NOISICIANS INC

Khaliqur Rahman

My twelve year old has recently got interested in car-driving. Uncle Tom is giving him lessons in the art. During the course of his lessons Uncle Tom must have told TYO quite a few things and TYO has told me quite a few things.

For instance, according to him, or more precisely, according to them, car-driving was introduced in India by obviously the white-Sahibs about two hundred years ago. Most Indians were then, as they still are, driving the bullock-carts. Even so, quite a few took to car-driving, because it soon came to be recognized as the key to social success. It was, and still is, the sign of development, social prestige and upward mobility.

But there was some kind of trouble in Indian-driving. It was distinctly different from Sahib-driving. TYO says that Expert Noisicians soon found out that when an Indian drove, the engine made a peculiar Indian noise and any expert Noisician could even tell a Punjabi driver from a Madrasi driver and a Gujarati driver from a Bengali driver on the basis of the different engine noises they made when driving.

All the Noisicians, then, gathered and expressed serious concern over these different kinds of regional noises in Indian-driving.

They devised a way out and an institute was set up. The objective was to minimize the terrible regional noises, though a kind of supra-regional general Indian noise was to be allowed to stay.

This led to all kinds of truck-drivers, bus-drivers and -- God save them -- car-drivers, from all parts of India, making a bee-line to this institute which gave them Diploma in Driving.

But over a period of time it came to be felt that the Noisicians were making more noise than the drivers.

Therefore, the cleverer ones branched off and laid their faith more in automobile engineering than in driving.

These cleverer ones were extremely lucky to get a bandwagon from the States.

It was Vansky who sent them this on a Big Chassis which he called the Universal Chassis.

According to him bodies of any size and shape, even creed, colour and country could be fitted on it. Surely, this great automobile engineer was widely acclaimed all over for his Vanskian Revolution.

Since then, those who once wished to become drivers have been busy supplying indigenous parts to the Great Chassis. Their hope is to become automobile engineers, if not drivers.

Uncle Tom predicts and TYO tells me as usual: They may end up becoming neither! God forbid that, because so many of them are required either in the Middle East or in the Far East.

And finally, TYO says that since he is basically interested in driving, he will stick to Uncle Tom.

MAN GOES FOR MANGOES

Khaliqur Rahman

Summer's delight, God's exquisite gift to Man, succulent with varied sweetnesses, Ghalib's favourite among fruits, you must have guessed what I am talking about. Yes, of course, if you are a connoisseur of good taste, you have.

Mangoes -- here's God's plenty -- are here again, of which one is never enough, neither are two. The truth is: enough is not enough -- at least for me. The mind -- and the body -- is always willing to go for one more, but I have to stop at a point for other reasons. There are people and what is worse, they are watching.

In fact, mango is one fruit, I would like to eat all by myself and all, all alone. It is a very, very private fruit. How often have I wished, there should be me and a room and mangoes and mangoes and mangoes, fresh from the fridge and sweating as impatiently to be eaten as I am, to eat. Perhaps, a full-length mirror nearby would make the setting ideally unearthly. How much  I would then love to lap the flesh and bite the stone and slurp the juicy eluding tricklings in many different gestures, of my hands, my lips, my eyes and even my nose. And how much I would give to have a time-to-time-look in the mirror to see how many various postures of extreme intentness my body acquires to match each gesture of its parts.

But modern civilization -- and my wife -- demands that I eat my mango -- poor, singular one or even less -- at the dining table with children and sometimes a guest or two. And that is very frustrating. I always thought mango-eating is not a child's play or for that matter a public affair. It requires a good deal of wild sophistication and extreme privacy.

But in modern times you are most often more constrained than liberated or emancipated. It was only the other day that I was thinking of Daseris and Langras, as I was relishing, with a lot of conscious composure, the taste of an undesirably delicately small piece of t. Himayat Soon I was beginning to be myself, even though the second helping was loathsomely tiny again.

