Applied linguistics and language learning/teaching
OPTIMUM AGE
English teaching in Nepal
Until the early 1960s English was widely available in the Nepal school system; the basic medium of instruction was Nepali but English was taught everywhere as a foreign language and there were private schools in which English was the medium of instruction. In the early 1970s Nepal withdrew from English for purposes of nation building (it should be noted that Nepali, the national language, is itself a colonizing language, introduced only about 300 years ago). English medium schooling was forbidden. But English did not go away. In the 1980s the ban was lifted, to avoid the unfortunate situation whereby middle-class parents were procuring English for their children by sending them to English medium boarding schools in Darjeeling, itself a Nepali-speaking enclave in India. It was decided by government that to avoid this embarrassment English should be officially reintroduced. A Survey of English Teaching by three applied linguists was commissioned in 1983. Its findings were disturbing (Davies et al. 1984, Davies 1987).
No school teacher in the sample studied possessed adequate English proficiency (by which was meant ability to read at an unsimplified level). For that reason, and in order to avoid the huge waste of time and resource devoted to English for the majority of children who drop out before they have gained any usable language skill, the Survey’s recommendation was that English should begin in government schools as late as possible, well up in the secondary school.
However, there were, as the Survey team acknowledged, counter-arguments which were political rather than psychological, that is they were about the perceived role of English in Nepal rather than about the critical period. The Ministry of Education had to recognize the powerful local views on the need to entrench English early: one of the King’s chief advisers stated that in his view English should start in the first year of primary school. The fact that there were no qualified teachers (and no prospect of any coming forward) was unimportant. The Ministry was of course well aware of its own government’s acceptance of the local political imperative. In a situation where English represents modernity and the key to professional advancement, starting English in the secondary school would be seen as deliberately penalizing the children of the majority, most of whom never reach secondary school (about 50 per cent of primary school entrants dropped out at the end of the first year). It was essential, so government officials argued, for English to start as early as possible, not primarily to teach English but to provide the appearance of equal opportunity.
Making decisions about English teaching in Nepal is more than a language problem. What the applied linguist is able to do is to clarify the choices and explain the parameters of those choices, what the implications are of starting English at different ages. In this local context (as in any other) there is no one general recipe (such as the critical period) that can be served up to determine the way forward.
