Heterogeneous Learning Environment and Languaging in L2 [1st ed.] 9789811539022, 9789811539039

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii
Linguistic Heterogeneity and English Language in India (Ramanjaney K. Upadhyay)....Pages 1-9
Second Language Learning, Teaching and Testing (Ramanjaney K. Upadhyay)....Pages 11-32
Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study (Ramanjaney K. Upadhyay)....Pages 33-49
Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables (Ramanjaney K. Upadhyay)....Pages 51-147

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Ramanjaney K. Upadhyay

Heterogeneous Learning Environment and Languaging in L2

Heterogeneous Learning Environment and Languaging in L2

Ramanjaney K. Upadhyay

Heterogeneous Learning Environment and Languaging in L2

123

Ramanjaney K. Upadhyay Humanities and Social Sciences Indian Institute of Technology Madras Chennai, India GLA University Mathura (on-lien), India

ISBN 978-981-15-3902-2 ISBN 978-981-15-3903-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3903-9

(eBook)

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

to Khyati (for getting me here)

Foreword

Multilingualism, Languaging and Translanguaging: Then & Now

Inspired by Wilhelm von Humboldt’s argument that “if one thinks of nation and language together, the latter has an original character which has fused with the character it acquired from the nation” (Humboldt, 1997: 56), the intrinsic connection between language and national identity dominated the ideological framework within language policy. Predicated on the Humboldtian principle, language-in-education policy treated language diversity as a problem, presenting a non-tariff barrier to mobility and interaction, and a constraint on the social engagement. It not only assumed that each citizen has one mother tongue, most commonly an official language of the state to which they belong, but also exercised, covertly (and sometimes overtly), the pecking order in the selection of an identifiable number of languages. Besides insensitivity to appreciate language as a ubiquitous and polymorphous phenomenon, one also finds a complete disregard to understand and even take full account of the complexities of multilingualism, which include the mobility, mixing, political dynamics and historical embeddedness that bring about rapid changes in the language profile of individuals and communities, especially in larger cities, uneven distribution of multilingualism, and the growing number of people with more than one first language. The nineteenth-century heritage inadvertently resulted in, large measures, creation of a monolingual ethos of language teaching, organized around a native speaker model of language learning. It marked both the discouragement and exclusion and forged links between language and power. Language learning, thus became a labour of Sisyphus, wherein there are some learners whom one may imagine to be happy, but many are also discouraged by the experience (a la Camus, 1942). The ethical relationship between speaker and their language becomes fairly clear if we look at the position of English in higher education in private institutions. In professional institutions with a higher density of cultural and linguistic heterogeneity, aspirations and expectations for a better corporate communication renders both power and sacrament to English and places it at the intersection of society, political economy and even religion (if one were to avail the opportunities created by the “Goddess English”. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-12355740). vii

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It is against this background of heterogeneity and multilingualism that one finds it heartening to see a term languaging prominently placed in a book of an Indian writer, for the South Asian readership and being published by Springer. Perhaps, it would not be politically incorrect to say that in the field of Applied Linguistics, particularly in the context of language pedagogy, languaging is a matter of affirmative action. It accommodates linguistic variations of multilingual users and gives a sense of ownership to their repertoire without any bargain of linguistic hierarchy and compromise with self-esteem. The monolithic view of “national language”, “common culture” and “national character” was not at all in keeping with the ways in which people in India used and identified with languages in the pre-colonial past. The conditions of social complexity and linguistic diversity, which Europeans encountered in their recent South Asian conquests, were too confounding and perplexing and were largely perceived as sinful humanity’s common heritage. It represented “a land of Babel brought to perpetual chaos by the sheer perversity of its natives” (Washbrook, 1991, p. 187). For the new masters, the wilderness of the South Asian multilingual society required taming which was effectively realized through the drive towards classification. While examining the growth of Telugu nationalism during the colonial and post-colonial eras, Mitchell (2009) points out that in pre-colonial southern India languages were regarded as features of the landscape with instrumental value, as opposed to comprising an aspect of individual or community identity. According to her, even the concept of “mother tongue”1 and its valorization as an inalienable feature of personal identity signalling participation and belonging in a larger, linguistically defined collectivity “is not attested in any Indian language prior to the second half of the nineteenth-century.” (Mitchell, 2009: 2). Sense of sharedness in languages and communication despite the linguistic complexity and the “perpetual chaos”. The multilingual natives could easily deploy their various languages in a linguistically heterogeneous region according to different social contexts and specific communicative needs without any invisible cultural power. Neither there were any established linguistic hierarchies nor any language used in some ways was given more value than others. These aspects of language disposition characterized the Asian sensibilities and values, which were beyond the comprehension of the Europeans. (Hasnain forthcoming) Mohanty et al. (1999) aptly capture this multilingual ethos in the following description:

1

Sriramulu’s death on December 15, 1952, followed by Sitaramaiah’s and Sant Fateh Singh and Master Tara Singh’s fast-unto-death for a separate Telugu and Punjabi-speaking state, respectively, and an international annual “Mother Language Day” commemorating death of four young men during language riots in the name of the Bengali language are “the dramatic forms of evidence of emotional commitments to one’s maata bhaaSa, maatR bhaaSa, or taaymoLi, literally ‘mother tongue’, [that] began to appear throughout the subcontinent during the middle decades of the twentieth century [and] [t]he past provides us no evidence of this type of committed devotion to language prior to the twentieth century.” (Mitchell, 2009: 2–3).

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the fluidity of perceived boundaries between languages, smooth and complementary functional allocation of languages in different domains of use, multiplicity of linguistic identities and early multilingual socialisation.

South Asian multilingual ethos in the past has neither been a double monolingualism type nor the de facto multilingualism is structured as a series of separate strands, which Heller refers to as “parallel multilingualism” (1999: 139). In fact, it was fluidity that characterized the language and society in pre-colonial India, which was in contrast to the colonial propensity for hierarchy. As Canagarajah points out: We do have evidence that translanguaging has been practiced in pre-colonial communities and in rural contexts. In South Asia, Africa and South America, rural life has featured considerable heterogeneity and multilingualism. (2011: 3)

“The edifice of linguistic plurality in Indian subcontinent, according to Khubchandani, is traditionally based upon the complementary use of more than one language and more than one writing system for the same language in one space.” (1997: 95–96; emphasis in original) In fact, Pedda Baala Shiksha ‘Expanded Child’s Primer’ presents early printed textbooks in multiple scripts. (Mitchell, 2009). Languaging or ‘doing language’ was also part of individual poetic compositions of the medieval and early-modern period. Amir Khusrau (1253–1325), one of the most celebrated poets of medieval India, writing in Persian, the courtly language of Muslims of the Sultanate period, was ‘doing language’ by combining words from Sanskrit and Arabic, Persian and Turkish with those from the vernaculars around Delhi with tremendous felicity.2 For example, the following poem written in Persian and Braj Bhaasha where the first line in the first verse is in Persian and the second in Braj Bhaasha, the third in Persian again, and the fourth in Braj Bhaasha: Zehaal-e-miskeen makun taGHaaful, Duraaye nainaa banaaye batiyaan. ‘Do not overlook my misery, by blandishing your eyes and weaving tales’. Ke taab-e-hijran nadaaram ay jaan, Na leho kaahe lagaaye chatiyaan. ‘My patience has over-brimmed, O sweetheart! why do you not take me to your bosom’.

Chatterji (1960:203) goes to the extent of saying that a writer like Khusrau “essaying in the Indian vernacular in literature was an exception” for his time.

2

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Foreword

While Khusrau composed the poetry in two languages, Ahmed Raza Khan ‘Ala-Hazrat’ (1856–1921) an Islamic scholar, jurist, theologian, ascetic and Sufi Urdu poet used four languages simultaneously. These languages are Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Bhojpuri/Hindi3: Al bahro ‘ala wal maujo taGHaa, man bekas toofaan hosh rubaa, manjdhaar me hun bigDi hai hawaa, morii nayya paar lagaa jaanaa.

‘I got trapped between waves and I am completely nervous (please) take me out sailing on the shore.’ In the pre-colonial context of Southern India, vibrancy in translanguaging practices has been found in abundance in much of the literary production, pedagogy, government business and everyday communication. (Mitchell, 2009) In fact, all these could happen because of the integrated nature of multilingual competence and communication with no tendency to adopt binary and hierarchical orientations to language and where languages were seen as tools to accomplish particular tasks and not as attributes of persons.4 In modern societies language use is fast changing and so is communication. The notion of separate languages bounded by specific linguistic features is not sufficiently adequate to analyze these concerns, which are constantly reflected in language in use and language in action. In fact, sociolinguistic literature dealing with the study of multilingualism is replete with terms5 such as ‘flexible bilingualism’ (Reese and Blackledge, 2010), ‘code meshing’ (Canagarajah, 2011), ‘polylingual languaging’ (Jorgensen, 2010), ‘metrolingualism’ (Otsuji and Pennycook, 2011), ‘translingual practice (Canagarajah, 2013), ‘multilinguality’ (Agnihotri, 2009) and ‘translanguaging’ (Garcia, 2009). All these varied terminologies revolving around the term translanguaging verge on the proposition that language is not a separate bounded-entities but “a social resource without clear boundaries, which places the speaker at the heart of the interaction.” (Blackledge and Creese, 2014, p. 2). In fact, they have not only 3 This genre in Urdu poetry is called Talmi’. Here different languages are used in a couplet or in one line of a stanza. This genre dates back to Amir Khusrau, who generally composed in two different languages but Ahmad Raza Khan employed four languages simultaneously. (I am indebted to Zuhair Ahmad for this information.). 4 This situation where individual languages typically took on specialized roles as one was not expected to be able to do everything in every language in order to claim competency, can, perhaps, be likened with Ancient Greek. As Haugen (1966) has pointed out in the context of ambiguity associated with the terms ‘language’ and ‘dialect’, in Ancient Greece, Greek language was usually a group of distinct local varieties: Ionic, Doric and Attic. They descended by divergence from a common spoken source with each variety having its own literary tradition and use—Ionic for history, Doric for choral and Attic for tragedy. 5 Some of these terms have been coined with the intent to postdate the translanguaging practices and valorize them as postmodern and urban. For instance, metrolinguistics, a term coined by Pennycook (2010) to capture the fluid and hybrid language practices of youth in the city gives a misleading impression as it “hides the vibrancy in other places and times.” (Canagarajah, 2011: 3).