But the last grab was a promising stone, thick with flesh and juice. Thinking that others would mind their own business and therefore imagining myself to be alone in the crowd, I decided to 'slog' and send the just-not-do-ables on a holiday.

I must have been in the middle, when I noticed, to my utter disgust and perhaps shame, that the children, having finished theirs, had already fixed their gaze of earnestness, surprise and greed to watch their father doing the devouring operation that presumably was to them sensuously brutal and passionately animal. Perhaps they couldn't believe their eyes as they saw their father eating for once sans dignity.

At the other end, as I encountered, from their mother, just another gaze but of a very different kind. I couldn't help muttering: Man goes for mangoes, not woman -- at least in summer!

EK SHE'R

Shiksha and Diksha

Shiksha and Diksha were twins. They looked alike all right, but in life they moved in different directions. Their goal, though, was more or less the same, as perhaps is everybody’s, a successful life.

Shiksha as a child went to school, then to college. Diksha didn’t like school bags and books. She told her parents, she wouldn’t go to school. The parents were good. They agreed. Shiksha always wanted to become somebody not Anybody and certainly not like an Everybody. Even as a child she participated in Fancy Dress Competitions and bagged awards as Saraswati, Sita, Durga … later she took to Mock Parliaments. In college, she acted as Indira, Uma, Rabri… This make - believe became her attitude in life. Her degrees - BSc, MA, PhD- were like Indira, Uma and Rabri in her; good enough to show, better still for accolades. In reality, Diksha knew, Shiksha was never a good student. Shiksha herself had often told Diksha how she cheated in the exams and how cleverly she flirted with the important men to get her PhD.

Shiksha, unlike Diksha, has had poor health since childhood. Poor Shiksha always had to go to hospital to be able to go to school and to college. Poor Shiksha always had to go to coaching classes to be able to clear her exams. Shiksha had no time for prayers; neither for sports nor for exercises. Understandably, she grew (grew?) into a frail irritable girl- and not very long later into an irritating woman.

Diksha spent her time with her mother. She watched her, cooking, washing and doing the chores. Watching led her to doing as it always does. Soon, she was as good as her mother!

Diksha spent her time with her father and her friends , too. She learnt quite a lot from them as well. She had enough time to pray with either mother or father or both. And, she had time to run around and play with her friends. Not unexpectedly, she developed into an attractive girl and later into a still more attractive woman after she got married. The suitable boy picked Diksha much earlier than Shiksha hooked her unsuitable boy for an unarranged marriage.

Shiksha is childless, whereas Diksha has a boy and a girl. Diksha thinks she has given her husband someone like him. And, her husband thinks he has given Diksha someone like her.

Like her degrees, Shiksha is trying to manage motherhood through a test-tube, and expecting a baby-girl, who Diksha thinks, Shiksha should call Pratiksha,  or  perhaps, Bhiksha.

Diksha also thinks that Dikshant Samaroh should better be called Shikshant Samaroh because that invariably marks the end of Shiksha.

PEACOCKHEN

        K Rahman

Brian Johnston referred to Dicky Bird's Peacockhen while commentating on the first day during the India-England Test match at Edgbaston. Dicky Bird, according to Brian, was a very worried man as he was waiting for good news any time. The Peacockhen was still sitting on the six eggs and hadn't eaten any yet.

Dicky Bird had a reason to brood over the brooding bird. But I got worried, too, and wondered whether it was possible to say male woman. Since KS wasn't around, I looked up the dictionaries myself. I came across a funnier entry which said -- Peafowl: a female peacock (Longman). I thought, if one applied this sort of lexical logic, Peacockhen  should be possible.

But that was not the end. On Monday, during his first 20 minutes, Don Mosey said that he had received a small note for Brian Johnston from someone in England, saying that there was no such thing as Peacockhen! That certainly roused some extra-cricketing interest and I waited rather impatiently for Brian to come over and take the mike. He did that only in the third session and coolly said that Dicky Bird's  peahen  was still sitting on the eggs. That was simply great, wasn't it?

