Surging ahead to be sufficient in English

Sushil Manav in Chandigarh

Nearly 40 young kids are sitting in a classroom in Government Primary School, Jakhan Dadi village, Fatehabad, on a Monday morning.

“Hello students,” says Jyoti, a Block Resource Person (BRP), as she enters the classroom. “Hello, madam,”chorus the kids. “Say it again,” Jyoti tells them. The children repeat the sentence till they get it right.

Haryana and Haryanavis are on the forefront in many fields ranging from sports, ease-of-doing business and even churning out beauty queens. Now it is gearing up to tackle an area that it falls short of: Proficiency in English. 

The abysmal performance of the state’s schoolchildren in English has made it lag behind on the road to growth. For this is the language of universal means of communication and can open doors to knowledge, research and development. 

Recognising this lacuna, the state government has launched an initiative “I am not afraid of English”. It is aimed at introducing English from Class I. Small children, who would earlier mug up Hindi alphabets, can now be seen speaking simple sentences in broken English. Initially, the programme has been launched in one school in each administrative block of the state. 

Additional Chief Secretary, School Education Department, Haryana, Dheera Khandelwal says that in the academic year 2017-18, the medium of instruction of teaching various subjects was converted to English in Classes I and II in 180 primary schools. These classes were also made bag-free. This year 238 more schools are being covered under this initiative.

Six language labs have been set up in selected Model Sanskriti Schools to facilitate digital learning and to improve the listening and speaking skills of the students. Gradually, more language labs would be set up in more schools across the state.

A booklet, “I am not afraid of English” containing 1,000 sentences or phrases, has been prepared. It contains 200 sentences for each class up to Class V. This will ensure that the students will learn at least 1,000 sentences in English at the primary level. Jyoti is one of 750 primary schools teachers who have been trained as a BRP. They were imparted training at a two-day workshop held at Gurukul Vidyapeeth, Pandu Pandara village, Jind, in October last year.

 “We only teach basic sentences to kids. We teach alphabets and small sentences like ‘good morning, good luck, may I come in?, wash your feet’ etc. Children are imparted knowledge through activity-based learning. For example, we give different colours to different children and they are made to speak and spell names of colours like red, green, yellow, etc. based on observation,” explains Jyoti.

Dayanand Sihag, District Education Officer, Fatehabad, says it is a good initiative, provided those who have been assigned the job to implement it do their work honestly.

“When I was the principal at Government Senior Secondary School, Jandli Kalan, Fatehabad, in 2003, I introduced English as medium for instruction in science and maths in one section each from Classes VI to XII. The results were quite good as more than 12 students found place in state education board’s merit list when the first batch took its Class X examination,” says Sihag.

Many parents have welcomed the government’s move. They say that English is not just a language, but has become a basic necessity for surviving in the competitive world of today.

“Today, people judge your capability on how fluently you speak English. If you teach something from the childhood, it is better imbibed,” adds the mother of a kid. Dr Anu Shukla, a professor of English at Chaudhary Devi Lal University, however, feels that knowledge of English is okay, but one should not forget one’s mother tongue. “It should rather be, I am proud of Hindi but I am not afraid of English.”