TONGUE TWISTERS

TONGUE TWISTERS

Try reading out these short poems. Easy? Then try to say them more quickly …

---

A flea and a fly flew up in a flue.
Said the flea, “Let us fly!”
Said the fly, “Let us flee!”
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

---

Which wristwatches are Swiss wristwatches?

---

A noisy noise annoys an oyster

---

Ned Nott was shot and Sam Shott was not.
So it is better to be Shott than Nott.
Some say Nott was not shot.
But Shott says he shot Nott.
Either the shot Shott shot at Nott was not shot, or Nott was shot.
If the shot Shott shot shot Nott, Nott was shot.
But if the shot Shott shot shot Shott, then Shott was shot, not Nott.
However, the shot Shott shot shot not Shott – but Nott.

---

Thieves seize skis.

---

A bloke’s back bike brake-block broke.

---

Once upon a barren moor
There dwelt a bear, also a boar.
The bear could not bear the boar.
The boar thought the bear a bore.
At last the bear could bear no more
Of that boar that bored him on the moor,
And so one morn he bored the boar -
That boar will bore the bear no more.

---

Betty Botter had some butter,
“But”, she said, “this butter’s bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter
it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter -
that would make my batter better”.
So she bought a bit of butter
(better than her bitter butter),
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So ’twas better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.

---

She sells sea shells by the seashore.
The shells she sells are surely seashells.
So if she sells shells on the seashore,
I’m sure she sells seashore shells.

Word-Hedgehog

Semantics – Lecture: Sense

 SEMANTICS

Title:

Sense

Author(s): Dr John B Corbett

1.0 Sense Relations

Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at the semantic relations involved in what is called reference, the relationships of words to the world. We saw that the word is a combination of form and concept, and that the form relates to phenomena in the world (or more specifically, to referents in the universe of discourse) via mental concepts, which seem to be fuzzy categories centred around what are called prototypes. The study of the so-called semiotic triangle – the relations between form and concept, between concept and referent, and (indirectly) between form and referent make up one branch of the discipline of semantics. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis makes futher claims about the relationship between language, concepts and the world, arguing that our thoughts are determined by the language or languages we speak, and that this linguistic model is imposed upon the world. Last week we considered arguments for and against this theory. This week we are going to look at another branch of semantics. We’ll be focusing on word-meaning, but instead of looking at the relations between words and the world, we’ll be looking at the relations between words and other words. That is, instead of exploring reference, we’ll be looking at sense relations.

There are various types of sense relation. Traditionally, semantics looked at synonymy and homonymy. Synonymy is the relation between two or more words of similar meaning, let’s say car and automobile, or sofa and couch. These words are synonyms – you probably have heard that word before.

Homonymy is the reverse situation, in which one word-form has two or more very different meanings, for example, the bank of a river, and the bank that gives or denies you overdraft facilities. Bank (1) and bank (2) are homonyms. There are special cases of homonymy – sometimes the words sound the same but look different: for example, the tea that you drink versus the tee that you hit a golf-ball from. These are homophones. Alternatively, words may look identical but sound different – thus you might weep a single tear if you tear your best jacket. These are homographs.

As an intellectual pursuit, homonymy is of minor interest, and not just because it’s difficult to pronounce. Synonymy and homonymy originally grabbed scholars’ attention because there was a fashion, mainly in the 17th Century, to find the perfect language. In the perfect language, some scholars argued, there would be a one-to-one relationship between word-form and concept – messy things like synonyms and homonyms would be outlawed. Anyway, unless you are interested in contributing to the language planning of Esperanto, or Klingon, homonyms do not have much lasting attraction.

Synonyms do, though. We’ll be considering three types of sense relation in some detail today: synonymy, antonymy and hyponomy. These sense relations are more interesting than homonymy, because they do give us considerable insight into the way meanings are generally structured in language. The first of these at least should be reasonably familiar: synonymy, as we have seen, is the relation that holds between words of similar meaning; antonymy is the relation that holds between words of opposite meaning; and hyponomy is the relationship that holds between different members of a category (eg the relations between words like apple, pear, orange and the more general term fruit).

If I give these brief definitions then the sense relations do not sound too problematical – some words mean the same thing, others mean opposite things, others are co-members of a given category. So what? But in language nothing is ever quite that simple, as you have probably already seen. So I want to look in turn at these three sense relations — synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy — and discuss what makes them a little more problematical and therefore a little more interesting.

2. Synonymy

Let’s start with the most familiar one of the three – synomymy. What does it mean to say that words have the same or similar meaning? If you want to look up the synonyms a word has, then you go to a Thesaurus, a reference book sometimes known as a reverse-dictionary because it is classified by meanings, not alphabetically, by word-forms. Word-processing programs also now have thesauruses (or thesauri) as standard features. They are interesting to look at. The most famous thesaurus is Roget’s, named after Peter Mark Roget, a Londoner born of Swiss parents in 1779. Young Peter went to Edinburgh University, graduated as a doctor, practised in Manchester and London, and in 1852 he published a Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged so as to Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Composition. The 19th Century was not the century of snappy titles. Soon this cumbersome work was known simply as Roget’s thesaurus, and it was so popular that on Peter’s death, in 1869 at the age of 90, it became a kind of family business: his son, John Lewis Roget revised and expanded it, and his grandson later did the same. The Roget you see today will be one of many different editions down the decades. If you look at one recent copy, Roget’s
International Thesaurus 4th edn, revised by Robert Chapman and published in 1984 by Harper Collins, you will see among the many synonyms given for writer the following:

Writer
Scribbler [slang]
Penman
Pen or pencil driver or pusher [slang]
Word-slinger
Inkslinger or Ink-spiller [both slang]
Knight of the plume or pen or quill [informal]
Scribe
Scrivener
Amanuensis
Secretary
Recording Secretary
Clerk
Letterer
Copyist
Copier
Transcriber
Chirographer [i.e. a person whose job it is to write]
Calligrapher

Do all these words really ‘mean the same thing’? Obviously not, although we might readily grant that there is a connection between them – they all have to do with the activity of writing. We might say, then, that they are ‘loosely synonymous’ or that they belong to the same semantic field.

