Kenneth Joseph Mortimer
English,
soon an extinct language – It is being murdered!
There is general alarm, here and worldwide, about the inability
of people who have not yet reached middle age to express themselves
in clear English (or French or Arabic.) But nobody seems to face
up to the question of why the standard of English in particular
has declined, in the USA and Britain as well as here in Lebanon.
Why was it that thirty years ago standards here in Lebanon were
so much higher? Why is it that young people graduating from good
francophone schools (Brothers, T.-Ss-Coeurs) write much better
English than those from anglophone schools? (As shown, for example,
in the case of the Longman Poetry Prize.) How was it that in medieval
times the immediate descendants of weird barbarian tribes from
the steppes learnt excellent Latin, Greek or Arabic when there
were no printed books, cheap writing materials, typewriters, computers
or photocopiers? Incidentally, more than a decade ago, the world-famous
American broadcaster Alistair Cooke remarked that whenever he
received a letter in good English he knew that the writer, whether
educated or uneducated, must be over the age of forty. One might
think that such a person as His Royal Highness Charles Prince
of Wales would have swarms of distinguished people craving the
honour of working for him. Yet, said he, he had to personally
read every single letter that left his office because he could
find nobody that he could rely on to write correct English.
It will be useless to add courses of English if methods are used
that do not pass the test of giving good results. The last fifty
years have seen theories of teaching that claim to be scientific
whereas in fact this claim is founded more on pseudo-scientific
verbiage than on the truly scientific experimental test
of producing educated people capable of thinking clearly and expressing
themselves with logic, lucidity and reasonable elegance.
This of course supposes a mastery of grammar, syntax, idiom and
even the music of the language.
The Behaviourist principle of developing reflexes should have
given excellent results. Unfortunately, with its claim to make
an exact mathematical science of psychology, Behaviourism went
off the rails. Multiple-choice questions were supposed to provide
an exact measure of progress. But unfortunately they only provide
a measure of one’s ability to answer multiple-choice questions;
they do not measure one’s ability to compose readable English
with logical ordering of ideas, vocabulary, grammar, idiom, spelling
and punctuation all correct at the same time (one wrong comma
can completely change meaning.) When teaching les classes intermédiaires,
I certainly used Behaviourist methods; when my pupils had constructed
sentences and I had corrected them, I made the boys repeat them
aloud by heart with rather exaggerated intonation and tonic accent
(little lesson of yoga breathing). But I also explained grammar
– very clearly and concisely, for after the age of about 12 the
human mind always wants to know why – Please, sir, why isn’t there
an s on “several sailing craft”? In this I was helped by the boys
having already done French grammar. If I said, “You never use
the future tense in a subordinate adverb clause of time or condition,”
the boys never made the mistake again. Later on I would give the
boys précis-writing, an excellent exercise in vocabulary,
conciseness, clarity and logic. But of course, for ultra-Behaviourists
such as J.B. Watson, who so influenced language-teaching in the
USA, starting with the need for battlefield interpreters 1942-1945,
consciousness, perception and mental processes do not exist (quoted
by David Stanford Clark, Psychiatry Today, Pelican Books, p.63).
So in that case learning language is a waste of time and one might
as well teach one’s pupils to quack like a duck. Some people will
fly in the face of all evidence in order to deny any spiritual
faculty in man and therefore any moral obligation.
Pace Watson, we agree that we need clear thinking and expression.
Sometimes one feels pity for students. A professor who possesses
elegant French and Arabic and very good English and German, as
well as reading Latin and Greek, once showed me a textbook for
first-year Economics students. He himself had a doctorate in Economics
from a highly reputed American university. Yet, he said, it had
taken him half-an-hour to understand the first page because it
was so badly written. Part of my own work is checking articles
and speeches for publication. I have received texts written by
native English speakers with doctorates in English or Education
that I and university instructors have found simply incomprehensible.
Sometimes the whole train of thought needs to be rearranged.
I heard on the BBC how a North England education authority had
decided that children should not be bothered with grammar when
writing but simply allowed free rein to express themselves. But
what is the good of their expressing themselves if nobody else
can understand them? English is an international language offering
vast possibilities of employment, but these poor children in the
North, however brainy, will be condemned to working-class jobs
in the district where their street dialect is understood. The
intellectuals who insisted on descriptive rather than normative
English, must have thought that everyone spoke like their fellow
scholars; they failed to recognise the variability of language
even in a small circle. When I was in the Royal Air Force in the
Middle East, 1946-8, airmen arriving from UK were completely lost
with “Shai up and get a shwai igri on (Bring me some tea and get
a move on.)”