Maybe, it was just a slip of the tongue as Brian had said  Peacockhen  only once in his references to Dicky's bird and this man, by sending that note was just trying to be too clever by half !

In fact, verbal slips are so much a part of the living language that one comes across many interesting anecdotes built around them.

There was a professor who hadn't quite liked the term paper of his female student. So he said, "It needs orgasmic unity". There was another who said lunder and thightning for thunder and lightning and yet another threw the window through the clock!

Scientists say that the speaker's mental state can only be guessed at, but the reason for the slip remains pretty much unknown. For instance, a provocatively dressed woman may change past fashion into fast passion for any healthy young man, nine times out of ten! And an electrophobiac might have fears of cursed wattage in worst cottage.

But here in India, we might choose to fight among ourselves over cater to and cater for and then go to the dictionaries only to find that one is American and the other British. Even so, I have heard a British teacher of repute saying cater to. Don't we often create a controversy out of virtually nothing and say CONTroversy is right and conTROversy is wrong, when the fact is that one is right and the other is not wrong! We take pride in catching the other person on the wrong foot. Sometimes we are a bit too fussy -- and I add -- fuzzy, too.

It takes a Brian to be cool in matters as delicate as the peacockhen!

EXAMINATIONS

Khaliqur Rahman

Today I wish to tease you with the detestable necessity in education that we call EXAMINATIONS. Do you know Testing and Evaluation in education is a discipline by itself? Even if you do, how many teachers do, who set examination question papers?

How many examinations are there and how many examining bodies? The students take the Higher Secondary Examination to finish school. Now why can’t they go straight for higher education in professional colleges?  Why do they need to take PMT or PET or PAT … I don’t know how many more monstrosities they have to grapple with to take an entry into education of their choice? There is one for admission to IIMs, there is another for IITs. And, they have funny names for one such examination:  CAT! Soon they will let go DOG then TIGER then perhaps COBRA! God save our students even from the existing monsters like AIEEE and GRE and GMAT and I don’t know how many more!!

If your Twelfth Board Examinations have lost their validity or reliability or both, why can’t you do away with them? The nation will save a lot of money. If they are valid and reliable, then, where is the need for any of those silly eliminators I’ve mentioned earlier? To top it all there are State Level Civil Service Examinations and Central Civil Service Examinations, results of which are there for everyone to see! How civil are our uncivil civil servants?!

 What are the results of so many examinations? Quality Control? Well, you can see the quality of education and the quality of the degree-holders? They have the degrees but have they had education? Are they really educated after passing so many examinations? Education should succeed in turning men and women into human beings. The degrees are there but where are the human beings?

Just because there are so many kinds of examinations, there have come up as many kinds of coaching centres. In fact, these coaching centres are SHOPS in the EDUCATION BAZAAR. Like a waiter in a restaurant, the so-called trained or untrained teachers in these coaching classes serve the clientele the menu. The hungry (for the know-how of getting through a required examination) places an order, pays the bill in advance (euphemism for which is FEES!) and gets served!

Look at the SPOKEN ENGLISH classes and their number in the entire country, and you will be amused and amazed. Thanks to the social demand in India and the academic requirement for studies abroad, Spoken English classes and books have come up like mushrooms only to fleece the learners. There are those blessed examinations – TOEFL and IELTS – to clear before one can aspire to proceed abroad for higher studies in the US or the UK. The young aspirants swarm into several shops where incompetent and unqualified apologies of teachers or trainers simply fill their coffers.Why can’t our universities have courses like Diploma in Spoken English or a Masters in Spoken English & Communicative Skills? But for that you’ll have to see that the teachers are very well trained first!