The acknowledgement of ‘loose synonymy’ leads us to a question: does ’strict’ synonymy ever exist? Are there words in the language that have exactly the same meaning? What about nouns like ‘couch’, ’settee’ and ’sofa’? Is there a difference in meaning between these words?

This question has been the matter of some debate amongst linguists. Some like Stephen Ullman argue that strict synonymy does not exist because no two words are ever completely inter-changeable. For some people, ‘couch’, ’settee’ and ’sofa’ are different in terms of formality – though you might get into arguments about which are the formal and informal terms. If you design furniture, you might have a technical definition that distinguishes the three – though as we saw in our earlier discussion of tomatoes, avocados and cucumbers, those well-known fruits, scientific categorisations do not always correspond to linguistic concepts. Certainly, if you look at English as a whole, the distribution of the three terms is different – you can insult someone by calling them a ‘couch potato’ but you would look rather silly if you screamed that they were nothing but a ’sofa potato’ or a ’settee potato’. So, according to Stephen Ullman, strict synonymy just doesn’t exist: there are always differences of register (i.e. formality and informality), dialect, or distribution of usage to distinguish words and meanings.

Other linguists disagree. John Lyons argues rather cleverly that despite the reservations of people like Ullman, strict synonymy is possible. You just have to narrow your focus and agree that because two words are strictly synonymous in some contexts, they need not be synonymous in others. Lyons devised a formula for strict synonymy that goes something like this:

Take two sentences, S1 and S2, which differ only in one word – x is substituted by y. If S1 and S2 are identical in meaning, then x and y are strict synonyms in that context.

So, if you agree that The chair is broken, so could you use the sofa? is identical in meaning to The chair is broken, so could you use the settee/couch? then (in those contexts) the words are strictly synonymous. However, if you agree that the sentences She works as a writer and She works as a clerk or She works as a calligrapher mean different things, then writer, clerk and calligrapher are not strictly synonymous (again, in these contexts).

Synonymy is interesting. It makes us think closely about the relationships between different words of similar meaning, and gives us insight into the way we use them – why the casting couch but not the casting sofa (is it just the alliteration?). What would be the effect of putting on your passport: Profession: Knight of the Plume? Would you really say to the Immigration Officer that it’s an informal synonym for ‘writer’?

3. Hyponymy

Synonymy can actually be described as a special case of hyponymy, as we shall see. Hyponomy is a more recent term in semantics than synonymy – it refers to the sense relation that holds between classes and their members. So, spanner, screwdriver, hammer, drill are all members of the class, tool. In technical terms, spanner, screwdriver, drill, etc are all co-hyponyms and tool is the superordinate term.

If we want to apply logic to this sense relation, then we can devise a formula along these lines:

Take two sentences, S1 and S2, which differ only in one word – x is substituted by y. If S1 implies S2 but S2 does not imply S1, then y is a hyponym of x in that context.

Let’s take the example of hammer and its superordinate term, tool. A sentence like Could you pass me that hammer? implies Could you pass me that tool? However, if you were to say, Could you pass me that tool? You might not necessarily have a hammer in mind. You might have what Americans are beginning to call a whole nother kind of tool in mind.

Unless you look closely into it, hyponymy might appear a kind of trivial subject. But it has its hidden depths. Two points can be made about hyponomy here. First, recall again the discussion we had about whether tomatoes and avocados are vegetables or fruit. To summarise, we said that English-speakers generally conceive of them as fruit, although technically (scientifically, and in some other languages) they are classified as fruit. In hyponymy, then, we would categorise them as vegetables, because here we are interested in the structure of mental concepts, not in the structure of botanical species. Thus tomato and avocado would be a co-hyponym with carrot in English, while avocado would be a co-hyponym with strawberry or passion fruit in Portuguese. Hyponomy can give insights into the way different cultures structure reality.

Secondly, as I said a few minutes ago, synonymy can actually be seen as a special case of hyponomy. All we need to do is alter our formula for hyponymy slightly and we come up with another formula for synonymy:

Take two sentences, S1 and S2, which differ only in one word – x is substituted by y. If S1 implies S2 and S2 also implies S1, then y is a synonym of x in that context.

Try it out with ‘couch’ and ’sofa’: If She was lying on the sofa implies She was lying on the couch and She was lying on the couch also implies She was lying on the sofa then ‘couch’ and ’sofa’ are synonyms in that context. Again, for some people, with different mental concepts of sofa and couch, they may not be synomyms, but for many people they probably are.

The main point to grasp here is that logical formulae involving implications are being used to clarify and define semantic terms and relations. Much work in semantics became very formulaic and algebraic for much of the first half of the twentieth century. After the 1950’s things loosened up a bit, as we shall see later in the course.

4. Antonymy

After synonymy and hyponymy, antonomy should be a cinch, a pushover, a trifle, a thing of naught, mere child’s play, a piece of cake, duck soup. But it isn’t.

Let’s try a little audience participation, to cheer things up. I’ll give you a word, and you give me its opposite, its antonym. So, when I say hot you say cold, and so on. Got the picture? Ok, let’s go.

Hot
Cold

Up
Down

Big
Small

Huge
Tiny? Teeny-weeny?

Buy
Sell

Married
Single (Divorced?) (Separated?)

Summer
Winter? (Autumn?) (Spring?)

January
Huh?

It should be clear from this little activity, that not all words have opposites, or at least, not all words have opposites in the same way. In semantics, antonyms are just one aspect of what is more broadly referred to as incompatibility of meanings. I want to conclude today’s lecture by looking briefly at different ways in which word meanings can be incompatible.

(a) Antonymy

Technically, antonomy is restricted to those words like hot/cold, big/small which are often gradable adjectives. The ‘opposites’ can be seen as occupying space at diametrically-opposite ends of a scale, thus big/small, huge/tiny.

