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ELT in India: 400 years and still going strongShreesh Chaudary English has taken deep roots and spread wide here. Some 350 million people use English here in their daily life. It is India's language for national and international business, commerce, diplomacy, education, fashion, government, industry, politics, science, technology, etc. Now English is not just India's 'window on the world', today it is India's virtual highway to the IT and other markets. IT workers from India have the advantage not only of skill and wages, but also of language. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced special exemptions for them in the proposed revision of the British asylum laws. India's ELT industry has also grown. Here English is both foreign/second and native language. India has over 300 universities, 25,000 colleges, 250,000 schools, and over a million teachers teaching English. Pedagogy here has developed from need, not notions. When John Fryer landed in Masulipatnam in 1668, he was surprised to have been greeted by an English-speaking Indian, offering to become his 'dobash', or interpreter. (1) Interpreters learnt special purpose Business English, and helped the European businessmen. Many special wordlists were in use in India in the 17th and 18th centuries. What today passes for special purpose English has its beginnings in the 17th century English commerce in India itself. By their adherence to business ethics, the British attracted the Indians. Soon the Indian trading classes, or Banyans, were dealing almost exclusively with the British. Banyans were astute businessmen. They recognized their opportunity for business with the British, and acquired a sizable vocabulary of English, mainly through translation. (2) Grammar-Translation method of non-native language teaching and learning became popular in India. Though this method ignored pragmatics and pronunciation, thus making the English of its users 'funny' and unintelligible, it had the advantage of teaching structures quickly. Supplemented with reading and conversation, these lacunae were often overcome without many difficulties. No other method could have taught EFL to so many in so short a time with so few qualified teachers. Grammar-Translation method also promoted literary reading. Today there are many more people in India who can quote from Shakespeare, Milton, etc. than are there in Australia, America and Great Britain. First bilingual (English) grammars were written in India, not always by Englishmen. (3) So were Bengali/Hindi and English grammars. These works also showed that knowledge of one language can help, not hinder the learning of another. Pedagogical grammars of English were also written first in India. Mention must be made of the English Grammar and Composition by J C Nesfield published in 1898. First public examinations in English were held in the early 19th century. Through public notices, pupils, teachers and others were advised to gather in a public place. Pupils were examined in the rudiments of grammar, vocabulary, composition, recitation and rhetoric, sometimes with globes. Early in its ELT history India realized the value of books as learning materials. Soon India became its own materials producer. In the first year of its creation Calcutta Book Society sold over 30,000 English books. (4) Today India is the third largest publisher of English books. It is also a big buyer, with about 300,000 copies of English dictionaries (5) annually, besides those from pirated editions. For 400 years India has used English without losing its multilingualism. Nor has this dampened India's enthusiasm for English. If one's attitudes are right, India has shown, no language can be a threat to the host culture. India has also been the testing ground for ELT innovations. Alexander Duff of Calcutta developed his direct method here. (6) Michael West developed his simplified readers and basic word list concept here. Submitted for the DPhil degree of the University of Oxford in 1923, West's is the first doctoral work in ELT. (7) Mention should also be made of Prabhu's (1985) work in communicative teaching of English. (8) ELT in India has some dark spots too. Here English is taught for over ten years, and yet many fail to learn it. About 300 million children, not at school now, need to be taught English, much faster. Non-formal institutions have tried to meet this challenge. The Rapidex English Speaking Course (9), a bilingual book that claims to teach English conversation with English utterances and their Indian language translations for possible situations in an average lower-middle-class student or worker's life, has sold over a billion copies. Whether it has really helped is another story, but it shows the need and desire. Similarly, there is no city or town in India without dozens of institutes of 'Spoken English'. Globalization and demand for Indian IT workers has given fuel to this 'Spoken English' industry (1)0. Whether even this sector has done well is again another story. When quick buck, not durability, is the prime motive, then mediocre passes for the best. Some quality work, however, is afoot. Syllabi are under revision. Foreign students, especially from Indian Ocean and Pacific-rim countries, are also joining English language streams in Indian universities. With a little better effort India can easily be the leading provider for English language needs in Afro-Asian countries. After all, as Widdowson says11, India has the experience of successfully learning and teaching English as a non-native language for over 400 years!
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