1. Irreplaceable Combination of Artists And Their Skills
Artists, whether they are poets, painters, sculptors or singers, have a general tendency to count seriously on their skills for the success of their products or performances. In the making of each of the artists, considerable amount of time is spent in the development of skills. People who watch them work or play get fascinated by the instruments that they use and may not notice the skill that they employ in using them. It is natural to a reader, spectator, viewer or listener to overlook the need for development of skills even if they think they should also perform in similar ways. Quite often, the instruments, especially those which are complicated get greater importance than the skills involved. Drummer Shivamani has a famous statement that he made in Chennai, he said that no mechanism or machinery can replace an artist and the skills associated.
2. Attitudes That Create Status and States of Mind
Every person, in the processes of functioning, alone or with others, needs several frames of mind. Noam Chomsky in his book ‘On MisEducation’ refers to normal creative patterns that should be allowed to flourish if children have to get a mastery over any language. Devaluing the intellectual dimensions of learning a new language, is common, (1) though it is evidently a mental process. Therefore, the frames of mind, which Howard Gardner brought up, worked on and developed more powerfully in a couple of decades must decide the attitude of a person towards learning anything, especially a language. (2) All human attitudes have their base in the belief systems and these attitudes create the mood for learning or development, particularly by creating a status of the mind as also the states of mind. (3)
3. Conducive Conditions For Learning New Languages
When it comes to developing a new language skill, what generally matters apart from attitude, mood and state of mind; is the consciousness of the individual. (4) Development of a spoken language demands conscious efforts and in such consciousness, there ought not to be any apprehension about the comments by others around, especially by those who matter as far as the learner is concerned. Therefore, the issue of the collective consciousness also would matter in influencing the learner to perform or withdraw. (5) Hence, it is necessary that learning of a language has to happen without critical comments from those who are around whose consciousness of the spoken language is much higher. (6) When similarly disadvantaged learners are put together, they have a collective consciousness which will help them perform without taking into consideration the comments that others who know to speak the language would make. (7) So, a collective of more or less equally skilled or unskilled learners together are likely to develop their specific skills faster.
4. Converting An Alienated Outsider To An Insider Through Apprenticeship
In connection with creating a group of learners together for developing skills of a new language, there is a need to refer to Albert Camus and his famous novel ‘The Outsider’. He makes a mention that the character is condemned because he does not play the game as others play. Many young learners become outsiders in their own institutions and they are left in the outskirts of life (8) in the institution because the learner is unskilled to join a group to express oneself in English. This would certainly create a sense of being alienated (9) and definitely that will not be a good frame of mind to develop the skills of learning a new language. Converting this sense of being an outsider into a person of significance as an insider (10) is possible only when an apprenticeship is offered to the new learner. This should constitute several stages of the development of skills in language to initially novitiate the learner (11) into the processes of speaking the new language. This will take some time to give assurances to the learner that there is progress in the development of skills. Undoubtedly, this will also help in creating a passion to become an insider. (12)
5. The Disadvantaged Children’s Effectiveness Through An Intervention
It will be useful to narrate a story of one hundred children who participated in a learning and development intervention in Dakshina Kannada in the early part of the last decade of the last century. The minimum requirement for an entry into the intervention for the hundred was that the applicant student should have failed in all subjects. Suffice it to say that after ten days of apprenticeship, they went back to school and forty-six of them passed in all subjects in the examinations that ensued for the classes, and the rest did not come into this group by losing one or two marks in one subject or another. In the speaking apprenticeship, what is needed for the learner is plenty of opportunities for trying to speak the language with a limited set of words without anybody to stop the learner while the language is spoken continuously. Let the learner speak the wrong language and by practice, the person is bound to correct oneself.
6. Non-conventional Interventions To Support Authentic Interests
In any effort to learn a language, the first priority is to start speaking. (1) Parents who live abroad are surprised when their children start speaking the local language whereas the parents themselves are struggling to learn it which is also new to them. There are two reasons for this. The first is that no one corrects the children when they speak (2) which give them the confidence to continue to speak. The second reason is that they have an authentic interest (3) to speak because at the school in a foreign country, the only language that will work is the local language. Therefore, their genuine interest leads them to speak that language however wrong it be. Alongside, children first learn how to converse and how to ask questions (4) in the new language. Therefore, when one thinks about a course of intervention for Spoken English, those need to be kept in mind.
7. Practice To Speak Indian English
There is a fear of the learner being condemned for speaking Indian English. One fails to understand why the Indian should speak English like those who have it as their mother tongue. People all over the world speak English in their own ways, be it the French or the African or the Spaniard. The fact that a large number of Indians speak English in an Indian way should encourage the youth or the young boys and girls to speak English without bothering about the correct pronunciation or accent. What should matter is that the content is reached out to the listener.
8. Studies Need Not Develop Skills
John Dewey who did a lot of analytical studies on human learning stressed the need for offering experiential and creative components to try the development of skills by the learner. He wanted old colonial model of education for language learning to be given up and also to remember that any learning or development of skills has to consider the production of people of a higher order because of the new language learning and should never be calculated as production of different types of goods for human consumption or use. Every learner for a new spoken language has to be encouraged with a quantum of support that does not become a product of sitting in judgement of the learner’s development. Serdar Ozkan, the Turkish novelist, creates an interesting character in the seller of painted pictures. When the lady asked him why he left his studies, he said that he was losing his original colours of paintings by being at college to study Economics. He added that his studies or listening to the professors would not include his skills in painting. It is enough to say that skill development may not happen through a quantum of studies however great their qualities could be.
9. The Need For Guides And Mentors
Scott Peck in his famous book ‘The Road Less Travelled’ refers to the reality of a presence of avoiding challenge which he calls a characteristic human nature. For a learner to speak a language needs the capacity to do an unnatural or not normal performance which is speaking a new language that till then was not a part of the learner’s habitual behaviour. Total assistance from outside, especially from someone whom the learner respects as a supporter for the endeavours that the learner would take is the most desired situation that will help a person try speaking the new language.
10. Becoming Part of Technological And Globalised World
Human language is innate and universal. (1) It needs support from people who believe in the free creation of the simplest things on earth, words, phrases and sentences. (2) All people are born with the capacity to learn and use any number of languages as per their need. Language learning is a process of free creation. (3) In a world which is manifesting itself into the need for humans to live both in technological and global circumstances, (4) all new languages are welcome. The more one speaks, the greater is the chance to be a maker or doer in different parts of the world. English language being spoken by the maximum number of people in the world, (5) next to Chinese, it will be worthwhile to make the youth of this country learn to speak English, so that they will become a part of the technological and globalised world. (6) In addition, one has to also remember that fourteen percent of Indians do use English (7) to speak to a person with another language as mother tongue not known to the speaker earlier.
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Prof. Sunney Tharappan, is Director of College for Leadership and HRD, Mangaluru. He trains and writes and lives in Mangaluru.
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