(b) Complementarity

Complementarity applies to two-term sets of words where one excludes the other. Thus if you are married, it implies that you are not single; and if you are single, it implies you are not married. Other states fall into the general semantic field, but if you are divorced or separated you can argue that you are single once more. The same kind of relation holds for up and down.

(c) Converseness

Relations of converseness are said to apply to words like buy/sell; give/receive; husband/wife. Again implications are used to clarify this relationship. If you buy something from me, then it implies that I sell something to you. If x is y’s husband, it implies that y is x’s wife. Like complementarity, converseness relates to two-term sets of words.

(d) Incompatibility

The most general type of ‘oppositeness’ is simply incompatibility. This is a little like complementarity but pertains to sets of words greater than two. Seasons of the year fall into a four-word set, although we tend to perceive summer/winter, spring/autumn as opposites. As numbers in the set increase (to twelve with months of the year) it is more difficult to assign a single opposite to each word. But we can say that a sentence like ‘It’s January’ implies that it isn’t February/March/April/etc. If it is one, then it is not one of a set of others.

Antonymy, incompatibility, or oppositeness, then, is a sense relation which again tells us a lot about the ways in which vocabulary is structured in English. So far we have been looking at present-day English and assuming that meanings, though complex, are fairly stable. Next week we shall look at how the meanings of words change and what happens when they do.
 

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Copyright holder(s)

• University of Glasgow: Copyright © 2004 The University of Glasgow. All rights reserved

The SCOTS Project and the University of Glasgow do not necessarily endorse, support or recommend the views expressed in this document.

Speak you English?

Speak you English?

By Pratibha Umashankar

ENGLISH IS supposed to be an international language. But you will be surprised to discover how many people around the world don’t speak English, or speak a version that sounds like a distant cousin of the Queen’s English.

 

Is it still English if someone gesticulates wildly with their hands and asks, “Train train, go go where time Moscow?” Yes it is. It is Globish.

 

 Globish is English spoken around the globe. It is a simplified version of English spoken by many non-native English speakers. It is so simple that the English might not recognise it as English. It is, in fact, a proposed form of English that uses a limited vocabulary and basic syntax — sentence structure — to help non-native speakers of English to communicate. Globish might become Denglish when English is mixed with German. Language purists in Germany have been concerned for some time about the increasing use of English in German, both spoken and written. English words are surreptitiously creeping into German ads. Why Denglish? Why not Genglish, if it is a mixture of German and English? Simple. Denglish is a combination of Deutsche (it is the German word for ‘German’, and is pronounced ‘doytsh’) and English. Do guys feel that they can’t really understand girls when they say “Don’t be mean” or “Cho Chweet!”?

And do girls just gawk when two guys talk, because it is like listening to another language, though it sounds like English? Yes, it is another language.

 

It is Menglish. Menglish is language used of, by, to, and about men. Yes, there is a gender barrier within the language. It is like men and women belong to two different planets. Yeah, men are from Mars and women are from Venus. When guys and girls think differently, naturally, their language will sound different. And if men speak Menglish, what do women speak? Yes, you guessed it — woMenglish.

 

First they tried to remove the word ‘man’ from all those male-dominated words for fear of sounding sexist and politically incorrect. From airman to chairman, the word ‘man’ was replaced by ‘person’. But then, you can’t really get rid of either male or female idiosyncrasies. Also, more and more men are taking on what was traditionally considered female-oriented jobs. (You thought it was the other way round. Ha, ha!) We have mannies — male nannies.

 

Do you want those around you to not know what you are talking about? Do you want to form an exclusive clique and keep others out? Try antilanguage. It is a collection of words and phrases used to exclude outsiders from a particular group. It could also be used to hide the group’s activities. One of the examples of antilanguage is Mobspeak — the language of the Mafia. Do you often wonder about the language of those corporate head honchos when they talk about their business organisation? They use words that, when analysed carefully, don’t mean anything. Yes, it is Spinnish.

Spinnish is the language used by spin doctors and other corporate or political movers and shakers. If someone’s speech is sprinkled with expressions like ‘think out of the box’, ‘ballpark estimate’, ‘rightsizing’, then you can be sure he is a spin doctor who is trying to manipulate language to con you.

 

Netspeak is a different ball game altogether. All of you practise it. It consists of words, idioms and peculiarities of spelling and grammar that are typical of Online documents and communication. Why only Online, the Net language is making inroads even into other arenas, including Literature.

 

Linguist David Crystal in his new book Language And The Internet calls it ‘computer-mediated language.‘ Experts claim that Netspeak is going to change how we write. So, kudos to you guys! You will have created a revolution by using Internetese and Netspeak with scant regard to spelling, grammar and literary style, and the tense going for a toss. Don’t be surprised if an entire novel is written using BTW, UR grea8 and the like.

 Then all of you can be cyberscribers — a person who writes about the Internet.

Oh, for LOL!  

The Role of Language in National Progress

The Role of Language in National Progress
Language has played a significant role in the rise and fall of civilizations.

Language presents humankind with a variety of possibilities. Since language is the portrait of human thoughts, it reflects the quality of thought generated in a society. Training in language therefore, enables an individual to express his thoughts in the most eloquent way.

But a person has to learn to think before learning to express. The skill of driving has to accompany the ability to know or remember directions. Without the ability to navigate, even a good driver will be lost.

The selection of language tools used to express thought reflects the priorities of a person or for that matter a nation. The way language is acquired and then used can make a tremendous difference in the success (or failure) of a person or nation. The quality and quantity of language is a barometer of the intellectual health of the people.

There are two types of language skills, each having its own specific role to play in society. The growth of a society depends on the importance given to each one of them. The first type is BICS ( Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills). This is our ability to interact with others in society. Many forms of language that concern with human relations fall under this category.

