words are made up of the society in which we live in. An example of a word that can be used as a positive word or a negative word would be the word 'please.' For someone using the word 'please' depending on the tone the speaker using the word and if there is a pause before or after the word, it may be heard with a negative connotation such as annoyance, or with a positive connotation as a sort of thanks and appreciation. When using a word that doesn't have a definition that’s defined by hatred and offends it offends the person hearing the word you can really never be rebuked for what you said but how you
Language and culture are inseparable; with language suffering variations as the culture varies or changes. Political, economic and geographical conditions will determine cultural characteristics that will result in language variation.
Malkani, Gautam. Londonstani. Rotten English: a literary anthology. By Dohra Ahmad New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007.
The education of women is one of the main and most difficult areas of concern for donors to spend their money on because of the delayed results in improvement. The agencies and the governments are under pressure to show concrete and quick results for money spent (6). Reforming curriculum, revising textbooks and changing teacher certification systems do not happen as quickly as building school buildings. In Afghanistan, billions are being spent each year on development and humanitarian activities. However,the education system gets a very small share of the aid budget. The main problem in the education system is the planning beyond con...
In the United States every student have access to education, no matter their language, race, ethnic, etc. Unfortunately not all the children can enjoy this opportunity because they do not speak the common language, in this case English. Many school offer bilingual education programs but there still school across the nation that have not offer bilingual education. The main goal of all this programs is the student became biliterate in their native language and the second language acquired. The most effective way to develop literacy is in child’s native language. Literacy Knowledge in the first language form a strong solid foundation will able to transfer many skills to the second language.
As an immediate offshoot of this scenario, the demand for Communicative Skills in English has been on the rise in all fields. Obviously the demand has brought a lot of pressure on English teachers to perform and produce good results. Consequently English Teachers and class room practices in teaching English have come into sharp focus for the assessment of the state and stage of teaching English in Indian classrooms. English Language Teaching is now at a crucial juncture as a number of methods, approaches and innovations have been discussed in series of seminars and conferences arranged at various colleges and universities in India. A few of them have already been in practice for a considerable time but found to be short of expectations in improving the language skills of the stakeholders. It needs a lot of motivation, innovation and commitment on the part of all concerned to sincerely and seriously take a new approach, an experiment or a theory through the process of practice from a superficial level to a deeper
A pidgin is a language which has no native speakers and was developed as a mean of communication between people who do not have a common language. A pidgin is no one’s native language. Pidgins seem particularly likely to arise when two groups with different language are communicating in a place where there is also a third dominant language. For example, on Caribbean slave plantations in the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, West African people were forcefully separated from others who used the same language to reduce the risk of them plotting to escape or rebel. To be able to communicate with each other, as well as their overseers, these slaves have created a pidgin based on the language of the plantation bosses, mixed with their own languages. Pidgins developed as language of trade between the traders who used a colonial language such as Portuguese, or Spanish, or English – and the Indians, Chinese, African or American Indians that they were trading with on sea-coasts. A lot of the meanings which have been suggested for the word pidgin reflect its uses as means of communication between traders. It may derive from the word ‘businesses’ as pronounced in the pidgin English which developed in China, or perhaps from Hebrew pidjom meaning ‘trade or exchange’ or perhaps from the combination of two Chinese characters pei and tsi n meaning ‘paying money.’ In the very beginning, pidgins develop with a narrow range of functions. The pidgin is an addition to a person’s linguistics repertoire used for a specific purpose, such as trades or perhaps administration.
In Sri Lanka English is learned as a second language .This study investigates the impacts of English Language learning on the values of the Tamil prospective teachers. The study explores whether the learning of English language has an impact on the values of the Sri Lankan Tamil prospective teachers. Qualitative and quantitative methodology was utilized for the study. A questionnaire and interviews with the participants were utilized for the study. The findings show that the English language learning has positive effects on the values of the Tamil prospective teachers
The good value of education that a country has, the good value of human resources it has. The good value can take from local wisdom that comes from community itself and implemented in English language teaching. Komin (1998) said in Piromruen and Pandian journal “the extent of local culture lost due to English language influence is in fact and important and relevant issue in English learning and teaching. Although no answer available, it is worth of being food for thought for language teachers to ponder”. Involving the local wisdom-based learning that has a positive value will provide learning contained character building in it and teaching base on local wisdom can preserve the culture that has been
As we all know language is the most important communicative tool of mankind, and English is an important tool for today’s international communication. College English Curriculum Requirement which was issued by the Ministry of Education, reflects the objective of college English, that is, to develop students’ ability to use English in an all-round
Our nation needs a program that will begin teaching students growing languages such as Hindu, Mandarin Chinese, and Portuguese, at a young age. This program must be capable of making a child fluent in one, if not several languages. As the common cliché goes, the nation’s children today will be the nation’s leaders tomorrow. We need multi-lingual’s in the work force, and program like this can get us the people we need.
I have made an attempt to explore a relatively untreated arena of English Language Teaching in India. The long association of Indians and English has proved an advantage for the Indian youth. In the current globalized world, oral communication skills have gained importance. Learning language is not difficult for the Indian learners who have a multi-linguistic background. However, this background causes a difficulty which is reflected in their oral communication. While the written skills are more or less uniform, as they are acquired from books, the oral communicative behavior is diversified. This can be attributed to the absence of a conducible atmosphere to teach/learn Spoken English.
Just a few centuries ago, English was spoken by elite sections and rich people in India. Today there are more non-native speakers than native users of English all over the world. English is nowadays official language in over 60 countries. At the time Indian independence, English was the language which was for only administration. India, after becoming independent in 1947, was left with a colonial language, in this case English, as the language of government. Kachru (1986: 111) rightly says that “English functions in the Indian socio-cultural context to perform roles relevant and appropriate to the social, educational and administrative network of India.” Since it is international language, in the present days, there are many different types
English language was originally the language of England. Historically, through the British Empire expands in 18 century, the English language spread to different areas of their colonies. For example, it has become the primary or secondary language for these colonies such as United States, Canada, Australia, and India (BLUK, 2016). Nowadays, English language because the dominant language in the world, people all over the world use English language in education, business, work placements, media and so on. This paper examines the importance of English language for media students.