It was possibly the year 2004 and I was a third year university student then. I got an offer of tuition, lucrative in the sense of payment. My would-be-student ¾ a housewife-cum-students ¾ was reading in BA (Pass) course. And there was a condition against that high remuneration. It was like this ¾ as the student had already failed in English two times, the husband wanted to see his wife pass this time, by hook or by crook. I accepted the challenge. On the very first day, I asked her which text she followed and was at a loss at her reply, “the blue-coloured book!” Very easily did I understand why she failed twice in English.
I joined here in Comilla University in 2009, got more than 5 years of experience. Since then, I have had many complaints and objections about poor markings, of course in English. Somehow, the students try to complain that they are given, not that they deserve, poor marks. But the scenario is totally different. A student now-a-days gets good marks, secures highest CGPA even after having common spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, wrong sentence construction and unlikely thematic contents in his script. Writing correctly and to the point is not their main concern. Rather, they waste their time and talent to get good marks without reading and writing well. As a result, we get graduates with good results but not with better skills in English.
Many students obtain GPA 5.00 in SSC and HSC levels in our country. Communicative system helps them positively securing the same in English too. Most of them opt for reading in the department of English at the tertiary level. At the time of interview in the university admission test, they can’t justify properly their choice of English, rather they get confused and murmur, “My father wants me to…..”, “My mother, my brother, etc……” Almost all the good scorers, having such grade in English portion in the admission test, get themselves admitted to the departments of their first choice and, needless to say, in all the universities English is the first choice among the Arts faculty subjects. But, after the admission, I see from my experience, the students forget to speak in English in the classroom. The students even feel uneasy to write any application, if needed, in English. They want to communicate in Bengali in the classroom and if the course teacher doesn’t permit Bengali in the classroom, they remain silent avoiding communication or interaction even if they have anything important to know from the teacher. The aspiration of getting a lively interactive classroom gets nipped in the bud then. In the semester final viva, it’s even worse as some of them can’t utter even a single word in English and seek permission to speak in Bengali. The foremost reason for this is the system. In his/her SSC and HSC level, s/he gets accustomed to the communicative system that makes him an oral communicator who lacks perfection and so gets afraid of it. And the system makes the students and the guardians run after marks, not after skills and mastering.
Those who come to read in the department of English without minimum preparation and the minimum sense of English language and literature lag behind in every respect as the days go by. They fail catastrophically and pass with very poor GPAs. In some courses, they even fail let alone pass or obtain good GPA. As a result, they come out without standard result finally or even drop out from the programme. Those carrying poor GPAs stumble in their job field also as the companies now require standard GPA holders as their executives.
We are mistaken to think a student good in English if he speaks fashionably with lots of errors and mistakes. We are awarding degrees, I should rather say we are giving certificates, to thousands of graduates passed in English every year throughout the country but those graduates are getting these without mastering English. Some two or three in hundred might be there to uphold the minimum level, but exception can’t be examples.
In the past years, English language was not given due emphasis in the syllabi of the departments of English in our universities. They used to design their curricula based mainly on the courses of literature, some 2/3 courses of English Language in the total syllabus. They would like to think that mastering literature would automatically pave the way for mastering language. And they taught their students to master the language, vocabulary and sentence structure while reading any text. But now in almost all the English departments, both the language and literature are given equal importance while developing curricula. The language courses are dealt with modern high-tech equipments and amenities. The ways and systems of English language teaching are enhanced so as to offer a pro-language teaching environment. But the scenario is just the same, no development. We are yet to ensure the quality of the students. The students are busy with notebooks, readymade materials to pass the stairs of examinations somehow.
Almost all the district towns are now-a-days full of advertisements, signboards, banners, festoons etc. to teach English, X-Method, Y-Method, X-Englsih Bazar and so on and so forth. Even the rural areas are no exceptions. Their simple message is that you would master English language overnight if you go there.
The word “Bazar” is directly related to business. The application of the word exposes the mercantile motifs of those businessmen who think only of their best profit, nothing of the students. The innocent students go there to develop their skills in English after their SSC or HSC and get cheated very easily. Those English teaching centres do nothing other than manipulating the ignorance of the learners.
At present, the rate of educated persons in our country is more than 60%. 20/25 years back, it was in between 20%-30%. Earlier, a student passing SSC was visited by the people from both the nearby and distant areas. Now the guardians and relatives crowd in the sweet shops on the day of result publication, no relatives go to visit a GPA 5.00 holder as they are available everywhere. Previously, there was a merit list of 20 places from the whole board. And now, as numerous students are GPA 5.00 holders, the guardians try to console themselves by a strange term “golden GPA”. People were afraid of English earlier and took it for granted that a student having sound knowledge in English is really a good student. But now, as we see, a student securing 80% marks in English is unable to get a place in any university. And the reason is clear-failing in the English portion of the admission test. The present students aren’t afraid of English; they can do pretty well with English for day to day purposes with lots of silly mistakes. But in regarding accuracy and perfection, they are helpless.
Recently, we have yielded plenteous crops in the HSC result, many students have passed and obtained GPA 5.00. Same happened with the SSC result earlier. And we have been yielding the same for so many years. In English, the result is supposed to be the same. Some of my relatives, securing so-called golden (!) GPA 5.00, have unfortunately failed to secure admission into the remote colleges in the rural areas let alone their preferred colleges in the town. The picture and the scenario I have collected from my friends teaching in the colleges and the schools is really shocking, and alarming too. The whole education system is under the clutches of an unknown disease – English education couldn’t get rid of it.
(Jahidul Alam is an Assistant Professor, Department of English, Comilla University)
