NIESD -1

 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ENGLISH SKILL DEVELOPMENT (NIESD)                                                     CHENNAI - INDIA

                English skill will never let you down

Hundreds of universities, thousands of colleges, lakhs of high schools, not to speak of thousands of English language Institutes, and yet we find hardly five percent of professional graduates employable (due to lack of English skill), I am not taking other streams of graduates into account as there would be further dip in the percentage of employables. The standard of English is rapidly falling down in India from the past three decades.  Everyone knows where the fault lies but  no one has the solution (to  GDE ), I mean to Gross domestic English literacy. This reminds of the nursery rhyme ' Humpty Dumpty had a great fall'. Lack of English literacy will severely affect, India's global business, economy GDP, Information technology, higher education research output etc.

The aim of  NIESD  is to provide training in  functional English to the students, employees, executives, businessmen  teachers, trainers  etc., to improve their communication and presentation skill.

                                         What is English skill?

When people talk of English skill they think about English literature, novels, drama, the bulky dictionary, other literary works and finally the grammar. Some people enroll in English literature (degree) and other such courses to gain the language skill, at the end they  find it difficult to frame or speak even a single simple sentence of their own.

A Language  is a form of verbal communication with the  fellow human beings to convey the desires,  wants, suggestions, emotions etc. There is a link between the sentences the people use to communicate and the grammar and literature of the language, of course culture plays an important role in acquiring the language skill.  A same idea can be communicated  in a variety of word combinations  or many thoughts can be communicated using the same word combinations.

Communication skill training is such a vast area that no single course, or a teacher, or a training can accomplish the task. Language is purely a personal domain, because no two individuals can speak in the same way, the language skill can be acquired by constant observation, and usage.

                                                                                                   

                          How people acquire English skill?

Native people (Say English) acquire language fluency by observation, necessity, situations, body language etc., even  without knowing the alphabets or grammar of the language. A child speaking in his/mother tongue is the best example, this is the most effective  and the fastest way of acquiring a language skill.

Non native speakers of the language acquire the language skill in the following ways.

1.Studying grammar: This method wouldn’t be of much help because it’s is not based on day to day communication needs of the speakers, besides it’s is a long and tedious process.

2. People working in corporate houses  and  multinational companies, acquire language skill by interacting with their co workers

3. Students studying in reputed universities acquire language fluency by listening to the lectures, interacting with the English speaking students, and by participating in debates, GDs and seminars.

4. Very few students/people acquire langue fluency by studying English literature, books, novels,  etc.  Majority of the students who take up English literate at degree or post graduate level end up memorizing the content without acquiring the language skill.

5. People who are exposed to cartoon films and books based on cartoons or Picture story books or comic books tend to acquired better language proficiency than the above mentioned four methods.

6. Regular English news paper readers and English news watchers acquire remarkable and high degree of language proficiency, their vocabulary is better than that of  the native speakers. People of this category climb up the career ladder faster than anyone in non-native speaking category

7. Another way of acquiring fluency in a shortest span of time is to master at least one thousand Lexical Chunks. Lexical chunks are the frequently and widely used phrase (In various contexts) in spoken English.  

7. Now the trend in non native speaking countries is, mushrooming of Spoken English Training centers. These centers just issue books/CDs containing Stereotype dialogues, expressions, conversations etc. The trainees are made to memorize  like parrots, and  of course they are taught the pronunciation of some frequently used words-group (American English) .  The irony is that these poor trainees can’t  frame  their own sentences even after spending hundreds of dollars.  

In India an average student is exposed to English for twelve years at school, nearly 95% of the these students fail to speak a single sentence of his/her own. At university/college level the universities/colleges  have failed miserably to deliver the goods, oops! many universities/colleges staff are very poor in English. The end result is that the millions of graduates  are unable to secure a decent job due to lack of English skill.   India is losing billions of dollars of outsourcing  jobs to Philippines,  China, Sri Lanka etc., as these countries are very serious about providing english skill training to the common man.

Present status of English in India

The falling education standard in India is directly proportional to the declining English standard.  Further investment including FDI in higher education is bound to fail unless the free fall of English standard is arrested.  Today a common man in India is well aware that, upward mobility is impossible without English skill.  Unlike Japan, Russia , Germany  etc. where the knowledge is available in their respective country language , India is solely dependent on English for information and knowledge. With the new role as the Global language of  commerce and communication, English commands more respect and Elite status , among the masses and affluents.  

 2004 story

Once Jerry Rao, Chairman of National Association of Software and Service Companies lamented that ‘The average student in India who completes high school doesn’t speak good English, thanks to the ill-conceived chauvinist educational policies’. He called to step up investment in English speaking workforce. He went on to say that, ‘A large English speaking workforce is a National Asset’.

2013 story

‘Investment in picking up one’s English language skills hasn’t found much favor with Indians in Comparison to science or technology or other areas, they like to invest in’.  This was the opinion of Angela ffrench and  Coombe of Cambridge English Language Assessment (CELA) which is part of University of Cambridge, UK. Further they added ;  ‘Brushing up one’s English could lead to overseas study  and employment opportunities is  something  we needn’t tell people .  They should have  realized by now’, they  further stressed that ‘people shouldn’t miss out on great opportunities just because they are handicapped with respect to communication’.

2014 Story

Hardly 15 percent of  the graduates are employable, the remaining 85 percent lack English communication skill. The inference is 85 percent of investment is going into drains. The Universities in India still consider English  literature, history, criticism etc. as integral components of the English language, they are fail to realize that the employers need communication skill not the literature and criticism. The  University/College teachers themselves are poor in Communication skill. This has resulted in mushrooming of  thousands of the so called  English Language Training Companies all over India and it’s the most sought after business these days(better than investment in gold).  The only aim these companies is to cash in on the English craze, the youth who fall prey to the catchy ads of these companies end up as parrots with no knowledge of speaking or wring of their own.  There are few International Schools and some Elite colleges where  students  get an opportunity to hear and speak language fluently and this fraction doesn’t make any impact. I am of the view that India is losing at least a billion dollar a day due to joblessness/underemployment of it's youth, due to lack of English skill.

National Employability Report (2014) says that 73.6% of engineering graduates lack English speaking and comprehension skills, one can imagine the fate of graduates in Arts and Science colleges. The prediction of the World Bank in 2010 that ‘Skill shortage remains one of the major constraints to continued growth of the Indian economy’, is true even today. It is time the government stepped  up  investment in skill development  rather than opening more and more universities and colleges.  Look at the fate  hundreds of  Engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu , struggling for survival in just two decades of their inception. `

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