The Hindu : New Delhi News : Learning English as a skill rather than a subject

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 27, 2006

New Delhi

New Delhi

Learning English as a skill rather than a subject

Madhur Tankha

NEW DELHI: The British Council and Cambridge ESOL will launch a nationwide programme for training English language teachers next month. Part of an initiative to establish international benchmarks in English language skills in academic institutions where English is not used as a first language, the programme aims to brush up English skills of college graduates so that they can meet the requirements of the corporate sector.

Cambridge ESOL Development Manager for Asia Duncan Rayner, who was here recently to discuss the teacher-training programme with the British Council, talked about the competitive edge India has over its economic rivals in Asia due to the English language skills of its work force.

Admitting that one of the main factors in the growth of the BPO, IT and other service sectors in the Indian economy has been the ready supply of professionals who speak English, Mr. Rayner said: "Until a few years ago, at Cambridge ESOL, we had always assumed that in India there was no need to learn and assess English as a second language.

While it is still the case that in elite schools English is used as a first language -- indeed I have been to schools where the kids speak better English than they do in England -- and this gives India a tremendous advantage, demand in the corporate sector for fluent speakers of English now far exceeds supply and this has generated many issues that threaten India's competitive edge."

The British Council and Cambridge ESOL, which is a department of the University of Cambridge specialising in English language testing and a global leader in this field, are setting up the programme as a result of the need to shift towards the teaching and learning English as a skill rather than an academic subject in schools and colleges.

Expressing concern over many technical colleges having a limited infrastructure to teach English as a skill, Mr. Rayner said: "Some do not even have language departments. In China there is a well-established tradition for teaching English as a second language in education and a lot of resources have been put into this, which now puts India in a dangerous position. But there is no quick fix."

Stating that the key was to focus on quality and international standards that build on the tradition of speaking English as a first language, Mr. Rayner said the corporate sector needs to clearly convey the need for rigorous standards in English to the colleges, which is not happening in a systematic way at the moment as a result of which companies are spending an awful lot of money on English training far more than they do in China.

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