Damage!

<b>Forum for the discussion of Applied Linguistics </b>

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metal56
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Post by metal56 » Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:30 am

<Are you going to be paying the geriatric and criogenic costs of keeping us alive for the spectacle? >

Are you really so old, Stevie?
I think you and Crystal would do best to lay off the ganja!
LOL! And you the WASP weed.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:34 am

lolwhites wrote:I think you might have to have gone back rather more than just " a few" years to see how my comment was then. Probably before most of us were born, actually.

I hope we do all live to see IE take over though. It'd mean we'd had a long, happy retirement spent posting on Dave's :lol:
Last edited by metal56 on Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:47 am

There are obviously a far larger number of people who speak English as a second language, and many of them have full mastery, but it is doubtful if the number of competent speakers exceeds 5-6% of the population.
Which 5% - 6% counts.

"An estimated 4% of the Indian population use English; although the number might seem small, out of the total population that is about 35 million people (in 1994)(Crystal 1995:101). Although the number of speakers of English in India is somewhat limited (as compared to the total population), that small segment of the population controls domains that have professional prestige (Kachru 1986a: 8)."

Anuradha Chepur
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Post by Anuradha Chepur » Tue Nov 07, 2006 4:06 am

Well, India is already exporting English! The prestigious Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL), Hyderabad, is doing that since 1999. Learners from Kazakstan, Kyrgystan, the Middle East, China, Korea, Japan, etc. come to CIEFL for a three-month-program. Also professors from CIEFL are deputed to those countries to teach senior government officials there. I remember, a professor left his job at CIEFL when he got a high-paid offer in Brunei. He migrated there and is doing very well.

What Crystal probably meant could be, that India is a bridge between the English speaking and the non-English-speaking countries. Among the NES countries, India is the one that speaks a considerable amount of English, and has enough good speakers and trained teachers to help spread the language.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:59 am

Anuradha Chepur wrote:Well, India is already exporting English! The prestigious Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL), Hyderabad, is doing that since 1999. Learners from Kazakstan, Kyrgystan, the Middle East, China, Korea, Japan, etc. come to CIEFL for a three-month-program. Also professors from CIEFL are deputed to those countries to teach senior government officials there. I remember, a professor left his job at CIEFL when he got a high-paid offer in Brunei. He migrated there and is doing very well.

What Crystal probably meant could be, that India is a bridge between the English speaking and the non-English-speaking countries. Among the NES countries, India is the one that speaks a considerable amount of English, and has enough good speakers and trained teachers to help spread the language.
I hope Stephen sees that post and learns something from it.

lolwhites
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Post by lolwhites » Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:16 am

Very interesting post from Anuradha Chepur. What sort of "English" is taught at CIEFL? Is the main focus on any one variety? Is "Indian" taught as a distinct variety? What "English" do the students generally ask for? For example, are the recorded materials used generally British, American, something else altogether or a mix?

I'm not sure who Metals's questions are aimed at as I never said anything about "competent speakers", and the relevant quote came from a post by SJ, so I presume it's for him. I don't get the point Metal makes by quoting my post in its entirety. Can you clarify?

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:44 am

Sorry, Lol, they were meant for Stevie.

To Stevie:
One thing is clear; there aren't going to be three hundred million competent speakers of English in India in our lifetimes.
How many competent speakers of English - in your use of that term - are there in the USA? How many use AE as their second language? And when you mention competent speaker, in which variant are you expecting Indians to be competent? Yours?

Anuradha Chepur
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Post by Anuradha Chepur » Tue Nov 07, 2006 12:22 pm

The professors at CIEFL are highly qualified, expereinced and an elite lot. They practise, preach and teach the standard varieties and have a customised approach. They are at home with the teaching methodologies. The international students mainly ask for proficiency in communicative English and writing skills. Whether American or British depends on what they ask for, I guess, and all that is decided at the time of signing the contracts with the respective countries.

I don't have access to the information on the recorded materials they use. I should guess they use American, British and also the recorded material produced by CIEFL.

lolwhites
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Post by lolwhites » Tue Nov 07, 2006 5:03 pm

Thanks for the info, Anuradha, it's very enlightening. A couple more questions if I may: firstly, are the professors all Indians or are they from abroad too? Secondly, is Indian English ever requested by the students (or their sponsors), and if so, how often?

revel
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Anyone for getting their ruff up?

Post by revel » Tue Nov 07, 2006 6:37 pm

Hello all.

Today I gave my kids their new English book (finally, someone forgot to order them until last week) and I stuck a mailing lable on the cover of each of their books, being careful to stick it covering the word "British" in the subtitle (original "British English").