Before I finish, I would like to share my personal views on most of the present day examinations. The very word EXAMINATION has certain negativity built into it. You suspect unfair approach on the part of examinees. The examiners, therefore, for security, go for confidentiality. Then you treat the examinees as thieves and do the policing in the name of invigilation in the examination halls. Evaluation is then done in top secrecy. All this air-tightness and water-tightness are only on paper. In reality everything leaks and you know that. What is the solution? I’d suggest an examination in which nothing is secret. Give them a set of questions, sufficient time for preparation, ask them to take the examination on a specified time and date and allow them to consult books if they wish to BUT FIX THE PASS MARKS AT NO LESS THAN 80%. Award A to 90% and above, B to 85% and above and C to 80% and above.

I’m amazed at the present day pass marks – 33% or in some courses 40% ! Would you buy a mango which is 66% rotten or eat a chapati which is only 33% cooked!!

Lastly, examinations should be able to test the capability to think and solve a given problem or to create something new rather than test the ability to transport knowledge and information.

Hope this moves the authorities enough to do something worthwhile.

ARTICLES ARE NOUN-FOCUSSING WORDS

Khaliqur Rahman

INTRODUCTION

We’ve taught English at SECC (short for Spoken English Club & Clinic) for well over two decades. During this period we’ve learnt a lot, as well. We have been able to develop a Pedagogic Grammar and we’ve found it to be very effective in bringing home a grammar point in the minds of the Learners.

They are made to understand that Grammar is the sum total of Core Grammar and Peripheral Grammar. Core Grammar is nothing but what goes with what and what replaces what and Peripheral Grammar is how, when and where. Also, making a sentence is like choosing clothes and dressing up, taking care of what goes with what, what replaces what and then the finishing touch of how, when and where. All this is demonstrated with the help of short video- audio lessons, at the end of which they finish the one hour class giving Introduction and Description, their own and introductions and descriptions of their peers.

Here, we’d like to share with you one of our lessons in the use of Articles. Through examples on the blackboard, interaction and recall, we manage to get from them statements like:

Articles are words that go with nouns that are naming words. The Indefinite Article goes with a noun that is countable and singular. The Definite Article can go with all the three categories of a noun: countable singular, countable plural and uncountable. Sometimes, we have to make a statement ourselves when we know it is beyond them, particularly with our deft-nitions. For example: Articles are noun-focussing words. They bring nouns into focus. The definite article the, pronounced ðɪ or ðə,
brings nouns into fine focus. The indefinite articles a and an bring a noun, countable, singular into broad focus.

Grammar Rules thus are discovered by the Learners themselves, of course with the minimum-maximum pushing and prodding by the Teacher. We’ll now enter into the main thrust of the discussion.

TECHNICAL TERMS vs PLAIN LANGUAGE

We use what goes with what for syntagmatic relationship and what replaces what for paradigmatic relationship. For mid-level Learners, we use chain relationship and choice relationship, for syntagmatic relationship and paradigmatic relationship, respectively.

FOCUSSING WORDS

This is our attempt to take care of the use of the generic/specific dichotomies and replace the terms generic/specific with the concept of focussing. Let’s look at these instances of language use:

What do you do? I am a teacher. Oh, well, one of you here has won the President’s award! O yes, I am happy to tell you, I am the teacher!

When he says I am a teacher. He is asking you to focus your mind on teachers and not on lawyers or doctors or engineers and he is one of teachers not engineers, etc. The noun teacher is thus brought into broad focus.

When he says I am the teacher, he is asking you to change your broad focus on teachers to fine focus on one teacher (That’s him.).

If someone says The first three teachers in the list have won prizes, again, the speaker wants fine focus on the first three from the broad focus on all the teachers in that list..

Similarly, when you say Bring me the water in the fridge, you mean not any water but that water in that fridge. Fine focus.

CHOICE OF A OR AN

In most school textbooks, the rule is: words beginning with a e i o u take an, by which it should be possible to say an after*, an eat*, an it*, an often*, and an under*.

Our rule Indefinite Article ( A or An ) goes with noun countable singular not only clinches the issue but also motivates them to learn more rules like this.