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emerged with a clear aim to “describe and analyze linguistic practices in which meaning is made using signs flexibly.” (Blackledge and Creese, 2014, p. 2) but also to advance our understanding of multilingual communication in a heterogeneous learning environment. Translanguaging helps us adopt orientations specific to multilinguals and appreciate their competence in their own terms. S. Imtiaz Hasnain Professor of Sociolinguistics Department of Linguistics Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh, India

References Blackledge, A., & Creese, A. (eds.) (2014). Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy. Springer. Canagarajah, S. (2011). Translanguaging in the classroom: Emerging issues for research and pedagogy. In W. Li (ed.), Applied Linguistics Review 2 (1–28). De Gruyter Mouton. Chatterji, S. K. (1960). Indo-Aryan Hindi, Calcutta: Firma K L Mukhopadhyay. Hasnain, S. I. (Forthcoming). Langauge Standardization: Coloniality, Society and History. Haugen, E. (1966). Dialect, Language Nation. Americal Anthropologist, 68, 922–35. Heller, M. (1999). Linguistic Minorities and Modernity. London: Longman. Humboldt, W. V. (1997). Essays on Language. In T. Harden & D. Farrelly (eds.), Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang. Khubchandani, L. M. (1997). Revisualizing Boundaries: A Plurilingual Ethos. New Delhi: Sage. Mitchell, L. (2009). Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mohanty, A. K., Panda, S. & Mishra, B. (1999). Language socialization in a multilingual society. In T. S. Saraswathi (Ed.) Culture, Socialization and Human Development. New Delhi: Sage. Washbrook, D. (1991). ‘To each a language of his own’: Language, Culture and Society in India. In P. J. Corfield (Ed.) Language, History and Class (179–203). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Preface

sarasvati namastubhyaṃ varade kāmarūpiṇi / vidyārambhaṃ kariṣyāmi siddhirbhavatu me sadā // //

This book is an adapted version of my Doctoral thesis, and that is one reason, among many others, that this book means a great deal to me. My interest in Socio-pragmatics and Indian English took me to a very interesting, involving and intriguing domain of doing-language. The book revolves around the languaging (refers to doing-language in the book), with reference to BICS and CALP, by the students of Engineering in a Heterogenous Learning-Environment. A substantial part of the book also presents a vivid account of English Language in the Indian context. This book should be useful for those who are interested in analysing and looking at the languaging ability of a group of people. The very inherent and intrinsic nature of heterogeneous Indian society, makes it a very curious place for such a study wherein there is a lot of resource in the form of untapped and unannotated data. Such works, I am confident, would also contribute in developing people’s understanding towards native and non-native (language) dichotomy. I sincerely hope and believe that this book makes a useful resource to those who are dealing with any aspect of languaging and heterogeneity. It, as a resource, should also be useful for those interested in looking at the contrastive outlook of oriental and western world with respect to language and language learning. There are many who have been instrumental in making this book happen. This book wouldn’t have been possible without the unconditional, constant support and love of my family: Baabujee- Ram Chandra Upadhyay and Mummy- Uma Upadhyay; wife- Khyāti and son- Porco (Chaitanya Vāṅmáya), (also, actually, a heartfelt thanks to you both for allowing me to take this up); Bhaiayā- Shivanjaney, not to forget, My sisters and sisters in law, brother and brothers-in-Law. I am grateful to Prof. S. I. Hasnain for all his guidance, encouragement and love, and for being what he has been to me- a constant source of energy and motivation and also for agreeing to write the Foreword of this book. I wish we had many more like of him in the Indian academia. I would also like to sincerely thank Prof. Rajesh Kumar and Dr. RamKumar Penchalia (IIT Madras) for all the help, all this while.

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I thank Praveen Singh (IIT Madras) too for his selfless friendship and support of more than a decade. I wish I had better words to thank you, Praveen. I must also thank the people in management & administration of GLA University, Mathura- Prof. Anoop Gupta, Mr. Neeraj Agrawal and Mr. Ashok Kumar Singh for their true generosity. I have always found them phenomenally rich in the understanding of human psyche. Chennai, India Vasant Panchami, 2020

Ramanjaney K. Upadhyay Institute Post-Doctoral Fellow

Contents

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2 Second Language Learning, Teaching and Testing . . . . . . . . . Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language and Language Learning in the East and West . . . . . . . Approaches to Language Teaching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frameworks for Testing Languaging and Communicative Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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3 Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study . . . . . Key Terms and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Description of the Questionnaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data on the Background of the Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Language in and by Family and Surroundings . . . . . . . . . . . . Exposure at School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exposure at Elementary School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Exposure at Middle School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secondary/Senior Secondary Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overall Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Competence of Secondary/Senior Secondary School-Teachers . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . Description and Analysis of Qualitative Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Challenges on Prosodic Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1 Linguistic Heterogeneity and English Language in India Tracing Usage of English in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . English Language with Reference to the Present Study . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Non-verbal Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pragmatic Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Representative Quantitative Data and Analysis . . . . . Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interpretation and Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Overall Interpretation from Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Variable-Wise Analysis of Quantitative Data . . . . . . Gender . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Top 35 BICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bottom 35 BICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CALP Top 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CALP Bottom 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Place of Schooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Top 35 BICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bottom 35 BICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CALP top 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bottom 35 CALP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medium of Schooling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Secondary and Senior-Secondary Schooling . . . . . . . . . Frequency of Using English at Different Stages of Life . BICS Top 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bottom 35 BICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CALP Top 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bottom 35 CALP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Branch of Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Native Place (Geographical Location) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Summing Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1

Linguistic Heterogeneity and English Language in India

Abstract This chapter examines the intricacies of multilingualism with respect of scheduled/non-scheduled languages in India. It also briefly touches upon the tradition of language study in the country, other than taking a sneak-peak into the compositionality of the current Indian population and how it came about in the existence and current form & structure. The final section of the chapter looks at the role English language, among many other popular native languages, plays in varied contexts. Keywords Linguistic heterogeneity · Indian English · Multilingualism India is a country of languages, cultures and religions. Annamalai (2004: 151) calls it an “expanding network of languages”. Though there is not a great clarity on how many languages does India speak but one can very evidently see the heterogenous character of Indian society. In the context, Pattanayak (2014: 20) says, “India is a multilingual country with 1652 mother tongues, 200–700 languages belonging to four language families, and ten major writing systems including Roman and Perso-Arabic and a host of minor ones”. 2011 census talks about 22 scheduled and 99 non-scheduled languages in India, however the data of mother tongues in India is not quite clear. “There are total 270 identifiable mother tongues which have returned 10,000 or more speakers each at the all-India level, comprising 123 mother tongues grouped under the Scheduled Languages (Part A) and 147 mother tongues grouped under the Non-Scheduled languages (Part B). Those mother tongues which have returned less than 10,000 speakers each and which have been classified under a particular language, are included in “Others” under that language.” Retrieved form—http://censusindia.gov.in/2011Census/Language-2011/General% 20Note.pdf. Although Grierson documented 179 languages and 544 dialects in India, the MEA website, with reference of PSLI documentation, notes, “there are more than 780 languages and 66 different scripts. This indicates that one state is not confined with just one language but there are as many as 50 different languages in many Indian states” https://www.mea.gov.in/articles-in-foreign-media.htm?dtl/ 21996/India+a+linguistically+rich+nation+with+780+languages+in+its+Kitty. India, in truest sense of the term, has been a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multiracial and multilingual country. “[M]ultilingualism…is one of the most distinguishing © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 R. K. Upadhyay, Heterogeneous Learning Environment and Languaging in L2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3903-9_1

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features of the Indian society. In India, it is common for most individuals to grow up with several languages” (Agnihotri, 2001: 7). Some historians say that at least, six racial elements have contributed to the formation of India’s population. Following are the six ethnic groups widely agreed upon in the context of racial composition of India (Majumdar, 1964: 16, cited in Chaudhary, 2009: 2): A. The Negrito, immigrants from Africa. B. The proto-Australoids, who came from the west. C. The Mongoloida, living in Assam, Chittagong Hills, and the Indo-Burmese frontiers. D. The Mediterranean people, speaking Dravidian languages. E. The Alpine, Dinaric and Armenoid, mainly in Bengal, Odisha and Gujarat of today. F. The Nordic group, speaking the Aryan languages, as in the early Vedas. The fact remains that from the point of view of blood, language and culture, the population of India is an admixture of many elements. As Majumdar further commenting on the multiethnicity, multiculturalism of India says: ‘… considerable admixture has taken place among these six types of humanity in order to give rise to the present population of India, and none of them is now found in a pure form. Further, all the people which resulted from the admixture ultimately adopted one or the other of the distinct languages, viz., the Austric, the Tibeto-Chinese, the Dravidian and the Aryan … the people speaking the same language do not necessarily belong to the same ethnic group and vice versa …’(Majumdar, 1964:17). There are many instances where a language from a particular language family is spoken not just in its ‘area’ but also on a remote place. For example, Dravidian languages are spoken in southern part of the country but one of the Dravidian languages, Brahui is, even today, spoken in Baluchistan, Pakistan. Konkani, which is an Indo-Aryan language, is spoken in coastal Kerala and Karnataka. As Agnihotri (2001: 189) puts it, “Even though India was divided into federal units on the basis of language, there is not a single unit that may legitimately be called monolingual.” Chaudhary (2009: 3) says, ‘with such admixture of ethnic groups, admixture of languages also took place. Though not in strict chronological order, India has heard speakers of Hebrew, Chinese, Greek, Sanskrit, Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Armenian, Portuguese, Dutch, English, French and many more. And all of these languages, spoken by many more than one ethnic group, have added to the cultural diversity of India.’ Commenting on the Indian diversity and multilingualism Annamalai (2001: 1) says, ‘India is said to be sociolinguistic giant (Pandit, 1972) and a giant is huge and different from the ordinary. The nerve system of this giant is multilingualism. Indian multilingualism is huge in size with over 1600 mother tongues reducible to 200 languages for a population of about 940 million people and with the population of many of linguistic minorities larger than many European countries. It is different in function from the demographically multilingual but functionally monolingual countries’. Upadhyay & Hasnain (2017) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/ pii/S0024384117302449?via%3Dihub.

1 Linguistic Heterogeneity and English Language in India

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Language is very central to our existence. “It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the “real world” is to a large extent built up on the language habit of the group.” Hall (1966: 93) Language as a phenomenon has been object of study for a very long time in India. In India, language has also been both the means and victim of politics. On the other note, there have been Indian grammarians- P¯an.ini, K¯aty¯ayana and Patañjali, who have greatly impacted the discipline and study of language. In early times, Language was related to spirituality & religion. It was considered to be Godly, a supernatural thing. There was a distinction between dev-bhasha (Gods’ language) and asurya bhasha (humans’ language). Deshpande (2016: 1) puts it as, “Language appears in relation to Gods as well as humans, and occupies the entire width of a spectrum from being a divinity herself to being a means used by Gods to create and control the world, and ultimately to being a means in the hands of the human beings to achieve their own religious as well as mundane purposes.” With the development of philosophy of languages, there grew two streams of thought on languageone which viewed language as a physical phenomenon and the other which viewed language as a metaphysical object. And the disagreements in opinions led to “…fullblooded disagreements on major issues. Such disagreements relate to the ontological nature of language, its communicative role, the nature of meaning, and more specifically the nature of word-meaning and sentence-meaning. On the other hand, certain manifestations of language, whether in the form of specific languages like Sanskrit or particular scriptural texts like the Vedas, became topics of contestation between various philosophical and religious traditions.” (Deshpande, 2016). The first recorded understanding of Indians probably begins with Sanskrit (the one which is well designed), wherein the aks.ara (letter) which is in fact, a-kshar (the one which can’t be destructed). The language per se had basically two interpretations and usages- the one mundane and the other spiritual—which was a means to please the Gods and deities and to offer prayers. P¯an.ini is probably the most influential grammarian as on date in India. His Ashtadhyayi, which he wrote in the 5th century BCE, is still considered to be most error-free framework not only for language analysis but also for a modern age’s Natural Language Processing. Even Chomsky hails Panini’s as the first generative grammar. Chomsky, in an award acceptance speech delivered in India in 2001, claimed, “The first generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini’s grammar” (refer to Kak (1987) Bharti et al. (1994) and many more).