I don't doubt that the book teaches British English, but I commented to the kids that I thought it was a bit silly to call it British English with so many different people speaking the "language" and each speaking it as he or she likes. I pointed out that it would be silly to call the book American English when there are so many different ways of speaking in America.

What was curious for me was not the name of the kind of English I was going to teach them but rather that the students interpreted the covering up of the word as a kind of social, maybe even racial censureship. One said that I had done it because I am American, and I had to admit that certain peculiarities of British English are sometimes beyond me, but that really had nothing to do with where the address lable ended up stuck.

Actually, I think I put it there because it did not fit in the upper right corner where the kids are used to putting their names on their homework, quizes and exams, without covering the main title of the book. (anyone want to correct that last sentence for me? I feel so rusty....)

peace,
revel.

Stephen Jones
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Post by Stephen Jones » Wed Nov 08, 2006 2:03 am

I hope Stephen sees that post and learns something from it.
And what am I supposed to learn. I have long known of the existence of CIEFL. I was responsible for hiring English lecturers for six years and a qualification fron CIEFL was an automatic ticket to the shortlist.

Indian and sub-continental teachers have been hired by the Gulf and other places for a long time. A few years back Saudi hired hundreds of Pakistani teachers (we used to get inundated with applications from them; the main problem was that when we gave them a test we found only around 5% passed), and I believe it is also hiring a fair number of Bangladeshi teachers (somebody persuaded the ministry the level of Bangladeshi teachers' English was high - evidently they had never seen The Bangladeshi Essay Book www.robinupton.com/research/publication ... Upton).pdf )

This is however very different from what Crystal is saying:
I see it playing the most important role of a bridge between the standard English spoken in the UK and the US, and the non-standard English spoken in countries like China and Japan.
He is saying that Indian English will act as a bridge language. English is a bridge language in India; that is to say a Hindi speaker will converse with a Tamil or Mayalam speaker in English. What Crystal is saying is that a Chinese student of English will converse with a native English speaker from the US or UK using Indian English. The idea is palpably absurd.

What amazes me is that when Crystal talks about 300 million speakers of Indian English, he is so obviously ignoring his own experience of India (metal 56 as far as I can see hasn't got any, and takes his arguments from short excerpts from journalistic articles more in tune with political correctness than reality). 300 million people is the entire urban population of India. As one can reasonably presume that the number of competent speakers of English in the rural areas is close to zero, Crystal is suggesting that in the near future the whole urban population of India will be competent English speakers. The truth of course is that the vast majority of urban Indians might pepper their speech with English words (though that is probably more a Bollywood and advertising agency fiction than a valid sociolinguistic observation), but they would be hard pressed to be even able to direct a tourist to his hotel, and a large proportion would not be able to have even a basic converstion in English.

I spend three to four months a year every year in Sri Lanka, which in terms of the penetration of English is little different from India. I live in the richest part of Lanka, near the most important tourist resort and the chief Free Trade Zone in the country. Not even 15% of the population speaks sufficient English to hold a short conversation with a tourist (sure the front of house hotel staff will, but the kitchen and cleaning staff will scarcely know more than a few words), let alone enough English to use it as a primary means of communication in their job.

The real problem however is that Crystal and metal56 appear to have little idea about Indian English as a standard. The truth is the Indian English, may be extolled by sub-continental journalists such as Gurcharan Das who metal56 links to, but a visit to the site of any English language subcontinental newspaper such as The Hindu, or the Hindustan Times, or The Times of India, or The Island, or The Daily News, will show that the Inglish Das claims as the new vernacular of the street masses, is conspicouous by its very absence (which explains why non-Indians can understand it). Indian writers of English who have a worldwide reputation such as Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Roy, or Panchal Mistra all write in standard English. Indeed in the latest history of Sri Lankan literature in English to be published, it was admitted that there was only one writer in who attempted to write in Lankan English, and that writer, Carl Muller, only does so in dialogue or internal monologue, reverting to standard English for the rest of the narration.

In a recent book on Sri Lankan English, two varieties of Lankan English were referred to, the second variety being considered socially inferior as it marked the speakers as coming from the Sinhala or Tamil medium, as opposed to a purely English or bilingual one. On top of that there is what one writer has described as Sinenglish (that is to say English spoken through the prism of Sinhala diction and grammar). The author of the book clearly distinguishes this from Sri Lankan English (which he considers too difficult for the average Sinhala speaker) and recommends that SinEnglish be taught in schools, no doubt so that the tuk-tuk driver can communicate in it with the tea stall owner and appear really cool, as opposed to speaking their native language and really communicating.