The Learners in general are not familiar with the Sounds of English as in most schools in India, they start with the Alphabet. We, therefore, introduce the sounds with the help of audios and now with the British Council phonemic chart and ask the Learners to keep learning them with patience and practice. Now they know the difference between sounds and letters and have come to know for the first time that there are 20 vowel sounds in English.

Now they realise it is easier for them to discover that an goes with a vowel sound and a with a consonant sound. They are thrilled, with a sense of relief, to realise that they won’t have to cope with a long list of exceptions to this rule! Moreover, they discover and learn the whole pattern: that along with an, to is , r is  and the is  before a vowel sound, but before a consonant sound, along with a, r is silent, to is  and the is .

They do like and enjoy the statement of the rule that has examples of the rule built into them:

r is pronounced only before a vowel                      

r’s are pronounced only before vowels                  

TIME  TENSE  AND MEANING

Khaliqur Rahman

Look at these sentences –

(a)    I am writing this now.

(b)   I am reading Dalrymple these days.

(c)    I am going to finish Nine Lives next week.

(d)   I read in the morning (everyday).

(e)    India plays the West Indies on March 20, 2011. Today, it is March 18, 2011.

(f)    Zaheer comes in and bowls. Watson drives. Tendulkar fields at mid on.

(g)   He used to bowl much faster in his younger days.

(h)   Tendulkar scored another hundred against South Africa (on March 12, 2011).

(i)     He has scored 99 International hundreds. That is a record.

(j)     He has been playing Test Cricket since 1989.

All these sentences have three essential components: tense, time and meaning. The choice of appropriate tense depends on time (or time-reference) of action. This combination of tense and time brings about the intended meaning.

Tense is nothing but complete form of the verb. The verb expresses an action (or state). This action has a time (or time reference).

In (a), (b) and (c), the tense is  be + VbI-ing , but the time of action in (a) is now, in (b) it is these days that covers a bit of past time and a bit of future time, with or without now, that is present time, and in (c) it is future time.

In (d), (e) and (f), the tense is VbI(-s/-es). But the time reference in (d) is everyday that covers a lot of past time and a lot of possible future time. In (e), it refers to future time scheduled. In (f), the time of each successive action is now.

In (g) and (h), the tense is VbII and the time of action is past time. At the level of meaning, we understand that (g) refers to past habit and in (h) it is a single action.

In (i), the tense is have/has + VbI-en. When this tense is used, the crucial point to understand is: the action is a past action but the time of action is never referred to and at the level of meaning the point to note is: the intention is to relate the past action or experience to its position now.

In (j), the tense is have/has + been + VbI-ing and the action, here, is understood as one that started in the past and is still going on.

In the choice of a tense, it is extremely important to understand the difference between any two tenses in respect of their functions and their time references. It is also very necessary to understand a particular word in the terms we use in respect of the domains they belong to. I’ll try to explain with examples. The domains here are: tense, time and meaning. Take the term present continuous tense. It is just a name for be + VbI-ing. The word present must be understood only under the domain tense. It should not be confused with present action or future action or action happening these days which are the terms used under the time domain. Similarly, the term present habit is used under the meaning domain and under the corresponding time domain we know it covers past time, present time and future time. Corresponding to this, in the tense domain the term used is present simple or present indefinite which is just the name of the verb form. Therefore, the word present in the tense domain should not be dragged into the time domain or meaning domain to create confusion.

Let’s notice the differences between any two tenses now. For convenience, I’ll refer to sentences in present continuous tense as sentences in Table I, sentences in present simple tense as Table II sentences, sentences in simple past tense as Table III sentences, sentences in present perfect tense as Table IV sentences and sentences in present perfect continuous tense as Table V sentences.

Table I talks about actions that are happening now. You can see them or hear or perceive them to be happening now. It also talks about actions that are happening these days. Maybe, they’re not happening now. Maybe, they are. Table I sentences talk about future intended actions, also.