BICS can be in the form of verbal dialogue or written text. In both its forms BICS concerns with human feelings, social and religious arguments and entertainment. Political and religious rhetoric fall under this category. Much of BICS is done to leave a lasting expression on the listener or the reader. It’s a tool used to arouse feelings in humans, convincing them to take up a certain task. Plenty of BICS is simply entertainment. The time humans spend in leisure or to relax engages BICS and the forms of BICS used in such situations can be poetry, drama, theatre or discussions.

The other type of language used to express human thought is CALP ( Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) . Whereas BICS concerns with human emotions and social issues, CALP is the language of science. CALP is the language used by the scientific community to produce and share research. It is used to read, analyze and generate scientific papers. CALP deals with natural phenomena, discoveries and issues of scientific importance. It is used in research reports, dissertations and theses. CALP is the ability to present a problem, building a hypothesis, analyzing data and then presenting solutions. CALP is less concerned with emotional appeals and rhetoric. The words used in CALP may not make us emotional or entertain us but have accurate scientific references. Since CALP mostly deals with data, facts and figures, it lacks the beauty of Shakespeare or the imagery of Mirza Ghalib.

Humans must possess a balance between the two types. Without BICS human life can be dry and boring. A society may lack colour, warmth and movement if there is no BICS. Human relationships as well as national identity are kept strong with the help of BICS. On the other hand, CALP is needed to make scientific advancements. A society lacking CALP starts to fall behind in the League of Nations. Lack of CALP leads to lack of scientific knowledge and discoveries, creating a severe handicap for a society.

At individual level we can find people who had little of CALP yet they made a name for themselves due to their BICS. For example, a person might be able to make people laugh or cry, motivate a group of people to sacrifice their lives for a cause that is dear to the orator, but may have poor ability to make sense of any kind of scientific knowledge.

Similarly there have been plenty of eminent scientists who made long strides in their own field of science but had little or no BICS. Many of scientists are considered dry with hardly any love for poetry but they were excellent in making sense of scientific knowledge.

So a question arises:  Which one is more important to acquire, CALP or BICS?

We can find the answer to this question in the landmark book of Michael Hart –
The 100.  The book, as many of us know, is famous in the Muslim world because
of its ranking of the Prophet of Islam as the most influential personality of the entire human history. Coming from a westerner, the ranking of the last prophet at the top talks plenty about the professional judgment of the author. But that is not the only credit that is due to Hart. Throughout the book he has been a competent researcher, who has carefully evaluated the lives of hundreds of people and weighted the effects they had on human history. To specifically calculate the achievements of a person and then to see how much
they have been able to change the course of human history is a difficult job.

The book can help us create two groups of personalities i.e. the people who succeeded because of their BICS and those who influenced due to their CALP. From the list of hundred we can find the people who were successful for their CALP. The CALP personalities would include scientists who are not considered excellent communicators but their works have helped improve the quality of human life. The book lists 36 scientists and inventors. Each one of these 36 scientists and inventors left a mark on human
history because of their CALP.

It would be a surprise to many Muslims who look only at the first chapter of the book, that the second most influential personality of the entire human history is none other than Isaac Newton. To understand the effect Newton has left on human civilization, I quote here Alexander Pope, one of the most renowned of the English poets:

Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night
God said, let Newton be! And all was light.

It would be worth mentioning that Jesus Christ is ranked at number 3, one step below Newton. Why? Because the author of the book considers the changes that world has seen due to the scientific discoveries of Newton far outweigh the changes that Jesus has been able to bring about in the world.

Now to understand the role of CALP in the development of this scientific genius, I quote from the first paragraph of the second chapter:

“As a child he ( Newton) showed considerable mechanical aptitude, and was very clever with his hands. Although a bright child, he was very inattentive in
school and did not attract much attention. When he was a teenager, his mother took him out of the school, hoping that he would become a successful farmer.

Fortunately, she was persuaded that his principal talents lay elsewhere, and at eighteen, he entered Cambridge University. There he rapidly absorbed what was then known of science and mathematics and soon moved on to his own independent research.”

From this we can see that due to his lack of BICS, even his mother considered him a poor student who could only be a good farmer. Fortunately in 17th century England there were people who did realize that poor BICS does not mean a mental handicap and thus Newton’s mother was persuaded to let Newton continue with his education. We see that once at the Cambridge University, Newton, who severely lacked BICS absorbed all the scientific and mathematical knowledge of that time using his CALP.

There are plenty of others who make this list of 100 because of their excellent CALP. Some of these belong to the Greek era when philosophy and science were still intermingled and great scientists were also great philosophers.

The book lists no less than 14 in this category. The greatest of all the philosophers is Aristotle at 13 th position followed by his mentor Plato at number 40. Both of them had been good teachers (teaching requires more of BICS) in their own ranks, where Plato had an opportunity to educate the world’s foremost philosopher, Aristotle, and then Aristotle tutored the greatest military leader of all times – Alexander the Great.

But none of the two are remembered for their students. Aristotle wrote 170 books of which 43 survive up to this day. Some of the fields of science that he discussed are: astronomy, zoology, embryology, geography, geology, physics, and anatomy.

Plato, on the other hand, is best remembered for his work, The Republic. Much can be said about this book, but it suffices to claim that almost every western political system from ancient Greeks to the United States has been influenced by this work.

Even Voltaire, who is accepted as the most witty and eloquent of all the
philosophers, has left behind 30,000 pages of written materials that can easily make Voltaire a possessor of above average CALP.

So how many of the people on the list can be considered to have better BICS than CALP? To answer this question we have to identify the individuals whose success was hidden in their motivating and managing people. Political and military leaders are definitely the type who left a mark on history by leading people. And communicating with masses always needs BICS. The book lists 31 political and military leaders. None of these leaders have left behind any written works, and they are all known for the political changes they had caused or the conquests they had made.

To summarize it all 69 of the most influential individuals used their CALP,
whereas only 31 can be selected as the great user of BICS. In other words for every one person who is part of the list due to BICS, two are there for their CALP. It appears that the author did not have adequate access to the treasures of Muslim sources. we are sure, otherwise, he would have included Omer bin khattab and Iqbal in his selection.