Tracing Usage of English in India With the emergence of globalised world, the usage of English language by Indians, budding or potential engineers has gone up dramatically. It’s not that English was not learnt and used by Indians before. English came to India with the British as did

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1 Linguistic Heterogeneity and English Language in India

the Portuguese with Portuguese or as Arabic & Persian with the Mughals. But as historian R. C. Mazumdar (in Chaudhary, 2009: 392) says, English was introduced in India, “not by the British but in spite of them”. English got the popularity primarily because of the opportunities it created for the ones capable of using it. India has a long history of English language learning in India. “[T]he reasons for this support generally include upward social mobility, access to knowledge and power, better occupations, intellectual status, trade and commerce… (Agnihotri, 2001: 186). It can be overtly seen and observed that there are hundreds of people who any day can and do speak almost or sometimes as good an English as a ‘native’. Through English you can expect to survive in almost any part of the country—be it the North, South, West or East. India doesn’t have any national language and English, apart from being the language of academics in almost all the Technical courses, enjoys its supremacy as the language of power, administration and several other domains and sub-domains in the sub-continent. As Chaudhary (2009) puts it, “English gathered popular support in India from the economic opportunities it created for its users. Hardly any other language has gathered so many domains, speakers and political and economic powers as quickly as English has done in India.” There has been a great debate in this debate-loving nation on how English got introduced in India. There are many sayings/opinions/understandings about English language coming to India. Treating this subject matter, several seminar and conferences have been organised and are organised even today. People from both “in and outside the inner circle” of Kachru’s ‘outer circle’ have divided opinions. As Pattanayak (2014: 263) puts it aptly, “there is a strong though minority view that Indian English is a derivative of formal written English. A mere cursory examination of the varieties of prevalent English in India will be enough to reject this contention”. Many a time, we come across some gross remarks on these issues, primarily based on the very (in)famous ‘Macaulay’s minutes’. A few see English as a killing language, which has snacthed legitimate space of native tongues, still a fewer people with a little reading in the area of English in India/Indian English hold rather a balanced view about its position and status in India. English undoubtedly plays a very crucial role of a bridge-language and lingua-franca in such a linguistically and culturally heterogeneous country. Until recently, India was seen as a massive tool and asset in software and BPO industry, as the table below indicates (Table 1.1). Not only that, in terms of number of speakers, English stands only second in the overall rank of languages. The table below taken from Wikipedia, which refers to the data of Census, 2001 clearly indicates to the popularity of English among Indians. Studying English in India, right since colonial times, has been a business of benefit. Krishnaswamy and Burde (1998: 1) very interestingly puts it as, “[t]he English language in India shares at least two characteristics of its existence with the cow in India. Both the cow and the English language are held in reverence and worshipped, though for different reasons and with different expectations of a reward. Cow-worship is enjoined on Indians by their ancient scriptures and is believed to bring them, in the distant future, the infinite riches of the paraloka, the unseen other world, while the worship of English is expected to bring the devotee the wealth of this world in the

Tracing Usage of English in India Table 1.1 The relative attractiveness of countries for BPO (cf.) A T Kearney Global Services Location Index 2005, Graddol (2006: 35–36, 50–51)

5 1.

India

11.

USA

2.

China

12.

Egypt

3.

Malaysia

13.

Indonesia

4.

Philippines

14.

Jordan

5.

Singapore

15.

Bulgaria

6.

Thailand

16.

Slovakia

7.

Czech Republic

17.

Mexico

8.

Chile

18.

Poland

9.

Canada

19.

Hungary

10.

Brazil

20.

UAE

ihloka, the here and now- a promising career, a prosperous bride (groom), a coveted green-card and a non-resident Indian status with all its ‘perks’.” First, Second, and Third languages by number of speakers in India (2011 Census) See Table 1.2. In terms of the readership of newspapers in India, English newspapers too have a mass- readership. As per the report of Audit Bureau of Circulations, The Times of India holds 3rd position whereas the The Hindu, another English newspaper, holds 11th position. In January to June period, Times of India had 2,731,334 readers, Table 1.2 List of languages by number of speakers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ languages_by_number_of_native_speakers_in_India Language

Hindi

First language speakers Figure

% of total population (%)

Second language speakers

Third language speakers

Total Speakers Figure

% of total population (%)

528,347,193

43.63

139,207,180

24,160,696

691,347,193

57.09

English

259,678

0.02

83,125,221

45,993,066

129,259,678

10.67

Bengali

97,237,669

8.03

9,037,222

1,008,088

107,237,669

8.85

Marathi

83,026,680

6.86

12,923,626

2,966,019

99,026,680

8.18

Telugu

81,127,740

6.70

11,946,414

1,001,498

94,127,740

7.77

Tamil

69,026,881

5.70

6,992,253

956,335

77,026,881

6.36

Gujrati

55,492,554

4.58

4,035,489

1,007,912

60,492,554

4.99

Urdu

50,772,631

4.19

11,055,287

1,096,428

62,772,631

5.18

Kannada

43,706,512

3.61

14,076,355

993,989

58,706,512

4.84

Odia

37,521,324

3.10

4,972,151

31,525

42,551,324

3.51

Malayalam

34,838,819

2.88

499,188

195,885

35,538,819

2.93

Punjabi

33,124,726

2.74

2,300,000

720,000

36,074,726

2.97

Sanskrit

24,821

0.002

1,234,931

1,196,223

2,360,821

0.19

6 Table 1.3 Ranking of newspaper by number of qualifying sales from http:// www.auditbureau.org/files/ Highest%20Circulated% 20amongst%20ABC% 20Member%20Publications% 20(across%20languages).pdf

1 Linguistic Heterogeneity and English Language in India S. No.

Title

Language

Jan–June 2016

1.

Dainik Jagran

Hindi

3,632,383

2.

Dainik Bhaskar

Hindi

3,812,599

3.

The Times of India

English

2,731,334

4.

Amar Ujala

Hindi

2,938,173

5.

Hindustan

Hindi

2,399,086

6.

Malayala Manorama

Malayalam

2,372,256

7.

Eenadu

Telugu

1,841,276

8.

Rajasthan Patrika

Hindi

1,813,756

9.

Daily Thanthi

Tamil

1,714,743

10.

Mathrubhumi

Malayalam

1,461,881

which increased to 3,184,727 in July to December period. Similarly, the readership of The Hindu in the same period grew to 1,464,297 in July to December period from 1,458,398 in January to June period. At present, the newspapers in Bengali language have market share of 5.2%, English newspapers have 17.4%, Gujarati has 1.5%, Hindi has the highest 37.7%, Kannada has 4.5%, similarly Malayalam has 9.7%, Marathi has 7.8%, Tamil has 6.3%, Telugu has 6.1% and others have 3.9% of market share in India. Average Qualifying Sales See Table 1.3.

English Language with Reference to the Present Study There is also no dearth of people who see the rapid growth of English in India as a planned conspiracy to deter the under privileged section from their basic right of getting the information in their own language. As the article published on November 6, 2014 in The Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/06/theproblem-with-the-english-language-in-india/#5181d5ca403e Sahith says, “Imagine living in a nation where you, a member of the majority, are unable to read the label of the medicine you must give your child, the menu at a local restaurant or even the warning signs of the road; a place where you are unable to comprehend the government document officiating your driver’s license, tax filing or marriage. This is the world that hundreds of millions of Indians live in simply because the elite prefer English. This discrimination has become so systemic that the elite and middle classes send their children to English private schools while the vast poor send theirs to the government schools of their mother tongue. One need not mention that universities and even government jobs require fluency in English, as mandated by the ruling elite.

English Language with Reference to the Present Study

7

Therefore, a person’s socioeconomic status in Indian society is approximately in line with his or her fluency in the language. In other words: a new caste system.” The ‘realistic’ observation of this kind leaves no scope closed in the line of this endless argument. It’s all about how far you want to take a particular argument. No car maker ranging right from 1.75 Lac to some Crores gives you any details of your car in language other than English. Imagine a car maker providing the details of the car into all the major languages of the world, about 1000 of them. Why is it that it is not felt necessary that all Indians should have access to any information (meant for them) in their own language(s)? Is there any reason that the Pharmaceutical companies, either producing in India or importing from some part of the world, do not feel the need to provide information in the Indians’ own tongue? If we decide to see the point in anything, we can. The vastly heterogeneous country like India does require a bridge-language. There are socio-political reasons, evidently, as to why Hindi, the largest spoken and understood language on this land can’t be the one. English has been greatly successful in doing so, so far. I don’t intend to sound only pro- English, but the point is- even if willing to do the things such that we reach out to the maximum of our population, what are the ways out? There aren’t many! “[A]s the multilinguistic status of the subcontinent is likely to prevail, there is a need for a language of wider communication. Promoting the dominance of any one specific Indian language is undesirable for social reasons and introducing a completely new non-Indian language would be extremely uneconomic. Thus the English language in India may well retain and consolidate its status.” Schlik (2011: 7). The translations from English to major Indian languages, in cases, more often than not, are pitiable. There is an attempt made to offer technical education in Hindi by Government of Madhya Pradesh by establishing a Technical University in the name of former Prime-minister of India, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The government institute intended to start a B.Tech. course in at least 3 major core branches such as—Mechanical Engg., Civil Engg. & Electrical Engineering, but the institute ended up getting only 5 students in academic session 1016–17. The institute director was more than willing to start the course this session itself, with whatever numbers he got. The books and resource materials have been translated from popular course-texts written in English. In the given situation it can be well imagined that the students would find reading and making sense of those texts still more difficult than the original ones written in English. Because it can be safely assumed that the students would have had the opportunity to speak/use/listen some sort of English (in whatever form) in his/her life so far but s/he must not have had the privilege of having listened to Sanskritized Hindi. All the technical dictionaries or the Hindi equivalents of foreign words are produced by the people at the university and people on deputation from other institutions. Ever since the colonial times, India has always had a good number of speakers of English as their mother-tongue. See the Table 1.4. English has been no less important in contributing the education sector of India. There is a majority view that in India, there is hardly any academic institution which offers any technical degree in a language other than English. All in all, English is used

8 Table 1.4 Number of speakers of English as first language in India (cf. Bayer, 1986: 14)

1 Linguistic Heterogeneity and English Language in India Year

Number of speakers

1931

319,349

1951

171,742

1961

223,781

1971

191,595

2001

226,449

in almost all the domains, spheres and walks of personal, professional and academic life. As Chuadhary (2009: 393) says, “English gathered popular support in India from the economic opportunities it created for its users. Hardly any other language in the world has gained as many domains, speakers, and political and economic powers as quickly as English has done in India. English was unknown in India in AD 1607. It remained almost so until the last quarter of the eighteenth century. But two hundred years later it counted at least three hundred million users in India. Today, English is used in all domains in India”.

