Teaching English is not a piece of cake

Khalid Zafar

Teaching any language is not easy, even learning of a language takes quite a lot of time, let alone the secondary language which one has to learn first and then teaches it. I would say that the job of being a good teacher of any language can be compared to any of the difficult tasks of the world, but English! It has got its own behaviour of idiosyncratic nature.

First of all the language, English is famous as a “sound language” not a “letter language.” It means, many of the letters in the language do not have a one to one correspondence with the sounds they make as we have the patterns in other languages like Khowar and Urdu. The Urdu letters will give the same sounds as they are represented, but it does not happen with English. To take a very few as examples: the letter “c” would sometimes give us the sound /s/ as in the word “cement” and other times it gives us the sound /k/ as in cat and car. So, by only working on the spelling patterns of the language one could hardly be able to get even the actual pronunciations of words. For that purpose one should go through the sound patterns or phonology of the language.

There are certain rules which provide some help to the person understanding things but the rules are also not very hard and fast, as there are always the exceptions.  Like the word “facade” is pronounced as /fəˈsɑːd / not /fakad/ and the word “rendezvous” is pronounced as /ˈrɒn.deɪ.vuː/ not /rendezvous/ and adding to the difficulty there are the unrealized sounds and the intruding sounds. Sometimes an existing sound is not realized but at certain conditions a sound which is not actually present anywhere, is fully realized. For example the sound /r/ at the end of the word “letter” would not be realized when followed by a consonant but under the condition that when a word starts with a vowel sound and the preceding word also ends in vowel, the sound /r/ is added there from nowhere, taking the name, “the intruding r” .

But as the greatest of the playwrights, the great Shakespeare says, “When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions,” the learners of English face the unintelligible spelling patterns of the language having the silent letters creating dilemmatic situations for them. Sir Javed often narrates a story related to a local “Beotian” who was trying his level best to learn English Language. After sometimes when he thought himself to have acquired some knowledge of the language he asked his friends to test his English skills. One among the friends, who was well versed in English, asked him to spell the word psychology. The Beotian started with the letter “S,” the friend told him that he was not right, he started with the letter ‘C” but he was once more reminded that he was not correct. When he found out ultimately that the actual spelling of the word psychology starts with “P” not with “s” or “C”; he laid down arms by declaring that English was beyond his capacities.

Only learners of the language consider themselves fortunate when they meet the English language teachers, as, the real problem starts when one comes to translate an English text to a target language, which also to a non native one, as to translate something, one has to be an expert of both the languages. One should be aware of every nuance of both the target and the source languages. For example, the Pakistani English Language Teachers, specifically the Chitralis face myriads of problems when translating English into Urdu as, both are foreign tongues for them and on the other the expectations of people towards the English teachers are very high. People expect them to understand everything about English and excuses are never accepted at any cost. So, the teachers of English are in real trouble.

Teaching a language to non native speakers is a very difficult job. Especially, when someone is following the Grammar Translation Method, it becomes a real hard nut to crack. As, translating something from one language to another means transplanting the whole idea from one culture to another. For the purpose, alternative words, calques and sometimes borrowed words are used so that the idea could be transferred “as it is” to the target language.

Same happens with the translation of the English language, if the teachers don’t have any alternatives in the target language, they would either go for the borrowed words or towards the audio visuals, but if they are not fortunate enough for having the facilities then they will manage to transfer the concept on their own irrespective of how good or bad they would perform.

To illustrate the idea further I would share a story of my own with you. After I had completed my Masters in English literature and Linguistics, I was hunting for jobs to make my living on my own as I did no more want to be a burden on my parents. So, I got the offer of teaching General science at one of the private schools in Peshawar- Academy of ****. I happily joined the school but it came to me before the penny dropped that I had to teach the students of 4th grade and they did not speak even a single phrase of Urdu. I was also a beginner of the Pashto Language, so the task seemed quite not possible.

But having no other option, I had to tackle the task wily or nily. One day while I was teaching the \’Solar System\’ there came the word \’Comet\’ in the lesson and I had to explain it to them. I said it is called “Dumdar sitara in Urdu.” They asked \”Sir, dumdar, sa ta woi?\” (What is the meaning of Dumdar?) Now, I did not know, what would be the Pashto equivalent of the Urdu \”dum,” (tail). So, I drew the picture of a horse there on the blackboard and asked them about the tail pointing my index finger at it. All of them together shouted, \”Sir, laki da, lakai da\” (a tail, a tail). Then I told them that \”Comet\” was a lakai wala storey (Comet is a star having a tail, as it is called in Urdu). They got my point.

That day I got reminded of the catch word of one of my teachers, “beta, teaching English is not a piece of cake.” I agree with him now.

(Khalid Zafar is Lecturer in English GC Chitral).