A careful look at the list tells us of another amazing fact. At the end of 17 th century, as the people with CALP were dwindling in the Muslim world, their number was rising in the west. At this turning point of the history stands Francis Bacon (also ranked as one of the most influential personalities in the book), who eloquently advocated the use of scientific skills. Francis Bacon can be credited as the genius that made the West realize the importance of CALP bringing the western civilization out of the shingle of BICS.

From this point onwards there were hardly any at par with Al Beruni and Khawarizmi to come out of the Muslim world. The West went on to produce Newton and Einstein and the balance of power shifted between the two civilizations.

The Muslims lost their CALP and became more interested in BICS that involved futile entertainment and eloquent religious debate. Whereas, the West did away with BICS which was needed at that time to win arguments between Church and protestant movement and successfully developed CALP of its people, leading to hundreds of scientific discoveries and inventions in the last 3 hundred years.

The balance between BICS and CALP is so critical that it can make all the difference between success and failure of a nation. The education system, therefore, must provide appropriate impetus for the development of BICS and CALP. For non-English speaking students this becomes a daunting task and most students are then in a catch 22 situation. The BICS is the foundation of language. Whereas, most native speakers of English come to school with some BICS, the non English speaking children have to develop it at school, which only means less time for the development of CALP. Most non-natives spend most of their primary schooling learning BICS leaving little or no time for CALP.

Recent research shows that students should have some CALP by the end of class 6. Without a grasp of CALP by the end of class 6, students do not develop the basic aptitude and ingenuity to CALP that they would need when they step into the realm of higher education in sciences. Students in Pakistan complete class 6 with BICS only, hardly knowing anything about CALP. And that’s why we see so few Pakistani students entering university with any desire or ability to read and conduct research.

To change this situation teachers must realize that primary classes are not about acquiring the typical knowledge at all. The education till age 11 is all about, in the words of Stephen Covey, Sharpening the Saw. These critical years must be spent on developing BICS and CALP.

Secondly, teachers should remember what Leonard d Vinci has said: Everything in the universe is linked with everything else in the universe. And that goes for science and language as well. Teachers should bring language into science and science into language. While teaching how to write an autobiography in a language class, teachers can suggest students to write the autobiography of a raindrop thus introducing children to Water Cycle. Similarly while teaching children the part of a plant, teachers can suggest students to try writing a letter as a plant to a fish telling her all about the parts of a plant.

Considering that more than 80 percent of today’s scientific knowledge is in English language, students must acquire CALP and should not be limited to BICS only. Primary years play a crucial role in the development of both BICS and CALP. Now it is only prudent that, during these years, teachers spend maximum amount of time developing these 2 language skills, instead of making children learning information given in the books.

 

By  Rayed Afzal
Executive Director
New Century Education http://nceonline.com/

CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH ENGLISH IS TAUGHT IN PAKISTAN: By Dr.Jilani Warsi

CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH ENGLISH IS TAUGHT IN PAKISTAN: AN APPLIED LINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

Jilani Warsi*

http://www.saridjournal.org/2004/warsi.htm

Preceptor, Institute for English Language Programs, Harvard University, 51 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA

INTRODUCTION

Pakistani educators are concerned that the English language is taught in that country under conditions which are far from being satisfactory. English plays a prominent role in Pakistan as a lingua franca – a common means of communication – besides Urdu and a host of regional languages and numerous dialects – as a global language, and an easy medium for science and technology. However, it is a fact that despite studying English in schools and colleges for about 6-8 years, students, especially coming from rural backgrounds, are not able to communicate in English with relative ease and success. Even in some areas where students use a regional language as a first language (L1) besides Urdu – and in such areas English becomes a third language (L3) – they lack all the four major linguistic skills – reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Since acquiring a second language is a skill, it should be approached in that light. It is clear that the methods of teaching the English language in Pakistan have not yielded the desired objective, i.e. communicative competence. In this paper, I argue that educators, second language acquisition researchers, and English language teachers in Pakistan must approach teaching English as a Second Language from the perspective of applied linguistics and take the necessary measures to ameliorate the conditions under which English is taught in both rural and urban areas. The underlying thesis of this paper is that even though applied linguistics is a science and teaching is an art, they are closely related to each other, especially in the case of teaching English as a Second Language. The process of any second or foreign language teaching includes ‘selection,’ ‘grading,’ and ‘presentation’ as the major steps. Linguistics plays an instrumental role in the teaching process.

The paper is organized as follows. In Section I, I discuss the problematic issues such as shortcomings in the curriculum; inefficient teachers; methods and techniques most Pakistani English language teachers incorporate; inappropriate textbooks; inadequate material facility; an erroneous examination system; and lack of supervision. Then in Section II, I suggest plausibly attainable ways to improve the teaching conditions in Pakistan.

SECTION I
Drawbacks in the Education System

1.1 Little understanding of curricular objectives

In designing English courses for students of varying levels of proficiency, most language programs do not set clear curricular objectives. As a consequence, teachers are incapable of honing on specific skills. As I mentioned earlier, second language learning is a matter of skill acquisition. Therefore, it is in the interest of both teachers and students if the curricular objectives are clearly evinced at the beginning of the semester. For example, the curricular objectives for beginning, intermediate, and advanced courses should include the exit criteria, enabling the teacher and students to strive towards achieving the desired outcome collectively. This is not to mention that in Pakistan a placement test consisting of problem solving tasks related to reading and listening comprehension and writing and oral proficiency is usually not administered so that students can be placed in appropirate levels.

In a report, “A Civil Society Initiative in Curricula and Textbooks Reform,” a project of the Pakistan-based Sustainable Development Policy Institute, editors A. H. Nayyar and Ahmad Salim rightly point out serious drawbacks in the curricula and textbooks as follows (Please note that I have purposely ommitted some of their recommendations that are not pertinent to the focus and scope of this paper):

Ommission of concepts, events and material that could encourage critical self-awareness among students.
Outdated and incoherent pedagogical practices that hinder the development of interest and insight among students

I will comment on obsolete pedagogical methods and techniques that have a stultifying effect on the learner in a separate section, but suffice it to say that the Ministry of Education in Pakistan does not address the seemingly intractacble problems that mar the current curricula.