References Agnihotri, R. K. (2001). English in Indian education. In C. J. Daswani (Ed.), Language education in multilingual India (pp. 186–209). UNESCO. Annamalai, E. (2001). Managing multilingualism in India. Delhi: Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. Annamalai, E. (2004). Nativization of English and its effect on multilingualism. Journal of Language and Politics, 3, 151–162. Bayer, J. M. (1986). A socio-linguistic investigation of the English spoken by the Anglo-Indians in Mysore city. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages. Bharti, A., Chaitanya, V., & Sangal, R. (1994). Natural language processing: A Paninian perspective. New Delhi: Prentice Hall of India. Chaudhary, S. C. (2009). Foreigners and foreign languages in India. Delhi: Cambridge University Press. Deshpande, M. (2016). Language and testimony in classical Indian philosophy. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2016 Edition). Retrieved Jan 2, 2017, from https:// plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/language-india/. Graddol, D. (2006). English next: Why global English may mean the end of English as a foreign language. British Council: UK. http://censusindia.gov.in/2011Census/Language-2011/General%20Note.pdf. Accessed 16 Jan 2020. https://www.mea.gov.in/articles-in-foreign-media.htm?dtl/21996/India+a+linguistically+rich+ nation+with+780+languages+in+its+Kitty. Accessed 20 Dec 2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/11/06/the-problem-with-the-english-language-inindia/#5181d5ca403e. Accessed 2 Jan 2020. http://www.auditbureau.org/files/Highest%20Circulated%20amongst%20ABC%20Member% 20Publications%20(across%20languages).pdf. Accessed 12 Dec 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers_in_India. Accessed 10 Dec 2019.

References

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Krishnaswamy, N., & Burde, A. S. (1998). The Politics of Indians’ English. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Majumdar, R. C. (1964). Ancient India. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass. Pattanayak, D. P. (2014). Language and cultural diversity. Orient BlackSwan Pvt Ltd: New Delhi. Schilk, M. (2011). Structural nativization in Indian English Lexicogrammar. Amsterdem/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Upadhyay, R. K., & Hasnain, S. I. (2017). Linguistic diversity and biodiversity. Lingua, 195(c), 110–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2017.06.002.

Chapter 2

Second Language Learning, Teaching and Testing

Abstract This chapter contextualises this empirical study with reference to some of the important works in the field. The chapter also locates the phenomenon of languaging ability in prominent works such as—Hymes, Habermas, Chomsky and so on. It also takes a stroll along the models of language learning; communicative competence; approaches to language teaching, a brief but significant overview of BICS and CALP with special locus to their application in present work, along with a note on language learning in Oriental and Western world. Keywords Second language learning · BICS and CALP · Language in Oriental and Western world

Introduction Some scholars have looked at human (natural) language as the sole object of study wherein could be found the answers to issues pertaining to languaging and its challenges. These are the ones who believed that the sole purpose of language (human language) was to communicate with fellow members of the species. Some others were more charitable in their outlook and gave importance to communication among animals and also other means of communication, such as—sign language, non-verbal communication, etc. And then there have even been others who have come to look at language as an accident which later on came to be used for communication. Chomsky (1966, 1980) for instance opines that language didn’t come into being with the sole purpose of communication. Fodor (1975/2008) is of similar opinion. For these people and for many others language does serve a communicative function but this is just a chance usage of something that was available at hand. Defining ‘Languaging’: For any research dealing with the languaging abilities of an individual or a group, it is very natural to discuss the communicative competence (Hymes, 1972); rather it’s almost inevitably imperative to relate the languaging ability to communicative competence. Refuting Chomsky’s (1965: 4) dichotomy of competence and performance, “we thus make a fundamental distinction between competence (the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language) and performance (the

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 R. K. Upadhyay, Heterogeneous Learning Environment and Languaging in L2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3903-9_2

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actual use of language in concrete situations)”, Hymes proposed the term communicative competence, considering even the sociolinguistic aspects of language use, absent in Chomsky’s theory. “This competence, moreover, is integral with attitudes, values, and motivations concerning language, its features and users, and integral with competence for, and attitudes toward, the interrelation of language with the other code of communicative conduct.” (Hymes, 1972: 277––278). So in a sense, Languaging is the sum of challenges faced by subjects not only in day to day formal, not so formal and also informal encounters, dealing with people from different hierarchy, but also the subjects’ ability to deal with the languaging aspect of competence, such as—answering the questions of ‘high stake examinations” (Madaus, 1988) particularly reading comprehension, drawing inferences, subjectverb agreement, PoS, error-correction, etc. Hymes (1972: 277), talking about communicative competence proposes his four parameters: a. b. c. d.

“Whether (and to what degree) something is formally possible Whether (and to what degree) something is feasible Whether (and to what degree) something is appropriate Whether (and to what degree) something is in fact done”

“There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would be useless. Just as rules of syntax can control aspects of phonology, and just as semantic rules perhaps control aspects of syntax, so rules of speech acts enter as a controlling factor for linguistic form as a whole.” (Hymes, 1972: 278). Hymes’s definition and explanation of communicative competence fails to capture the essence of an important component of verbal communication—the aspect of languaging and written competence. Though it can be understood that Hymes was responding to Competence and performance that’s why it was natural for him to respond only on those aspects which are dealt by Chomskyan dichotomy. Nonetheless, given the fact that Hymes (1974) also introduces two new elements to make it six in subsequent revision, he still doesn’t touch upon and misses very important aspects of competence—i.e. written competence as well as the ability to deal with aptitude aspect of language, particularly in high-stake examinations. In the context of present study and in more specificity to the term, ‘languaging’, Habermas’s term ‘formal pragmatics’ also seems to fail to capture the essence of the term and also fails to account for it as the cover term, which encompasses all those elements of language, which are jotted under ‘languaging’ by the author, perhaps even those that are not part of the present study. Maeve Cooke, in her ‘introduction’ to the ‘On the Pragmatics of Communication’ by Habermas (1998: 1), says, “by the “pragmatic” dimension of language, Habermass means those pertaining specifically to the employment of sentences in utterances. He makes clear that “formal” is to be understood in a tolerant sense to refer to the rational reconstruction of general intuitions or competencies. Formal pragmatics, then, aims at a systematic reconstruction of the intuitive linguistic knowledge of competent subjects, the intuitive “rule consciousness” that a competent speaker has of her own language.” I again refer to the introduction by Maeve Cooke in Habermas (1998: 6) where she says,

Introduction

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“Pragmatic theories of meaning don’t emphasise only the assertoric or descriptive modes of language use; they draw attention to the multiplicity of meaningful ways of using language”. Fultner (2014: 57) while talking about the theory of Formal Pragmatics of Habermas, writes—“The goal of formal pragmatics is to spell out the general conditions of possibility, or presuppositions, of communicative action. In other words, formal pragmatics is supposed to yield a rational reconstruction of communicative competence, of what it means to understand and to be able to employ an utterance. This rational reconstruction is based on an understanding of communicative practice and hence fallible. Whereas linguistic competence refers to the ability to produce syntactically well-formed sentences, communicative competence refers to our ability to produce context-appropriate utterances.” Having found not a satisfactory account of communicative competence in above works, for this particular study the author has used the cover term, ‘languaging’ to indicate all the kinds of communicative act on part of a subject, be it oral communication or the aspects of verbal aptitude. The ‘communication challenges’ thus are the limitations of the students while doing any level of languaging. For example—in a given sentence as—Grandmother looks forward (A)/to spend her summer with her grandchildren. (B)/She expects all of them to spend some time with her (C)/and let her cook for them (D)./No error (E), a student when asked to identify the erroneous part of the sentence, finds that part ‘B’ of the sentence is correct because ‘forward’ will take ‘to + gerund’ and not the ‘infinitive’. While, on the other hand, if a student finds it either being correct or finds error in some other part of the sentence, s/he “communicates the challenge that s/he faces in dealing such kind of questions”. In a way we can summarily say that if a student answers a particular question correctly, with the ‘why’ of it, he can be understood as not feeling ‘challenged’ with/by the question. And if the student fails to find the answer, due to whatever limitation(s), s/he communicates her/his challenge or the limitation(s). Models of Language-learning: We find that language is looked at through the following models: – – – –

Code Model (Millikan, 2005) Ostensive Model (Scott-Philips, 2015) Language of thought hypothesis (Jerry Jean Fodor 1975; Reboul 2015) In the code model, language is seen as a code that captures the thought and passes it on to the other listeners, i.e. receivers of the code. This has been one of the dominant approaches of looking at language and has come to be questioned in the last century. There are suggestions that a few of other thinkers of the past have held different positions. – The ostensive model doesn’t look at language as a code which comes to have a meaning. – Language of Thought Hypothesis says that “thought and thinking take place in a mental language. This language consists of a system of representations that is physically realized in the brain of thinkers and has a combinatorial syntax (and

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semantics) such that operations on representations are causally sensitive only to the syntactic properties of representations.” (Ayedede, Fall 2015). Now whether we see language through the lenses of a code model or that of ostensive model what we can’t deny is that it is the function attributed to language that decides how we are going to make sense of what language does. Not only is there genetics involved, it has been found that all the children come to acquire languages, if they grow up in a normal social environment. So, there is definitely some role for the language input but it is not a lot. Children end up acquiring the whole complex language very easily by the time they are 3–4. And the only possible way to explain that is to accept that it grows as though there was a language organ inside every child. Researches have come to call this endowment as the innateness hypothesis after Chomsky used this term back in the 1950s.

Language and Language Learning in the East and West Here we shall focus on what the ancient Indian thinkers and grammarians thought about language and what they thought about the transference of meaning. India stands out amongst all nations as far as the thought and analysis of language and about language are concerned. It has a very long tradition approximately, 3000 years old of dwelling in over issues pertaining to languages and language learning. Some of the finest names that come to mind are Yaska (7th or 5th century BC), Panini (5th century BC), Patanjali (2nd century BC) and Bhratrihari (5th century A.D.). However, it may be added that “the study of language has never been the monopoly of the grammarians or the rhetoricians. All schools of thought began their philosophical discussions for the fundamental problem of communication” (Coward & Raja, 1990: 3). Saussure, a late 19th century linguist looked at language in terms of langue and parole, where the former is a collective social construct and the latter is the manifestation of the power of the individual level (Saussure, 1983; Matthews, 2001). There are some very important names that we shall have to miss for lack of space but it should suffice to say that both the East and the West spent their considerable time on the analysis of language and in both societies the functions of language were important triggers that brought about the sea change in the way the language was important in the world. The degree of importance given to language by the beginning of the 20th century is best summed up in the lines by Harris (1988: ix) who writes: “Language is no longer regarded as peripheral to our grasp of the world we live in, but as central to it. Words are not mere vocal labels or communicational adjuncts superimposed upon an already given order of things. They are collective products of social interaction, essential instruments through which human beings constitute and articulate their world. This typically twentieth-century view of language has profoundly influenced developments throughout the whole range of human sciences.” (Harris, 1988: ix).