I must say that I have a suspicion that some of these theories
of education are really excuses for overworked, underpaid teachers.
harassed by ill-disciplined children and obstreperous parents,
being saved the tedious labour of careful correction. The Ancient
Romans employed slaves as pedagogues and sometimes the children
flogged their teacher. Maybe we are moving in the same direction.
I know two cases of Lebanese girls preparing doctorates in Britain
who have been put in charge of Remedial English courses for local
native English students. The reason is simply that, having received
a French education, they know their grammar and can explain the
language. One of these young ladies tells me that native Nottinghamshire
girls preparing a BA English ask her what a verb is! When a Lebanese
student of English literature was preparing his doctorate at Baylor,
USA, he too was put in charge of Remedial English for Americans
because the native American university professors of English had
never learnt any grammar!
As I see it, one trouble is that for an English degree one has
to learn psycho-linguistics and socio-linguistics and Chomsky
and Popski, etc., which is all very interesting, but there seems
to be no point between kindergarten and doctorate at which one
learns English! – unless one goes to Germany or Russia. In fact,
West Africans in Britain are sending their children to school
in Ghana and Nigeria, because there one learns good English and
there is discipline in the classes and homework to do in the evening.
Indeed, one sees that the best English authors now, with a feel
for the beauty of the language, are Africans and Indians and other
Commonwealth citizens. In my time one learnt grammar in Latin
class. Latin disappeared from schools but for a time was replaced
by a study of English grammar. Now both have gone by the board.
I remember my surprise when in France I found a little girl reciting
the future tense of the French verb aller. I said to her mother,
“Mais elle est française!” Now, converted by the rubbish
one hears and reads these days, I understand the need to study
one’s own language.
A refined and cultured young Englishman with a BA English from
Cambridge told me that he had never known the names of the tenses
in English until he went on a British Council course for teachers
of English as a foreign language. Yet any young Frenchman with
secondary-school education used to be able to replace his military
service by teaching French abroad as a coopérant, having
himself studied his language systematically. It is worthwhile
looking at the French textbooks used in schools and comparing
standards. I was stunned when in a book for American university
students I saw both participles and gerunds described as “-ing
words”, an expression which gives no intimation of their respective
uses and functions in a sentence.
I once saw a leaflet advertising a language school attached to
Oxford University, evidently composed on the principle that one
should not use once clear, simple word where one can use a phrase
of a dozen long, vague and pompous ones. Certainly not a good
advertisement for the language school! Examples:
*to offer participants a range of opportunities for developing
further their linguistic awareness and improving their performance
in English at an advanced level. (Translation: to help advanced
students improve their English.)
*to provide information and insights into recent thinking on approaches
to the teaching of English as a foreign or second language. (Translation:
to explain recent ideas about teaching English as a second or
foreign language.)
From a leaflet issued by a Michigan university about courses for
international students (query: how can a student be “international”?):
The writing component of this class emphasizes development of
fluency and increase in comfort level in expressing one’s ideas
in written English. (Translation: students are taught how to write
with ease and fluency.)
American university president quoted by Alistair Cooke on the
BBC:
We hope to weave a seamless interface between the conceptual aspect
of education and its implementation in action. (Alistair Cooke’s
translation: We hope to practise what we preach.)
Unfortunately, Anglo-Saxons (not Scots!) suffer from anti-intellectual
prejudice and laziness. If an Englishman is intelligent, he has
to hide it in conversation. To say that somebody is an intellectual
is a compliment in France, almost an insult in UK or USA (“egg-head”!).
Culture has lost its original meaning of refinement and superior
mind in English. There is no exact equivalent in English for the
French word esprit. For the Anglo-Saxon the word philosophy means
either history of philosophy or empty talk rather than critical
thinking as in French. There is no English culture in Lebanon
comparable to the French culture existing here – can any Lebanese
write English as Charles Helou writes French?
I hope that I have not bored you. I admit that I have a bee in
my bonnet about my language. I am fighting to save it before the
British and Americans murder it!
Kenneth
Mortimer, January 2004