1.2 Inexperienced teachers

In rural areas most teachers are not able to keep themselves abreast of cutting-edge research in second language pedagogy and applied linguistics. One hopes that with the advent of the internet more and more English langauge teachers will educate themselves on recent trends in language teaching. It is needless to say that students are the ultimate beneficiaries of the teachers’ diligence. Advancements in understanding how the human mind works and the psychology of learning have been made, but teachers in Pakistan, especially in rural areas, have not benefitted from these discoveries. The State Department of Education ought to be promoting teacher training to equip language practioners with effective pedagogical tools. Workshops on teaching English as a Second Language can help fill the evident gap in the system.

1.3 Defective methods

Despite Chomsky’s (1957) groundbreaking work revealing that language is not primarily learned through imitation, the obsolete translation method is still being adopted by most language programs in rural areas. While it is true that there are certain advantages to using the learner’s first language in teaching the second language, in this case English, the disadvantages far outweigh the ephimeral benefits. According to Van Patten (2005), first language learning and second language acquisition are similar at the core. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that just as the child learns a first language through exposure to a vast amount of auditory input, second language learners will also gain speaking proficiency by listening to both authentic and connected speech in English and by doing oral work. Contrary to that, most English language programs in Pakistani rural areas neglect oral work and engage students in translating text from Urdu into English and vice versa. The translation method impedes the acquisition of syntactic structures in that it relies heavily on isolated chunks of grammar, ignoring the context in which the sentences are uttered by native English speakers. Furthermore, the translation method begins with the teaching of reading, ignoring prosodic features of the target language. It is ineffective in that communication skills are neglected and a great deal of stress is laid on rules and exceptions. There is increasing recognition in second language acquisition research of the auro-oral appraoch being more effective than the translation method. For this reason, the communicative approach to teaching English as a Second Language should be adopted.

1.4 Inappropriate books:

English as a Second Language textbook publishers in the US and the United Kingdom pay a great deal of attention to the selection and grading of structures – including both content and form – as they target students of varying levels of proficiency. Using the communicative approach, grammar rules are taught through content that subsumes a wide array of sociolinguistic topics. Considering the teachability and learnability hypothesis, which stipulates that ESL instrcutors be sensitive to what can be taught and what can be learned, simple rules precede complex ones in terms of presentation, exercise, and assessment. Despite this, textbooks in Pakistan are not geared towards honing on the linguistic needs of the learner, taking into account whether or not the learner is at the appropriate developmental stage to acquire the target language structures.

The impact of inappropriate textbooks on the learner’s language growth is further decimated by the grim fact that the teaching of language is not given emphasis. As I have mentioned previously, emphasis is on reading and writing without thoroughly understanding syntactic rules that govern semantic interpretations, which undermines the learner’s ability to set new parameters in the second language.

1.5 Inadequate material facility:

Second language acquisition research delineates that audio-visual aids such as flash cards, charts, pictures, models, filmstrips, tape recorders, computers, and overhead projectors facilitate successful acquisition of a second language. Despite this, there is a widening gap between what research shows and what actually transpires in English language classrooms in Pakistan. It should be noted that I am referring to language classrooms in rural areas. It is the case that in most major educational institutions in Pakistan, especially in metropolis, language learners have access to audio visual aids. Nevertheless, state-of-the-art language labs are still a rarity in most colleges and universities. Patrick Winston, who directs the Department of Artificial Intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argues that human intellligence is buried in the linguistic system and the visual system (2002). It is, therefore, in the interest of the learner if teachers rely on ancillary audio-visual aids in the classroom to tweak the learner’s linguistic and visual systems and accelerate the learning process. In general though, most English langauge facilities in Pakistan lack audio-visual aids, which are proven to be conducive to language learning.

1.6 The faulty examination system:

There exists a gap between the prescribed English textbooks and the cognitive problem solving tasks on the exam for the purposes of assessment. Since the exit criteria are not specifically laid out at the outset, the learner is faced with an exacerbating problem – answer questions that were not addressed by the language instructor during the semester or demonstrate the ability to understand content that was not covered in the textbook.

The objectives of second language pedagogy and assessment should be:

To develop the learner’s intellectual power through a second language, in this case English
To enhance the learner’s personal cultural values through the study of second language literature and philosophy
To increase awareness of the mechanism of the learner’s native language through a second language
To keep the learner abreast of current writing and research in her or his respective discipline
To enable students to communicate orally in their second language
To assist the learner in acquiring reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills
To expand gradually deepening knowledge of a foreign country
To help the learner appreciate cultural experiences through improved second language skills.

Most English language exams exhibit a glaring ommission of the aforementioned objectives. It is needless to say that the learner stands to gain from these objectives, as knowing about implicit cultural values of the target language expands her or his world view.

It goes without saying that formal tests are an attempt to construct an instrument for measuring ultimate attainment, or progress, or ability in language skills. Clearly, each of the qualities can be assessed in terms of each of the four basic linguistic skills. A test of attainment in understanding the spoken language, for instance, can be used to test the learner’s command of the language at the phonological level and to discover how far s/he recognizes the phonemic contrasts of the language. This obviously would be a test of the learner’s second language speech perception. Similar tests can be designed to evaluate the learner’s speech production.

In contrast, almost all tests in English in Pakistan, are, in fact, examinations: they are subjective in their setting and marking in that they only cover the skills of reading and writing. They measure the pupils’ knowledge of the language rather than their performance in it, and they confuse the testing of language with literary and cultural attitudes and knowledge.