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The expansion of language enterprise was, as we have briefly mentioned earlier, brought about by the focus on the language teaching and translation activities. In the next section we look at some of the perspectives on language acquisition and leaning and later on the methods of language teaching that were made possible because of the beliefs prevalent during different times.

Approaches to Language Teaching Language acquisition can be looked at from different perspectives. The perspective we come to believe in, will serve as the justification for choosing a particular approach to teaching a language. We may be asked—what is the need for all of this? How does it all relate to communication and communication challenges in multicultural learning environment? The answer will not be attempted here, save the short response that when one has to understand a complex phenomenon such as ‘communication’ one needs to know everything about language and society and the history of both language and society and how in the evolution of language and society, communication came to have an important role as far as socializing is concerned. And is it really necessary? It is a staple to say that language is for communication. And there is hardly anyone who could rationally challenge this conception but there is a thought that has already been pushed. That language came to be used for communication but was not primarily meant for communication is something that has been argued for by Chomsky (1980). Although what we say below applies to all languages, it must not be forgotten that we are essentially dealing with the teaching of English in classrooms and that it is communication skills in English as a second language in multicultural setting that is the focal point of our study. The challenges that form the crux of this study have to do with the challenges of speaking English among students for whom it has been the second or the third/foreign language. For hundreds of years, “practice makes a man perfect” was at the bottom of everything societies did or accomplished. What it implied was that the more one practised the better one was going to get. The same thought led people to think that language was largely the result of practising. Language acquisition in the case of a child was largely the result of observation and emulation. What the child sees, she/he emulates it and that is how she/he learns anything. So, a general theory of learning that is prevalent at a given time becomes the foundation for all other theories and methods. On the Eastern front, for several millennia it was considered that the child learnt language by anvaya and vyatireka. The child would hear a sentence like “gaam aanaya” (bring the cow) and see somebody bring an animal. The next time the child hears “gavaya aanaya” (bring the blue-bull) and sees the same person bringing another animal. On the basis of similarity and differences in the sentences the child arrives at an understanding that the animal that was ‘brought’ earlier was ‘gaam’ (cow) and the one that was brought later was ‘gavaya’ (blue bull). This way the child learns by seeing and listening to the inputs.

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Among the western thinkers we find thinkers like St. Augustine (4th cent. CE) talking about how they came to learn language by seeing and listening. Augustine writes in his Confessions (1998) which Wittgenstein quotes in his Philosophical Investigations: “When grown-ups named some object and at the same time turned towards it, I perceived this, and I grasped that the thing was signified by the sound they uttered, since they meant to point it out.” (Translation from Wittgenstein, 2009: 5). Wittgenstein, begins his Philosophical Investigations with the quote from Augustine to draw the reader’s attention to the thinking of an intelligent person on issues of language learning and the connection between language and meaning early in the history, which Wittgenstein wanted to refute (see Monk, 1991). John Locke is famous for the term ‘tabula rasa’ which essentially says that a child is born with a ‘blank slate’ and learns as he/she experiences (see Chappell, 1994). One can see that the most of the thinkers were of the opinion that learning is a matter of repeated experience. Of course, there were exceptions in the form of Socrates who tried to get the slave boy answer the question on geometry without any prior awareness of the topic and showed that a child comes to the planet with a lot of knowledge (see Russell, 1945). Such individual instances did not change much in terms of what the world thought about child learning. We see that the whole of late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century has been classified as the period of Behaviourism. The reason is that the thinkers during this period tried to show through their works that “all behaviours [were] results of habit formation” (Sinha, 2016: 136). Among the notable works were that of people like John Watson, Edward Thorndike, Pavlov, B. F. Skinner, and others. We can say that Behaviourism can be divided into three kinds (and later one may associate further sub-types with individual proponents). We stick to three: (a) Methodological (b) Psychological (c) Analytical. Methodological behaviourism claims that “psychology should concern itself with the behavior of organisms (human and nonhuman animals). Psychology should not concern itself with mental states or events…” (Graham, Spring 2017). This is the strand that stems largely from the works of John Watson. Psychological Behaviourism is the school which aims at “explain[ing] human and animal behavior in terms of external physical stimuli, responses, learning histories, and (for certain types of behavior) reinforcements” (Graham, Spring 2017). Edward Thorndike, Ivan Pavlov and B. F. Skinner would fall under this strand of psychology. Last is the Analytical behaviourism which is in fact “a theory within philosophy about the meaning or semantics of mental terms or concepts” (Graham, Spring 2017). Although the maximum light fell on B. F. Skinner whose position later came to be called the Radical behaviourism, works of Thorndike and Watson were also crucial. Sinha (2016) cites Watson’s views on the possibility of learning a foreign language and it becomes clear what he thought on the subject. Watson believed that learning a foreign language was difficult “if we start to learn that language late in life for the very

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same reason that a 40-year-old blacksmith can never learn to dancing” (Watson, 1924: 232 as cited in Sinha, 2016: 137). Thorndike came up with his famous experiment of an “animal in a problem box” leading him to “the law of effect” which later had implications for pedagogy and resulted in what we now know as connectionism. Skinner in his famous book Verbal Behaviour (1957) tried to explain the process of language learning through a functional analysis which had factors such as “stimulus, reinforcement and deprivation” which were said to control the “verbal response” (Sinha 2016: 137). The repeated instances of stimulus and response over a period of time constituted reinforcement which was supposed to be crucial to learning anything, including learning language. The behaviouristic outlook led to some particular methods of language teaching which we shall get to later. For now, what is important is to note that the dominant paradigm of Behaviourism had a sudden fall because of a review by Noam Chomsky published in 1959 where he argued that the explanation offered in skinner’s book was heavily mistaken and could not be taken seriously. He showed that several aspects of language learning simply couldn’t be accounted for by the stimulus-response approach proposed by Skinner. One such instance was that of children acquiring ‘tacts’ from parents who themselves do not have “the appropriate history of reinforcement” (Chomsky, 1959). He argued that no parent teaches his/her child how to speak through reinforcements, especially in the case of immigrant parents who do not have the expertise of the language spoken around still the child of a certain age ends up learning how to speak the language to “the last allophone”. The publication of this review came as a jolt to the enterprise of Behaviorism as it led to a ‘paradigm shift’ (see Kuhn, 1962) so to speak. The studies on learning shifted from looking at a child as being born with an empty slate to one being born with “innate” capacities. So, child was said to be born with “innate” capacity for language. This outlook was in some sense similar to that of Descartes (see Chomsky, 1966) who believed in “the product of mind”. Chomsky used the term “language faculty” to talk about the component dedicated to language acquisition. Another term that he used for the dedicated component was “language acquisition device” (Chomsky, 1965). Later, several researches proved that there was indeed something unique in a child which allowed him to learn a language at an age when he has not even acquired the motor skills to tie the shoe-laces. Another linguist who gave a lot of importance to the biological uniqueness among human beings was Eric Lenneberg (1967) who in his The Biological foundations of Language claimed that the period between birth and the attainment of puberty was somehow crucial to language learning. If the child doesn’t get exposed to language within that ‘critical period’, it is possible that the child may never be able to learn language. This period he called the “critical period”. Studies of feral children have given some credibility to this hypothesis (see Curtiss et al., 1973). There have been studies that have been conducted on children who somehow got deprived from the early exposure to language and when they were found, they had already crossed the age of puberty. Despite good intentions and several attempts on the part of doctors and psychologists, it was observed that such children could not learn language with as much

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felicity as their counterparts who got exposed to the language right from the birth and grew up among other people. Chomsky’s intervention also led to awareness on the part of the research community who came to realise that children don’t learn by mere imitation. There is a whole complex set of processes that are at work when the child is learning a language (cf. Cook and Newson, 2007; Clark, 2009; Lust, 2006). Repeated attempts on the part of parents or care-givers have failed to elicit a ‘proper’ response from children thereby proving that there are fixed stages of development and that a child has some kind of wiring that takes him from stage one to stage two in the process of acquisition. Later literature showed that second language learning too is not very different from the first one except that when a child/learner is learning his second language he already has something that could influence some aspects of second language such a phonology, etc. (Dulay et al., 1982). Following Chomsky there have been many studies and other proposals which now try to focus on what the child brings to the world. Such approaches may justly be called the cognitive-developmental approaches. Another set of authors in the form of Heidi Dulay, Marina Burt, Stephen Krashen and others argued that second language learning is largely dependent, much like the first language, on the kind of input the child receives. Krashen and others argue that in the case of second language there is some kind of filter that gets activated and is responsible for how well or how badly a learner would learn a second language. In the case of a low filter the learning is expected to be good and in the case of a high filter the learning would be bad (see Krashen, 1977a, b, 1985; Dulay et al. 1982). It was the focus on “comprehensible input” which led to a sort of revolution in the change in the teaching method and gave rise to the communicative language teaching, something we shall look at shortly (see also Krashen & Terrell, 1983). One may also mention, even if in passing that important contributions made by the likes of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky, both psychologists who worked all their lives mostly trying to study how children develop and learn things that they eventually do. Piaget proposed a schematic development which was achieved largely through the four stages of development, namely: sensorimotor stage, pre-operational stage, concrete operational stage and finally the formal operational stage. These stages are acquired over a period of time frame and once after the other normally. It is this maturation which guarantees that a child will be able to do some of the things whereas he would not be able to carry out certain other tasks given the lack of the maturation process that requires that a child be of a certain age. Although later researches have shown that not all children grow in the same way that Piaget thought that they did, his stages have remained central to the development studies in psychology world-wide. Another psychologist who worked on child development and the association of language was Vygotsky. He was a Russian Psychologist who argued that it was the interaction with the society that was largely responsible for the “meaning making” that a child did (Vygotsky, 1978). Unlike Piaget, he stressed that the social learning came before any other development (Vygotsky, 1978) and also that the social and cultural factors were crucial to cognitive development among children. He was also the one to highlight the importance of language in child’s cognitive development (Vygotsky, 1962). Vygotsky spoke of two processes in learning, namely “assimilation

