by Dr. K. Parameswaran
Recently I had a chance to interact with a group of engineering and medicine students who were preparing to appear for the civil services exam. In the course of the interaction, I asked them what the antonym of “full moon” was. To my utter surprise not a single one of them could answer my simple question!
Many of the students in the group had some knowledge about the technical aspects of the subjects that they had studied. But none of them had any idea about how to explain their subject of expertise to another person – a layman. No doubt these students had a rudimentary knowledge of English. But this knowledge clearly has not engendered in them any expertise in communication.
This set me thinking on the lines of the way in which English – or languages in general – is being given the short shrift as far as school and college syllabi are concerned. My mind went back to an incident a few days back. The incident was a clear pointer to why the knowledge of a second language was important – both from cultural as well as practical points of view.
Moreover the incident was also an exhibition of how teaching, especially the teaching of languages, was an exhibition of the art of communication in a very basic sense. Language itself is a potent means of communication, while the teaching of language assumes the form of the communication of how communication can be achieved effectively!
I was just getting up after that short and sweet siesta that has become my habit these days. The few minutes that precedes and follows the short nap that has already acquired all the characteristics of an elaborate ritual – from the placing of the pillow at a definite angle on the cool floor of the verandah, the adjustment of the fan to a low but comfortable speed, the tuning in of the radio or CD player to some Carnatic music programme etc. – have become very important to me. It seems to me the perfect time for introspecting on how the day has proceeded till mid day and how to go about things in the afternoon session.
It was then that my daughter, on a short vacation from her activity filled university life, came rushing to me all breathless and literally jumping with excitement that was reflected in the eloquent glow in her eyes. She slumped near me on the floor and said “Achaa, you must see this! It is just out of the world! You would have never seen anything more eloquent!”
She showed me a video clip on her mobile. Watching it, I was as bowled over by the speaker – a charming lady with a very attractive body language and an educated, stylish English diction – as my daughter! The speech was in Tamil, interspersed with English. The years we spend in Tamil Nadu, where Indu (our daughter) completed her schooling and is doing her postgraduate studies, have honed in all three of us – Indu, her father and her mother – an uncanny ear for the caressing cadence of that amazingly musical language.
Thinking back, I feel that there is another reason for the daughter as well as the father being excited about the clipping. I had always been attracted to the teaching profession since my father also had been one of the more respected teachers of his time. It is quite probable that this love for teaching had been automatically handed down generations and Indu too had begun to think about teaching in a more serious manner. Thus the video, which was a picturisation of how a teacher charmingly and eloquently convinced an audience about the absolute necessity of learning a second language in addition to their mother tongue, won our hearts. She was able to do this by using a simple story.
One hot afternoon a mother cat was walking along a road accompanied by her kitten. The speaker, in simple but expressive Tamil says that she has truly no knowledge of why the cat duo decided to go on a walk on a hot, blazing afternoon. Suddenly a huge dog came running behind them in an effort to scare them away. The cat and the kitten began running at full speed, with the dog setting up a volley of “bow bow” (because, intersperses the speaker again in eloquent Tamil, ipso facto the dog was British it must have barked in English, “bow bow” and “bow bow”)!
At one point, the cat felt she had had enough. A dog was trying to scare her and her kitten for no particular reason. Why should she succumb to such malicious pressure? She stopped running, turned round, stood her ground and looking at the dog straight in its eyes said “bow bow”! The dog was stupefied. It expected the cat to say “meow meow”! The unexpected “bow bow” sound from the cat bewildered the dog and then it became the turn of the dog to start running!
The cat, bending down to her kitten, asked “Now do you understand the importance of learning a second language?”! The applause from the audience was tremendous. The speaker continued saying that for a people who have mastered a lovely language like Tamil with its myriad letters and mystifying declensions, mastering a language with just twenty six letters would just be child’s play! She concluded saying that the advantages of learning a second language were two – it offers an alternative standpoint to look upon life and the world and it provides you with another tongue to communicate.
No doubt, it was a consummate performance by a master artist well cued in on the techniques of effective communication! After all, isn’t the very essence of teaching, efficient communication of knowledge and effective transmission of enthusiasm? Language is the most efficient tool for this and hence the teaching of languages should be given more importance in school as well as college syllabi.
Picture from http://www.thecultureist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Languages-of-the-world.jpg