1.7 Lack of supervision:

The primary objective of a teaching organization is to disseminate knowledge and to assess how successfully or unsuccessfully the instructor is accomplishing this task. Periodic observations are employed to determine how effective the instructor’s teaching is and how much s/he is adhering to the curricular objectives and performance standards. That is to say, an observation is conducted to ensure to what extent learning is taking place among the pupils in conformity with the curricular objectives. It is logical that a system of supervision is required so that the instructor can be provided with constructive criticism as to whether or not the desired objectives are met. In other words, the instructor needs a feedback mechanism to closely monitor the effectiveness of her or his teaching. The language school needs to know how far the classes are progressing in accordance with the teaching and learning objectives. Last but not least, the education system needs a way of measuring progress in different regions of the country.

Unfortunately, no such efficient system is in place in Pakistan. In particular, there is a dearth of trained specialists in rural areas who can be engaged in such tasks and provide immediate feedback to the instructor. This lack of supervision allows most English language instructors to be complacent about their teaching, which exacerbates the existing teaching conditions in Pakistan. Because of this complacency, most instructors do not take a proactive role in their professional development and are by nature inflexible.

SECTION II
Recommendations for Improvement in Teaching English

2.1 Setting realistic curricular objectives

Curricular objectives in line with teaching English at various stages of development must be specified at the beginning of the semester. In “Thoughts on Curriculum Objectives,” Mohammad Pervez and Anis Alam stress the importance of setting clear curricular objectives to enable the students:

To think critically and analyze objectively and rationally
To develop curiosity so that (they) become fond of learning for their own sake.
To transform available raw materials into useful goods and services
To offer marketable human resources acquired through education
To manage and administer a diversified society (urban/rural, nomadic/agrarian, industrial/service).
For living with people of different appearance, custom, language, culture, and faith.
To be able to adopt a vocation or a profession that one desires to espouse.

Barring a few exceptions, one can readily see the implications of the above objectives for teaching and learning English as a Second Language. For example, the ability to think critically and interact with people of diversified social and linguistic backgrounds is germane to the importance of successfully performing in a global society. It should be noted that English is gradully becoming a global means of communication for people who speak it either as a second language or a foreign language. Therefore, it is in the interest of Pakistan as a nation that the curricular objectives, regardless of whether English is taught in rural or urban areas, are clearly defined and that language instructors strive towards achieving them.

2. 2 Training Teachers

It is imperative that teachers be deeply grounded in linguistic theory and second language acquisition research. The Department of Education in Pakistan ought to be encouraging language teachers to present at professional conferences within the country and overseas so that they can keep themselves abreast of current trends in second language pedagogy and applied linguistics. The tendency among directors of English language institutes in Pakistan is to hire teachers with little or no background in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), grossly ignoring the fact that language teaching is a skill which must be acquired through investigation and discovery. The renowned British linguist, David Crystal, wisely uses an analogy to respond to this attitude. He argues that having a heart does not necessarily make one a successful cardiologist. In other words, one needs to go to a medical school and learn how the human heart functions in order to understand cardiac problems and perform surgeries. The pertinence of this analogy to second language teaching is transparent. Teachers need to be cognizant of recent trends in language teaching so that they may overcome their ingrained prejudices.

2.3 Abandoning the Translation Method

As I have mentioned previously, the Translation Method pays no attention to listening and speaking and largely focuses on literal translation. Instead of using a method that has been debunked by recent research, Content-based Instruction (CBI) must be incorporated into teaching English in rural and urban areas in Pakistan. The logic that dictates CBI is based on the principle that langauge is learned through social interaction. Therefore, if students are allowed to articulate their thoughts in English regarding pertinent social, political and economic issues, then it is reasonable to assume that they will master the necessary skills, especially listening and speaking, with relative ease and success.

It should be kept in mind that English language teachers must be prudent and eclectic in designing a lesson plan, paying close attention to a wide range of methods and teachinques that are at their disposal, and in selecting appropriate pedagogical tools that are congruent with the linguistic needs of their students.

2.4 Adopting Appropriate Textbooks

The Department of Education can play an instrumental role in publishing textbooks that are written in accordance with generative grammar and the structural method containing appropriate pictures and graded exercises. Fortunately, there is a plethora of English as a Second Langauge textbooks, making it relatively easier for eduactors and policy makers in Pakistan to adopt appropriate textbooks taking into consideration the learner’s level of proficiency and specific curricular objectives for the level being taught.

In addition, there are several different handbooks that offer succinct and lucid explanations of the mechanics and syntactic structures of the English language. These handbooks can be used as ancillary material, especially for courses in academic writing and business English.

2.5 Incorporating Audio-visual Aids

In addition to focusing on content rather than form, audio-visual aids should be used to help the learner advance the basic linguistic skills. They provide practical solutions to the problems of a language teachers whose sole equipment, as a rule, consists of nothing more than textbooks and the classroom. There are several advantages of using audio-visual aids in a language classroom:

Audio-visual aids help the learner understand the English language by bringing her or him in direct contact with objects and material artifacts, by bringing the distant things near, and by bringing the world into the classroom. They help the learner appreciate the subtle nuances of different linguistic systems and cultural values.
Audio-visual aids promote remembering by involving the perceptual senese of the learners, by arousing the learner’s curiosity, by making use of pictorial content, and by providing varieties in teaching.
They make teaching effective by creating situations for presentation and practice of language items and by reducing dependence on the learner’s native language.
They help in formation of language habits by drills, repetition, and constant practice.
They increase the learner’s experience of language by providing a rich variety and better quality of instruction.
They increase the instructor’s efficiency by saving time and energy.
They provide recreation to the learner.

Apparently, audio-visual aids play a vital role in language teaching. Their primary function is semantic in that they permit the learner to undestand what s/he hears, to learn the situation in which language forms are used, and to associate learning through repetition and limitation. It should be noted though that audio-visual aids should only be used as a catalyst to accelerate the learning process.

2.6 English Language Examinations

One of the goals of a language teaching institution is assessment. The learner’s tacit knowledge of the target language is evaluated by administering an exam. It is important to note that a subjective test is one where the marks depend upon the examiner’s opinion, judgement or evaluation. It is, therefore, recommended that language schools in Pakistan administer objective tests in which marks are gained or lost, as the case may be, solely reference to the learner’s performance in such a way that all examiners would agree on the apportioning of marks. Such tests, if they are carefully linked with a teaching program, offer a simple, rapid, and effective way of keeping a close check on teaching and learning.