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and accommodation” which are constantly observed in children who try to make sense of the world around them. He also spoke of the importance of “scaffolding” by the more knowledgeable other (MKO) through ensuring that the child is exposed to only a certain kind of new ‘developmental level’ or environment not very different from the existing ‘developmental level’, the one for which he already has a schema. This new input or the new ‘developmental level’ was what he called the zone of proximal development (ZPD) (see Vygotsky, 1978 for details). Another approach that became very popular and had ramifications for the language and language learning/teaching was the theory of “connectionism”. It is a theory that believes that there are connections/networks between entities (in our case words) which then help us form bigger web of networks and help us decipher what those entities could be like. So, an example that Sinha (2016: 143) gives is that of ‘colour’ which is connected to colours such as green, yellow, red, white, etc. and is also connected to the notion/concept of ‘colourless’, ‘colourable’, etc. (see Sinha, 2016 for details). It is these networks that help a learner form connection between the things he/she has in mind already and the new things/words he/she encounters. Another school of thought that had a huge impact on language learning and teaching was the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis which was proposed by Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Both of these independently arrived at ideas that share some things in common. Of course, Whorf met Sapir to discuss what he had found regarding the connection between language and thought but even without this connection Sapir had quite early in 1929 speculated that perhaps there is a connection between the language of the community and the way the members of the community look at the world. Whorf’s findings added weight to the overall claim that language has a major role to play in shaping our thoughts. So, we may say that Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is largely about how “languages carve the world up in different ways, and that as a result their speakers think about it differently” (Swoyer, Spring 2015). There are two strands to this, one that talks of linguistic determinism and the other linguistic relativity (Kay and Kempton, 1984). The former takes the position that “language completely determines how we think” whereas the latter claims that language only influences the way we think (Swoyer, Spring 2015). Chomsky’s intervention not only toppled the Behaviourist enterprise, it also launched a new way of studying languages. This came to be known as the Transformational Generative Grammar (Chomsky 1957, 1965, among others). Chomsky highlighted the difference between the competence of a speaker of language and the performance of the same speaker. He claimed that a serious study of language required that one studied the competence for performance can be affected by several outside factors such as loss of attention, fatigue, ill-health, etc. He suggested that in order to study competence one would have to study an ideal speaker listener who is a member of a homogeneous speech community. A speaker’s competence would be his knowledge of the language and his judgments about the grammaticality/acceptability of a sentence whereas his performance would be the actual usage of language. Dell Hymes questioned Chomsky’s emphasis on linguistic competence and suggested that it was the overall communicative competence that truly mattered. He stressed that “…a normal child acquires knowledge of sentences not only as grammatical, but also as appropriate. He or she acquires competence as to when to speak,

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when not, and as to what to talk about with whom, when, where, in what manner. In short, a child becomes able to accomplish a repertoire of speech acts, to take part in speech events, and to evaluate their accomplishment by others.” (Hymes, 1972: 277). Hymes’ reaction caught attention of many linguist and practitioners involved in language teaching and there was a sudden shift in the focus from the structure and patterns to the overall understanding in the learners about the appropriateness of a given sentence/utterance. The important among these were people like Widdowson (1978, 1983), Canale and Swain (1980), Canale (1983) among others. The word led Habermas to form his theory of Communicative Action which saw society as a group of people that participate to find solutions to the problem. We shall come back to Hymes, Canale and others that have used the notion of communicative competence in the domain of language learning/teaching and also to Habermas (1976, 1981) whose theory of communicative action has served as a valuable tool. Hyme’s communicative competence opened a debate among practitioners of various streams and the focus, for many of them, shifted from the form of the language to the “contexts of use” in which language was spoken. Students were not to be looked at as mere producers of linguistic utterances but also as being able to make sense of non-linguistic facts involved in a communicative act and respond accordingly. The analysis of exchange between two people was no longer about whether they were grammatically acceptable but also whether what was shared was acceptable on different levels of socializing. The exchange was then looked at as ‘discourse’ and its analysis was ‘discourse analysis’ (McCarthy, 1991; Fairclough, 1995, 2003 etc.). The performance, both oral and written, was to be analysed not in isolation as a text bereft of any cultural and social background but as something embedded in a larger context. Such analysis was “supposed to lead to a better evaluation of students’ performance” (Sinha, 2016: 148) discourse analysis “pleads that the text should not only be a reflection of social reality but also construct social reality.” (Sinha, 2016: 148). Having looked at the major outlooks to learning in general and language learning in particular, we now look at the methods introduced and proposed at different times that have largely shaped how the communities have come to acquire their language(s), especially when they were not born in the target language community but had to learn to be able to enjoy the minimum comfort that is afforded to one who speaks the language of the majority.

Frameworks for Testing Languaging and Communicative Competence Communicative Competence (CC) is, to repeat, a term introduced by Hymes (1972) to show his displeasure with Chomsky’s (1965) attempt to severe the languaging capacity in terms of Competence and Performance. As Bagaric and Djigunovic (2007: 95)

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point out that it was Campbell and Wales (1970) who first introduced the term but it was Hymes (1972) who “defined it fully, clearly and explicitly”, the author too joins them and Cazden (1996) in acknowledging Hymes to be the father of the term ‘communicative competence’. Hymes’ critique goes on to show the limitations associated with such a bipartite analysis of the capacity to language. Chomsky’s (1965: 3) insistence that language was an optimal system in its own right that needed to be studied by looking at the “competence” of “an ideal speaker-hearer” in a “homogeneous speech community” somehow appeared to ignore the empirical side of languaging, where the input, the environment and other aspects associated with language were not even considered. Several other linguists and authors objected to this kind of narrow interpretation of the ability for speech. William Labov, a sociolinguist, even accused Chomsky and other formalists of trying to get rid of ‘uncomfortable aspects of language’ that “[they] found inconvenient to handle” (Labov, 1971: 468). MAK Halliday too criticized Chomsky for such a distinction since it becomes difficult, once Chomsky’s distinction is accepted, to explain the notions of language change, language-contact and grammaticalization which can only be seen over a period of several decades or centuries and that too only in the observed language of the speakers. Despite several critiques of Chomsky’s above mentioned focus on ‘linguistic competence’ as the only road to study language seriously it was not until Hymes (1972) came up with his criticism and showed why it was important to move beyond ‘linguistic competence’ if one was serious about finding out as to what it meant to be a speaker of a language that the focus shifted from the mere sound/form to other aspects of languaging. The ability to speak a language, Hymes argued, was not to be restricted to the notions of “grammaticality” and “acceptability” as Chomsky (1965) had argued, it was much more than that. Since language is used for communication and sharing of ideas, and it is also one of the markers of an individual’s socialization, it is important that we go beyond the narrow limitations of ‘linguistic’ competence and ask for the ‘communicative competence’ of a person. This broader outlook allows us to look for issues other than those associated with mere form of an utterance/sentence and ask questions that are also pertinent to any act of communication; those are the questions such as: i. “Is something possible? ii. Is something appropriate? iii. Is something done?” Hymes’ 1972 notion of ‘communicative competence’ (CC) was taken up by several practitioners in the field of language and linguistics to develop further theories and methods to help learners learn languages and also give better descriptions. We shall look at a few models that owe their existence to Hymes’ ‘communicative competence’. The need for this was felt because the study conducted by the author takes an eclectic approach and draws not only from Hymes (1972) but also from several other models that have drawn heavily from Hymes’ ‘communicative competence’ proposal.

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Habermas (1970, 1998) is another prominent name who has greatly impacted the discussion on competence. These three works in details, talk about the “competence” for which he prefers to use the term “formal pragmatics”. In all these works he primarily refers to the formal pragmatics as any individual’s capacity to imply varied sentences to meet various needs. His focus is also on the speech acts but essentially fails to account for the languaging aspect of CALP. Talking about the models at the first we will look at the model of Canale and Swain (1980) and following them is Canale (1983) who took “communicative competence as a synbook of an underlying system of knowledge and skills needed for communication” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 96). For them, knowledge is of three types: “knowledge of underlying grammatical principles, knowledge of how to use language in a social context in order to fulfil communicative functions and knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions with respect to discourse principles.” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 96). Skill for them “refers to how an individual can use the knowledge in actual communication” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 96). Savignon (1972) on the other hand has stressed the ability in communicative competence in her version of communicative competence. For her and several other practitioners, for instance, (Bachman & Palmer, 1996; Canale & Swain, 1980; Skehan, 1995, 1998, etc.), “the nature of communicative competence is not static but dynamic, it is more interpersonal than intrapersonal and relative rather than absolute” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 96). Savignon (1972) sees communicative competence as language proficiency and it is for this reason that there have been suggestions from other thinkers over the use of the term ‘Communicative Competence’. It is with a view to avoiding any confusion that proposals have been made to “replace the term communicative competence with the term communicative proficiency” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 96; see also Taylor, 1988). Bachman (1990) too proposed the term “communicative language ability” with a view to combining both communicative competence and language proficiency. Models of Communicative Competence: Some of the models proposed in the past that directly followed Hymes’ communicative competence model will be discussed here: Model by Canale and Swain (1980) & Canale (1983): The framework suggested by Canale and Swaine (1983) as we have seen, had a combined form of knowledge and skills needed for communication. The framework was further subdivided into three components, namely—“grammatical, sociolinguistic and strategic competence”. – Grammatical competence has to do with rules of phonology, semantics, morphology and syntax together with the knowledge of lexical items. – Sociolinguistic competence—this included two types of rules, one of which had to do with socio-cultural aspects and the other had to do with “discourse” aspects. Although we shall see that the later was taken by them to propose a fourth competence, namely—“discourse competence”.

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– Strategic competence—this refers to the ability, acquired largely through real life experiences as a speaker, which helps one repair or save acts of communication when things may start failing for various reasons. These strategies again pertain to grammatical competence and to sociolinguistic competence. Strategic competence is “composed of knowledge of verbal and non-verbal communication strategies” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 97). The strategies “include paraphrase, circumlocution, repetition, reluctance, avoidance of words, structures of themes, guessing, changes of register and style, modification of message etc.” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 98). Discourse competence—this refers to some of the rules relating to discourse aspects of sociolinguistic competence. In fact, Canale (1983, 1984), we are told by Bagaric & Djigunovic (2007: 97), “described discourse competence as mastery of rules that determine ways in which form and meaning are combined to achieve a meaningful unity of spoken or written texts. The unity of a text is enabled by cohesion in form and coherence in meaning.” Because these competences interact with one another, at least it is said of the discourse competence that it interacts with other components, it ensures that the learners would be able to deal successfully with any lack in any of the other component competence. Model by Bachman (1990) and Bachman & Palmer (1996) Bachman proposed a more comprehensive model of communicative competence in the 1990s but failed to find acceptance among the practitioners and policymakers who had somehow taken to Canale and Swain’s model of communicative competence. Bachman replaced the term ‘communicative competence’ with “communicative language ability” (CLA) to avoid the confusion of terms. Bachman and Palmer (1996) further altered the earlier model and claimed that the overall communicative language ability is affected by “many traits of language users such as some general characteristics, their topical knowledge, affective schemata and language ability” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 98). The language ability in the communicative language ability covers two sub-areas, namely, “language knowledge and strategic competence” which can be further subdivided. We can divide language knowledge into two broad categories of organizational knowledge and pragmatic knowledge. These in turn, may be seen as comprised of grammatical knowledge and textual knowledge (which form the organizational knowledge component) and functional knowledge and sociolinguistic knowledge (which form the pragmatic knowledge component). Syntax, vocabulary and phonology/graphology constitute the grammatical knowledge, whereas cohesion, imaginative functions, rhetorical and conversational organization constitute the textual knowledge components. Similarly, ideational functions, heuristics functions, cultural influences and figures of speech and manipulative skills fall in the lot comprising functional knowledge. Natural and idiomatic expressions, registers and dialects and language varieties make up the sociolinguistic knowledge component (see figure below for diagrammatic representation) (Fig. 2.1).

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Fig. 2.1 Areas of language knowledge (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007, p. 101) (Source Bachman & Palmer, 1996: 68)

Bachman & Palmer’s (1996) model formulates strategic knowledge/competence in terms of three broad metacognitive components, which are: I.

