English Language Learning

Every Wednesday I help out with English learning in a small community centre not too far from our home. The learners are all men, mostly from Bangladesh and Pakistan. They live in Aston and in the neighbouring communities of Lozells and Newtown. Classes start at midday which suites those of the men who work in Asian restaurants. They come home late at night and sleep until deep in the morning.

If I have learned one thing from assisting these learners, it is how difficult the English language is for them. Some had little education at home and have to acquire the additional skills of reading and writing the letters of the alphabet, one by one, both in small and capital letters. It takes them hours of practice to produce some satisfactory results. Others are a step further and know some reading and writing, but they have trouble in recognising words. They are able to spell the letters of a word separately, but they have difficulty in putting the letters together and hit on the word itself. The biggest group, however, reads and writes easily. They are functional literates and only have to cope with the considerable confusion the spelling of English language poses to them.

In English the same sounds can be represented by different letters or letter combinations, and the same letters can stand for different pronunciations. It is not only the vowels that are afflicted with this bad habit but some consonants as well. Moreover, you have the silent consonants which you are obliged to write but not allowed to pronounce. The learners find it utterly confusing and I can't blame them.

There is no way of explaining the differences. Rules do exist but there are so many exceptions that indeed the rules are made to be broken. Historical explanations are not very helpful either. They are highly complex and often more governed by coincidence than by logic. So, what it comes down to in the end, is that learners have just to memorise 'the way it is'.

The teaching of grammar relies heavily on memory as well. It is more a question of memorising sentences in certain situations than an explanation of the distinctions that underlie grammatical differences. Learners are taught how to approach their GP in a health centre, what to say when they go shopping, how to talk about their children's education etc. It is hoped that by means of adopting these sentences the learners gradually develop a feeling for the language and spontaneously start using the right grammatical constructions.

It seems to me that this is the way children learn a language, but children are fast learners and have excellent memories. My learners are adults, they need plenty of time and lots of hard work to put things to memory. A few hours of English once or twice a week is on the whole not enough.

Ton