Deficiencies In Teaching and Learning English As a Foreign Language In the Secondary Schools In India

English language is considered by many as the international language. It is a language which has secured a place for itself alongside local languages in multilingual communities and is also learnt by all classes of the society. Its acquisition can guarantee the availability of opportunities to employment, traveling, higher education, and even better life (Crystal, 1997). The knowledge of English is also essential to access higher education which is dependent on English in many countries. In India, English is taught as a foreign language and in India it is taught as a Second Language. The major difference between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) is presented in this paper. In an ESL context, English is the partial or universal medium of instruction in some or most subjects in school, while in an EFL context instruction in other subjects is not normally given in English. English is taught in Indian schools about six periods per week for six years. But it has been estimated that they hardly know few words by the time they join a University. This means that they have hardly been able to learn English words at the rate of one word per period. They do not know how to use the commonest structures of English. The mistake is in Educational system itself as teacher’s target is to “prepare” his students for the examination and not to make them skilled in the use of the language they are learning (Subramanian, 1985). Communicative language teaching was introduced in India in the 1980s; it was a stuffy failure for the first few years because of the lack of the right context (Gupta, 2005).

• To explore the ways of developing ELT in India at the level of secondary schools.

• To study and compare perceptions of teachers and students of Indian secondary schools about the following:

o Medium of instruction in English class. o Methods used in English class. o Difficulties faced in ELT. o Textbooks.

• To suggest ways for improvement of status of ELT in Indian secondary schools.

For systematically describing the situation, I have used a “Descriptive Method” to examine the ELT status of the Indian secondary schools. At the same time, this study could be called as a qualitative study which deals with issues not directly observable.

The sample in the present study was consisting of 200 government secondary school students and 20 English teachers in Gujarat, India.

The Indian study was carried out in three districts of Gujarat. Questionnaires were collected from 200 students of four government secondary schools of these districts. Out of four schools, one was a boy’s school, two were girl’s schools and the fourth was a co-educated one. A total of ten teacher’s questionnaires were distributed among the teachers of the same schools.

The materials comprised of two types of questionnaires, one for students and the other for teachers, consisting of mainly multiple-choice questions and some open-ended questions.

The student’s questionnaire, with 29 questions, was planned with three parts: personal information, nineteen multiple-choice questions covering the areas of English classes, English textbooks etc. The last part

The teacher’s questionnaire, with 30 questions, was designed in four parts: personal information, fifteen multiple-choice questions, six open-ended questions on the problems posed in ELT classes, textbooks etc., and the last part which questioned teaching and learning strategies.

After the data were collected, the questionnaires were content analyzed. Subsequently, the frequency of each response was tabulated. Comments from the open – ended questions were used as part of analysis.

Medium of instruction is the language that is used in teaching. In India, media of instruction switches among English, Hindi, and the respective state’s official languages.

According to findings opted from the present study, ELT in the Indian secondary schools seems to be unsuccessful and English language proficiency and communicative competencies of a majority of the students are still open to question. In spite of the fact that they have had nearly 1000 hours of formal language instruction in their language classes before entering the university. Most of them have a very poor command over the English language. On the basis of the conclusions of this study, it can be said that most of the Indian students don’t receive adequate exposure to the English language, only the textbooks and not any other English books are taught, and there is frequent use of mother tongue by both students and the teachers.

1. T. B. Subramanian, “Teaching of English Made Easy”. Macmillan India Limited, Madras, 1985, p.56. 2. M. Celce-Murcia, “Language teaching approaches: An overview.” in Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.) Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 2001, pp. 3-11. 3. D. Crystal, (1997) English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

5. M. Kamrul Hasan, “A linguistic study of English language curriculum at the secondary level in Bangladesh- a communicative approach to curriculum development”. Language in India, 4, 2004. 6. D. Gupta, “ELT in India: A Brief Historical and Current overview". The Asian EFL Journal, 7, 1-13, 2005. 7. G. Mahmoodi, "Analysis of English Language Teaching Problems and Failure in the Educational System." Roshd Language Journal, 22, 13-19, 1990. 8. A. J. Shermila, A study of skills of reading comprehension in English developed by students of standard ix in the schools in Tuticorin district. Language in India, 6, 14-20, 2006.