Table II sentences talk about present habits, customs and periodic actions. Here, the time reference is in terms of how often rather than when. Therefore, frequency adverbs, like everyday, are there or are understood to be there. Here, it is interesting to note that these days in Table I and everyday in Table II, both cover past, present and future time. The difference is: the expanse of these days is much smaller than that of everyday. Thus, these days may refer to temporary habits. Therefore, habits more permanent in nature need everday and are expressed in Table II.

Look at the now of Table I and the now of Table II. The now of Table II is much faster. Try (f) in Table I and experience the slow motion description! Similarly, the future time reference in Table I expresses future intention, while in Table II, it expresses future schedule. Take Table III and Table IV. Both talk about past actions. If you want to say when the past action happened, you’ll go to Table III. If you are interested in the present position of past actions, you’ll choose Table IV. The choice of one between Table IV and Table V is again very interesting. Look at the two sentences:

Kapil Dev has played Test Cricket for about 16 years.

Tendulkar has played Test Cricket for about 20 years.

We can also say:

Tendulkar has been playing Test Cricket for about 20 years. Because he’s still playing.

But we can’t say:

Kapil has been playing Test Cricket for about 16 years.* Because he’s not playing anymore, He has retired.

With all this in the background, we ask our ESL learners to follow these steps:

(i)                 Don’t translate

(ii)               Mark the time of action

(iii)             Time of action will take you to the right Table

(iv)             The Table will give you the right Tense.

(v)               Do this until automatization sets in.

We’ve found it works fairly well.

TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN INDIA

Khaliqur Rahman

Teaching of English! Yes!!

Have you ever thought about the difference that is there in India between an MA in English and an MA in any of the languages like French or German or Russian or Spanish or Arabic? I’ll tell you, English in India carries the burden of Second Language while all the other languages referred to above enjoy the status of a Foreign Language. A foreign language student is personally interested in the language and is highly motivated, whereas a second language student is socio-economically under tremendous pressure to learn the language, in the hope of getting a job and earning a livelihood. A second language student thus finds himself or herself in a don’t-want-to-but-have-to situation. Therefore, when a student seeks admission to a PG course in a Foreign Language, the student’s language proficiency level is much higher than that of a student in India who wants to do MA in English which is a Second Language for him or her.

During the MA in English course, the student is exposed to the works of writers like Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope … Shelly, Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge … Eliot …  just to name a few of the many in the Syllabus. The teachers and the students lug information, like Coolies, without ever bothering what the contents are or mean! You have MAs in English Literature in lakhs every year, and MPhils and PhDs in thousands! But can they teach English language which they are asked to do at universities and colleges and schools? The answer is a big NO!

The UGC is a funny oceanic quagmire. Look at the syllabus for NET (National Eligibility Test) that qualifies one to teach English. They start with Beowulf! Leave alone Chaucer!! Now, how can the blessed Englishes ( this expression is pretty much acceptable nowadays and it refers to the different varieties of English) of these writers, or for that matter, of even Dickens and Hardy, help today’s teacher to teach contemporary English? If they can’t, you just can’t blame them because they have never been taught nor trained to teach English language.

I once talked to the Chairman of the NCERT while the big shot (in a small barrel) was here for a blessed exercise in futility which they call a seminar (without anything seminal in it) and suggested introduction of MA in English Language or MA in English Language Teaching instead of MA in English Literature. His response? “How can you bypass Oliver Twist’s ‘I want some more!’ and give a Master’s Degree?” I bypassed him for the rest of the seminar!

My humble suggestion is: Treat English as a Foreign Language when it comes to giving a degree in English Literature. And, allow only MAs in English Language or in English Language Teaching to teach English.

The teachers of English should possess a high level of language proficiency. They should also have an up-dated knowledge of Materials Production (text-book writing and all), Testing & Evaluation and current trends in ELT (English Language Teaching), contemporary descriptive grammar and modern Linguistics & Sociolinguistics.

More when you have the inclination and I have the time!