Goal setting: this includes “identifying a set of possible tasks, choosing one of them and deciding whether or not to attempt to complete them” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 99). II. Assessment of communicative sources: it serves as a “means by which language not context is related to other areas of CLA” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 99). III. Planning: planning refers to the task of decision making, which is needed to decide how one can make “use of language knowledge and other components involved in the process of language use to complete the chosen task successfully” (Bagaric & Djigunovic, 2007: 99). Bachman and Palmer’s (1996) model while drawing a lot from the communicative competence (CC), is a more comprehensive model but has not been able to garner enough attention from the practitioners and authors of language teaching and learning. Halliday’s model of language as social-semiotic and the ‘meaning potential’: MAK Halliday, working largely on the functional perspective, simply rejected Chomsky’s competence-performance dichotomy. For him any attempt to formalize the capacity to speak in abstractions is to ignore the socio-cultural aspect of language that is intertwined with the act of learning how to speak. Halliday (1978) criticizes the Hymes’ CC and calls it an attempt to apply intra-organism perspective (which largely is the ‘language as knowledge of the speaker’) to the inter-organism perspective (the stand that takes language to be ‘social behaviour’), which takes it to be the case that language learning is not only about the knowledge of a linguistic system but also the knowledge of its use, its appropriateness in different ‘contexts of use’ (Firth, 1957), and the awareness of several other layers of socio-cultural and political nuances. It is therefore a “meaning potential” for Halliday (1978) and not simply

Frameworks for Testing Languaging and Communicative ...

25

a case of hardwiring. Halliday (1978: 19) clearly says that “[i]f there is anything which the child can be said to acquiring, it is a range of potential, which we could refer to as his ‘meaning potential’. This consists in the mastery of a small number of elementary functions of language and a range of choices in meaning within each one.” The ‘meaning potential’ of a child then is his ‘behavior potential’ that is encoded by language for self-expression. It is not about what and how a child/learner ‘says’ or ‘does’ but about what a child ‘can say’ or ‘can mean’. Language is seen by Halliday as a system with three layers comprising: phonology, grammar and semantics. He further says that “…the semantic system, which is the meaning potential, embodied in language, is itself the realization of a higher level semiotic which we may define as a behavioural system or more generally as a social semiotic.” (Halliday, 1978: 39). It may be said that Halliday’s views on language learning or “language development” as he liked to call it, were largely framed on the basis of his observations of how his son Nigel acquired language (Ingram, 1989: 169–170; see Halliday, 1975 for details). And that is why his views are not in agreement with the views of other scholars/practitioners, who have taken Hymes’ CC to propose models for second language acquisition. It may be mentioned that Halliday’s critique of Hymes was challenged by Canale and Swain (1980), who argue that Halliday’s conception of language as “meaning potential” is not very different from Hymes’ CC. They accept Halliday’s conception of “meaning potential” but also show that Hymes’ formulation does justice to the fact that any “meaningful (verbal) communication is not possible without some knowledge of grammar”, an aspect that is ignored in Halliday’s formulation (Canale and Swain, 1980: 18). Celce-Murcia’s model of CC: We shall briefly look at one more model of CC that was proposed by Celce-Murcia et al. (1995) and later revised as Celce-Murcia (2007) because of certain lacunae that had crept in the previous proposals despite careful reflections. Celce-Murcia offers an updated model of CC which may be said to assign “central role to formulaic language. (as opposed to language as a system) and to paralinguistic aspects of face-to-face oral communication” (2007: 45). Her model is comprised of six components: i.

Sociolinguistic competence—this competence grants the speaker “knowledge of appropriateness with respect to dialect, context and use. (Celce-Murcia, 2007: 46). ii. Discourse competence: this competence assumes that the communicative act has the elements of “cohesion” and “coherence”, “generic structure” and also ability to sense the appropriateness of deictic issues. iii. Linguistic competence: it refers to the four types of knowledge described as phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical.

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iv. Formulaic competence: As the name suggests, it is “those fixed and prefabricated chunks of language that speakers use heavily in everyday interaction” (CelceMurcia, 2007: 48). These chunks are largely the collocations, idioms, lexical frames and routines. If one looks at this, one is bound to notice the similarity of this component with that of other schools of linguistic thought that interpret language in terms of constructions, fossilized chunks or lexical frames (cf. Goldberg, 1995; Kay & Fillmore, 1999; Evans & Green, 2006; Lakoff & Johnson 1980; Langacker, 2008 among others). One would be tempted to notice the work of cognitive linguists and that of frequency-based modules of language learning finding space in this component of Celce-Murcia’s model. Interactional Competence: It refers to one’s knowledge/ability to interact with and beyond language. It is manifested in three sub-categories of: A. Actional competence: this allows the speaker to have the knowledge of proper interactions involving interpersonal exchanges, expression of feelings, exchange of information and so on. B. Conversational competence: it refers to the knowledge of how to open and close a communicative act, change topics while engaged in conversation, etc. C. Non-verbal/paralinguistic competence: it includes within its ambit the elements of proxemics, kinesics, other non-linguistic utterances and haptic behaviour. Strategic competence: Celce-Murcia (2007) follows Oxford (2001: 362) and discusses three strategies that are: a. Cognitive strategies: these concern the “logical and analytical” aspects involved in a communication act. b. Meta-cognitive strategies: these concern the functions of monitoring during a communicative act. c. Memory-related strategies: these relate to the matters of retrieval, memory and its limitations. Celce-Murcia’s (2007) model is very comprehensive in its approach and handling of several issues connected to the needs of language learners but suffers from certain limitations, some of which she herself acknowledges. The model is not as organic as is required and it comes out as being static leaving little room for instant changes to the real classroom applications. If we look at the Fig. 2.2, just above, the popular and prominent models don’t account for the data on CALP which are of critical importance for the present study. Having described some of the models based on or inspired from Hymes’ CC, let’s now look at a few approaches proposed by other practitioners in the domain of language learning and teaching who came up with certain other frameworks that have been used successfully to evaluate and also to ensure better language learning. Some of the frameworks focus on the skills that may be targeted separately as being essential to overall language learning and some others offer frameworks to evaluate performances of students learning a second language (in our case English). We shall look at Jim Cummins (1979 and 1981a) who offered the now famous BICS & CALP

Fig. 2.2 Similarites and difference between models of communicative competence. Source Bagaric and Djigunovic (2007: 102)

Frameworks for Testing Languaging and Communicative ... 27

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distinction of looking at and assessing the different skill sets of speakers/learners of a language.

Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) and Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) Since this study deals with languaging, which implies that ‘language proficiency’ will have to be assessed in order to take a closer look at the real issues involved in the communication challenges faced by the students, we look at the different proposals made for testing ‘language proficiency’. This is expected to have other implications for both bilingual teaching and learning contexts and evaluation. It has always been suggested by authors that “second language teaching and testing [be made] more ‘communicative’…” since it “better reflects the nature of language proficiency than one which emphasizes the acquisition of discrete language skills.” (Cummins & Swain, 1986: 138). Whereas it is true, what we need to keep in mind is that in the case of high-stake examinations, at least in the Indian context, the focus still is on assessment of discrete language skills. Cummins (1980c) reports a case-study of “428 children from English as a second language (ESL) background” whose psychological assessments and teacher referral forms are analysed (Cummins & Swain, 1986: 139). He shows how there is a certain lack of theoretical frameworks which can do justice to several aspects that make up for crucial components in ‘language proficiency’. Cummins showed the inadequacies of psychological tests and other assessments that were being followed then. Cummins (1983) raises the point that in order to make sense of ‘language proficiency’, given its varied interpretations across fields, one would have to arrive at some common understanding of it which can then be used to design theoretical frameworks that would be just. This can be done, he suggests if one looks at the views of Oller (1979), Oller & Perkins (1980) and Labov (1970). The contrast in their views on the subject matter of ‘language proficiency’ should give some idea of what can be and should be done. Cummins (1983) further goes on to mention different approaches proposed by different authors on the point of ‘language proficiency’ also the relationship of ‘language proficiency’ with ‘academic achievement’. He mentions Oller (1979), Labov (1970, 1973), Bruner (1975), Olson (1977) and Donaldson (1978). Since it is not of much use to describe the approaches and positions taken by these authors, we shall skip the description. It should suffice to say that all of the researches above mentioned had something or the other to say on the relationship of ‘language proficiency’ and ‘academic achievement’ and how they connect with each other. Conclusively, the models presented above don’t explicitly talk about the kind of competence (that of BICS and CALP in high-stake examinations) that we intend to look at in our present study and also because our entire study is based on the subjects’ performance in BICS and CALP which was arrived at by administering the NRT and CRT tests, any framework which doesn’t overtly accounts for these data and also doesn’t provide a method to analyse the said data, can’t be taken a framework for the present study. Although almost all the models, presented above, account fairly for the data on non-verbal communication aspects and that of BICS, not really for

References

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the CALP. In this context, the author has used the term ‘languaging’ as a cover term too indicate all the linguistic abilities of an individual; and as far as the methodology is concerned, due to the fact that there is no clear-cut framework available, we shall use an eclectic method which doesn’t follow any specific method but borrows from a few existing ones as per the need. Cummins (1979, 1981a) however finds a theme wanting in some aspects or the other, which is why he proposed what is now called as BICS & CALP distinction, where BICS stand s for Basic Interpersonal Communication skills and CALP stands for Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency. Cummins (1979, 1981a) proposed BICS and CALP as a reaction and development to Skutnabb-Kangas & Toukomaa (1976) brought to light to the fact that “Finnish migrant children in Sweden often appeared to educators to be fluent in both Finnish and Swedish but still showed levels of verbal academic performance in both languages considerably below grade, percentage expectations.” (Cummins, 2008: 71). On the other hand, Cummins (1979) was a qualification to “Oller’s (1979) claim that all individual differences in language proficiency could be accounted for by just one underlying factor,” the factor he called “global language proficiency” (Cummins: 2008: 71). Cummins (1979) challenged Oller’s (1979) claim by suggesting that any attempt to “incorporate all aspects of language use or performance into just one dimension” was a problematic claim and needed serious rethinking. (Cummins, 2008: 71). Cummins gives examples of “two monolingual English-speaking siblings”, a 6-year-old and a 12-year-old. Cummins claimed that it would be found that at the level of phonology and basic fluency, there are minimal differences between the siblings but at the level of vocabulary and ability to read and write, the differences are enormous. Cummins (2008: 72) says that CALP “develops through social interaction from birth but becomes differentiated from BICS after the early stages of schooling to reflect primarily the language that children acquire in school and which they need to use effectively if they are to progress successfully through the grades.” BICS are the interpersonal skills needed in social interactions. These interactions can take place in different domains such as parties, bus-stands, lunch-halls, playgrounds and all other spheres of life that make up a normal individual’s life. Cummins pleads that BICS develop in meaningful contexts, which need not be highly demanding cognitively. Since the language skills that are needed for such basic interactions are not specialized, they may develop as early as in six months or may take up to two years once the learner is exposed to an environment suited for learning the given language. We must not forget that Cummins was talking about the immigrant population learning English after arriving in the US. CALP on the other hand is specialized language which takes anywhere between five to seven years to develop. CALP is specialized language proficiency to be used in formal, academic domain. The skills included under it are those of reading, writing, listening and speaking on and about a topic/issue. Anyone trying to succeed at school or at any other academic activity would need these skills. An individual would need time to acquire these skills as they are intensive and depend largely on the amount of practice & exposure gained.