I have read hundreds of books written by Sri Lankans in English, and hundreds of books written by Indians in English. Even in Saudi I am surrounded by Indian speakers of English of all social classes, and I would say that I spend more time online dealing with sub-continental English than any other variety. And it appears to me that Crystal's statement bears no relation to reality, and the fact that both Crystal and metal56 can come out with economic predictions with no factual basis only strengthens my suspicions.

Anuradha Chepur
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Post by Anuradha Chepur » Wed Nov 08, 2006 3:51 am

lolwhites, the CIEFL professors are all Indians. Actually, CIEFL doesn't recommend or teach Indian English to its clients. Nobody asks for Indian English. What people ask for is accurate English.
When teaching Indians, the aim is to help them unlearn Indian English, besides helping them learn English. Every Indian speaks atleast two to four languages. So they are bound to mix them, and this results in Indian English.
When Crystal is talking to Indians, he is being polite in saying nice things about them.
Notwithstanding, Indian's competence in English is not to be underestimated either. The US companies don't outsource to India (not only IT, but also spoken-english based call center work) for being politically correct or polite.

Stephen Jones
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Post by Stephen Jones » Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:01 am

Notwithstanding, Indian's competence in English is not to be underestimated either. The US companies don't outsource to India (not only IT, but also spoken-english based call center work) for being politically correct or polite.
Please don't think I'm doing anything of the sort. However the US & UK are outsouricing a relatively puny number of jobs (maybe ten million or so and more in the future, but I have seen figures that point out that even under the most optimistic suggestions for outsourcing the number of jobs outsourced to India will not come close to the number of new jobs produced in the economy in that period).

The article metal56 linked to claimed 98 out of 100 call centre applicants in India were turned down. As the writer appears notoriously cavalier with the facts this figure may well be made up, but certainly there is not an unlimited number of English speakers working in call centres. At present companies can still expand because other companies have ended their call centre operations because they found the model did not work out, but there is neither an unlimited demand for call centre operatives (Asia and Europe are out for linguistic reasons), nor an unlimited supply.

With regard to IT, there is already a shortage of skilled engineers. Google has had to import Americans to staff some posts in its Indian branch, and companies are claiming there are simply not enough engineers produced.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6124872.stm

India is getting a lot of other work outsourced that does not require oral English; accounting and medical transcriptions for a start. There is also a huge market for medical tourism, but India has hardly started to look at it; the annual figure for medical tourists is 1.7 lakh (170,000), which is less than half the figure for just one hospital in Bangkok.

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Wed Nov 08, 2006 7:54 am

I don't doubt that the book teaches British English, but I commented to the kids that I thought it was a bit silly to call it British English with so many different people speaking the "language" and each speaking it as he or she likes. I pointed out that it would be silly to call the book American English when there are so many different ways of speaking in America.
But does the English in that book reflect the Englishes spoken around America and Britain or does it reflect the ESL idea of what British English is?

metal56
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Post by metal56 » Wed Nov 08, 2006 8:05 am

<(metal 56 as far as I can see hasn't got any, and takes his arguments from short excerpts from journalistic articles more in tune with political correctness than reality)
Well, I lived and studied in Kerala for a year once.
Not even 15% of the population speaks sufficient English to hold a short conversation with a tourist (sure the front of house hotel staff will, but the kitchen and cleaning staff will scarcely know more than a few words), let alone enough English to use it as a primary means of communication in their job.
And what population on non-native Spanish speakers could hold a converstaion or give directions in Spanish to a Spanish speaking to a tourist in the USA. Also, what percentage of the US population have regular contact with tourist to the US?
In a recent book on Sri Lankan English, two varieties of Lankan English were referred to, the second variety being considered socially inferior as it marked the speakers as coming from the Sinhala or Tamil medium, as opposed to a purely English or bilingual one. On top of that there is what one writer has described as Sinenglish (...

Stevie, do you think that the majority of daily international communication in English is done in the standard form? Do you think that most communication is done through literature? I've been working in business language consulting and teaching for 25 years now and I see all kinds of variants of English being used to do business. Do you think that the majority of speakers of non-standard English are going to spend time and money reaching the perfection you and others require of them before they are deemed competent to do business? LOL! If you think that, you know very little about international business. Sure, there are still many Indians who wish to study standard BE and US Englishes, and that will go on for some time, but if I want to do business successfully in India, I may have to become a little more bilingual, re variants, in my use of English.

Tell me, do you think that a Japanese person can easier understand the accent of an AmericanEnglish speaker than that of an Indian english speakers?
Last edited by metal56 on Wed Nov 08, 2006 9:19 am, edited 2 times in total.

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