Another important feature of examinations is that they are by nature inflexible. Being related to an educational system, they have an obligation to remain reasonably constant and to change only when accompanied by necessary changes in the school’s teaching method and curricula.

Yet another inescapable feature of examinations is that they control teaching, whatever techniques and principles may be developed for evaluating and contrasting language teaching which is carried out in all but the best schools in a given area in Pakistan, and an improved course syllabus can therefore only be effective if the examination permits it to be so.

I recommend that tests of ability be adminstered to measure features of performance which are known to correlate closely with effective and rapid language learning. Furthermore, tests of attainment should also be conducted because they are measurements of practical performance. Last but not least, tests of progress are simply tests of attainment “per-unit-time,” a measure of the difference in the attainment of an individual at one moment and at a later.

2.7 Effective Supervision

In order to teach English as a Second Language effectively, teachers need a feedback mechanism, which enables them to learn through trial and error. Effective language teaching is about showing the learner how the language works by displaying, ordering, and adding to the learner’s use of the second language, and teachers who succeed or fail in accomplishing this task must be supervised on a regular basis. There are indeed various methods of language teaching that are appropriate for any level of proficiency at which the language teacher wishes to introduce them. These can be related to the general concept of ‘strata’ of linguistics, or more specially strata of grammar, of lexis and so on, as the links which together make up the chain from academic ‘back-room’ linguistics at one end to classroom practice at the other.

The fist stratum is work on general linguistic theory by linguists. The second stratum is the use of this theory to describe actual languages. The third stratum is the description of a language for the use of those who teach it. Fourth comes the textbook, the work that is placed in the hands of the pupils themselves who are learning the language. The fifth stratum, which could perhaps be subsumed under the previous one, is the actual content of the classroom teaching: the methods by which the language teacher displays the language at work, the features s/he selects to illustrate and the type of language s/he uses to delineate both form and content.

Taken together, it can be said that the language teacher plays an instrumental role in determining and influencing the shape and form of learner language. It is, therefore, incumbent upon the English language programs in Pakistan to develop a system of supervision whereby the language teacher receives constructive criticism of her or his teaching performance. This will obviously involve the painstaking task of training individuals to supervise language teachers, but it is imperative that Pakistan undertake the onerous responsibility to enhance the prevailing teaching situation.

CONCLUSIONS

To conclude, the conditions under which English is taught in Pakistan are not conducive to teaching and learning the language. Courses are taught without specific curricular objectives; English language teachers are not equipped with efficient pedagogical tools; most English language teachers rely on obsolete teaching techniques; inappropriate textbooks are chosen to teach English as a Second Language; language teaching facilities are not equipped with audio-visual aids; the examination system is erroneous, as it falls short of measuring attainment; and the education system is lacking an observation and feedback mechanism.

It is recommended that the Depatment of Education in Pakistan seriously consider designing Engllish as a Second Language courses with specific curricular objectives, paying close attention to the proficiency levels of the students; training teachers to ensure that they are well equipped for understanding the complicated process of second language acquisition and for teaching the English language to the Pakistanis; abandoning the Translation Method and incorporating Cotent-based Instruction in language teaching; adopting appropriate textbooks that link theory to application; using audio-visual aids to enhance the vast amount of input and raise the learner’s consciousness of the target language; adminstering tests that accurately guage the learner’s performance behavior; and envisaging a feedback mechanism that allows for professional development in a non-threatening, unobtrusive, and collegial manner.

The contribution of applied linguistics to a process that is primarily methodological in its nature is twofold. In the first place, and pervading the whole task, applied linguistics provides both the description of the second language and an understanding on the part of how the components make up the whole of how the language functions. Secondly, reference back to linguistic categories will ensure that in the planning of an English language teaching program all aspects of langauge that are relevant to the learner are included. This does not imply that phonology, graphology, lexis, grammar and context need to be taught as separate levels: these are linguistic categories, concepts for the description of language, not teaching procedures. Besides there is compelling evidence that the more closely the teaching items that fall within these categories are integrated and presented as total language behavior in a real situation, the more effective the teaching is.

REFERENCES:

Winston, P. (2002) How to Speak. Lecture given at The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

Chomsky, N. (1957) Syntactic Structures. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, USA

Crystal, D. (2001) World Englishes. Lecture given at the TESOL 2001 Convention, Malaysia

Mahboob, Ahmar (2003) English Language Teacher Education in Pakistan. Paper presented at TESOL 2003, 37th Annual Convention and Exposition. Baltimore, Maryland, March 25-29.

Nayyar, A. H. and Salim, A., eds. (2003) A Civil Society Initiative in Curricula and
Textbooks Reform.Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan

Pervez, M. and Alam, A. (2003) Thoughts on Curriculum Objectives. In A Civil Society
Initiative in Curricula and Textbooks Reform. Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan

Siddiqui, Shahid, (2002) English and Our Colonial Past, Pakistan Observer, Islamabad, August 19, 2002

* * *

* Jilani Warsi earned an MA in English at Patna University with emphasis on descriptive linguistics, historical linguistics, and language teaching. He also received an MA in linguistics at California State University in Northridge (CSUN), where he also taught English as a Second Language (ESL). He then joined the applied linguistics program at Boston University, and successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation in 2001.

He has taught in all of these locations, as well as at Salem State, Fisher, and Newbury Colleges; in the Framingham State College’s overseas programs in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Bolivia; and, since summer 1998, in the Institute for English Language Programs (IEL) at Harvard University where he currently teaches Integrated Skills, Academic Discussion, Professional Communication Workshop, Communication in Business Seminar, and Academic Writing.

Address correspondence to Dr. Jilani Warsi, Institute for English Language Programs, Harvard University, 51 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. E-mail: warsi@hudce.harvard.edu

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