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Krashen, S. (1983). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. London: Longman. Krashen, S. D. (1985). The input hypothesis: Issues and implications. New York: Longman. Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions (1st Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Labov, W. (1970). The logic of non-standard English. In J. Alatis (Ed.), Monograph series on languages and linguistics 22. (pp. 1–44). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Labov, W. (1971). Methodology. In W. O. Dingwall (Ed.), A survey of linguistic science (pp. 413– 491). College Park, Md.: University of Maryland Linguistics Program. Lakoff, G, & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar: A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenneberg, E. (1967). Biological foundations of language. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Lust, B. (2006). Child language. Acquisition and growth. UK: Cambridge University Press. Madaus, G. F. (1988). The distortion of teaching and testing: High-stakes testing and instruction in Madaus in Peabody journal of education (Vol. 65, No. 3, About Teachers and Teaching (Spring, 1988), pp. 29–46). Matthews, P. (2001). A Short History of Structural linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, M. J. (1991). Discourse analysis for language teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Millikan, R. G. (2005). Language: A biological model. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Monk, R. (1991). Ludwig Wittgenstein: The duty of genius. London: Vintage. Oller, J. (1979). Language tests at school: A pragmatic approach. London: Longman. Oller, J. & Perkins, K. (1980). Research in language testing. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Olson, D. (1977). From Utterance to Text: The Bias of Language in Speech and Writing. Harvard Educational Review, 47 (3), 257–281. Oxford, R. (2001). Language learning styles and strategies. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 359–366). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Reboul, A. C. (2015). Why language really is not a communication system: A cognitive view of language evolution. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. Russell, B. (1945). History of western philosophy. Great Britain: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Savignon, S. J. (1972). Communicative competence: An experiment in foreign-language teaching. Philadelphia: The Centre for Curriculum Development Inc. Scott-Philips, T. (2015). Speaking our minds: Why human communication is different, and how language evolved to make it special. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sinha, A. K. S. (2016). Elementary English teaching: A source book for teacher educators. Delhi: Shipra Publications. Skehan, P. (1995). Analysability, accessibility, and ability for use. In Cook, G. and Seidlehofer, B. (Eds.),Principle and practice in applied linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skinner, B. F. (1957). The verbal behaviour. U.S.: Copley Publishing House. Swoyer, C. (Spring, 2015). The linguistic relativity hypothesis. Retrieved Jan 3, 2017, from https:// stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/spr2015/entries/relativism/supplement2.html. Taylor, D. S. (1988). The Meaning and Use of the Term ’Competence’ in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. Applied Linguistics, 9(2), 148–168. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962). Thought and language. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Watson, J. B. (1924). Behaviorism. New York: People’s Institute Publishing Company. Widdowson, H. G. (1983). Learning purpose and language use. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Philosophical investigations (PI), 4th edn. P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (Eds. and Trans.), Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Chapter 3

Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study

Abstract This particular chapter presents the method and the description of the data collected by the author for the purpose of studying languaging in an ESP context. The subjects, part of this study, were enrolled in Bachelor of Engineering course at GLA University, situated in Mathura, India. The author undertook both qualitative and quantitative research to arrive at the understanding of state of languaging. The author tries to figure out through the questionnaire, what the students think are the real challenges of languaging. The major quantitative data for the study comes from—i. the achievement tests taken by the students for their grading of the course and ii. from the class-room observation of the subjects by the author in formal academic domain in BICS and CALP course. The study focuses largely on the second-year students. Keywords Sociolinguistic profiling · Empirical data · Questionnaire

Key Terms and Abbreviations The research presents data of 141 subjects on different parameters. In order to do so the author has used some terms and abbreviations for presentation of the data. In the first half of the quantitative data-description (the individual data-description section) has used some abbreviations in order to accommodate greater information in limited space of the table. In the ‘background’ table the author has used the term L-E-P, which stands for Languages known/used, Education and Profession. For the languages we have used the abbreviations such as—E for English, H for Hindi, B for Bhojpuri, M for Malayalam, Br for Braj, Te for Telugu, and so on. For education we have used E for elementary education, Numeric 8 and 12 for the middle school education and secondary education whereas G has been used for Graduates and PG for Post graduates. For profession—J is used for Job, GJ—Government job, HM for Home-maker, and so on. In the same table author has also used abbreviation in the Native column, SU—for Semi-urban, U—for Urban, R—for Rural etc. and for the states we have used the oft used terms like—KL for Kerala, UP for Uttar Pradesh, UK for Uttarakhand, BR for © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 R. K. Upadhyay, Heterogeneous Learning Environment and Languaging in L2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3903-9_3

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Bihar, JH for Jharkhand, whereas in the column of BICS (class-room performance) we have used SV Agr for Subject-verb agreement; PoS for Parts of Speech; Error Corr. for Error-correction etc. Structure of the Questionnaire: The questionnaire has a total of 76 questions and is broken under different labels with focus on certain aspects. The following are the further sub-divisions of the questionnaire: I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

Personal details: these were the questions that aimed at getting the personal details of the students such as their names, age, contact, etc. These are about 7 in number. Family background: there were about 9 questions through which the author tried to ascertain the background of the students and the environment in which s/he grew up. These questions included the education levels of the parents, number of siblings and certain other aspects. Socio-economic status: about 4 questions were asked by the author to assess the socio-economic status of the students. These included direct questions on family income and also questions that would help the author indirectly gauge the economic status of the student’s family. The student was asked about his/her exposure to English s/he received through gadgets and laptop. The assumption here was that such questions would not only allow the author to understand the level of exposure to English language that the student might have had but also help him understand the socio-economic standing of the student. Psychological orientation/aptitude towards learning English: it is a wellknown fact that a learner’s aptitude is one of the biggest factors towards learning a skill or a language. Although there have been studies by some who have now rejected the sole reliance on motivation being the key factor in language learning (Agnihotri & Khanna, 1994); it cannot be said that a learner’s aptitude plays no role in how much success one will have in learning a language given one’s aptitude and psychological orientation towards it. Approximately 8 questions were asked in the questionnaire to assess the very aptitude of the students towards learning English language. Exposure to English Language: The remaining questions in the questionnaire can be said to aim at helping the author understand the levels of exposure the student in the study has had during his/her upbringing. Hence, a number of questions (approximately 15) were asked to find out about the education received by the student and the kind of exposure to English s/he had during her/his schooling in all. The questions separately enquired the exposure in primary school, middle school and higher secondary levels of schooling.

Description of the Questionnaire The students in general and the participants of the study, in particular, were always found motivated and keen on improving their languaging abilities in English. It is not very unusual scene to come across the student-teacher interaction just before

Description of the Questionnaire

35

or after the class, wherein the focal point of discussion is about how that person could improve his/her languaging ability, be it-written, oral or the syntax of it. This situation primarily owes to the fact that, “[k]nowledge of English has never lost its importance as an asset for socio-economic advancement in India, a situation that is the topic of an ongoing debate about the status of English in India (cf. e.g. Tully 1997 and Matthew 1997)” Schilk (2011). The author asked questions of the following nature: Place of birth? Where is your mother from? Where is your father from? Currently staying at? These questions were asked with the intention to bring out the demographics of student’s upbringing. It is indeed the case that majority of the students at GLA belong to Hindi speaking areas (i.e. northern and central part of India) and only a few belong to non-Hindi speaking areas. In spite of this, it is of some relevance to know what the place of upbringing was for the place does have its impact on an individual’s overall command of the language. As already stated, majority of the students at GLA happens to be from Hindi speaking areas, it wasn’t surprising to find that the subjects chosen for investigation also turned out to have most of the students from Hindi speaking regions of India. There were exceptions in the form of students from Kerala, Jammu, etc. who also formed the subject-group for the study. Questions about the vocation of the parents gave the author an understanding of the conditions in which the students may have grown up. If the parents are in good jobs, we may safely infer that the child was given good care and education. The author also included questions that made the evaluation on the economic scale fool-proof by asking the students about the overall income of the family, including all the sources as well as the recognition and acceptance of the family in the society. This ensured that parents’ economic standing would not go unnoticed (Fig. 3.1). After the questions on the students’ personal details, family background and demographics the remaining questions then may be said to deal with the learning Fig. 3.1 Native place of subjects

Native Bihar

72

12

Delhi Haryana

11

Rajasthan

UP (East) UP (West)

68

30

Kerala

Jammu

36

3 Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study

Fig. 3.2 Overall proficiency of the subjects

Overall Proficiency understand but can't speak 45

Understand and can speak with great difficulty Understand and speak but with some difficulty

60 64

Understand and speak comfortably, with li le difficulty Na ve like command

aptitude/psychological orientation of the students towards learning and the exposure to English they received while growing. Languages are leant by living them. So, if a student had a good exposure to English while growing up, it would only add to the already understood fact that initial exposure and training in the target language leads to good command in that language. We shall take a look at the questions now. By and large, the questions are largely multiple choice with a few having yes/no choice, and there were, towards the end, a few questions that were open ended; four in all to be precise (Fig. 3.2). The author, in the questionnaire, asked the students to rate their overall linguistic proficiency during higher and senior secondary school phase on the scale of 1–5 and their overall current English language ability in terms of scale such as the one given below: One of the questions asks the students to note his/her LSRW skills in English on a scale of 1 through 5, where 1 is poor and 5 is native-like command. Another question asks them to note their LSRW skills in Hindi where again 1 is poor, 2 needs work, 3 is average 4 is good and 5 is native-like command. It is through these questions and a few others that the author hopes to find out about how serious they are as far as acquiring a good command at English language was concerned. Other questions asked were pertaining to the students’ perception about English language. The questions were based on their assessment of the skills they thought were the easiest to acquire, the domains that they found tough (such as the subject matter of a text, daily routine, etc.) and their opinion on ‘the biggest hurdle in learning English’ etc. There were also questions which were asked with the aim of finding out how the students rated the language skills of the teachers in classroom during their 9 to 12th standard of schooling and the overall ambience of the University. In other words, did they find the environment at GLA helpful in learning English or was it a deterrent in inculcation of English language skills. The author also wanted to find out as to what the students thought the university/teachers of English could do to help them make better communicators. The last question was an open-ended question, for the author wanted to find out what the students thought was really important and also the answers would give a clue to their writing skills.

Description of the Questionnaire

37

The students were asked about what they thought was the biggest hurdle in their learning/mastering English language, who did they find most difficult to talk to. Both these questions had some options from which they could choose, however they were also given the option of writing what they thought was the biggest hurdle and who they found difficulty in talking to. So, the questions despite being ‘multiple choice’ had the options where students were free to write what they thought was appropriate.

Data on the Background of the Students There were 141 respondents from two different fields of engineering at GLA, namely—Computer Science (CS) and Mechanical Engineering (ME). Two sections each of CS & ME were taken to analyse the communication challenges of students. CS had total of 76 students out of which 56 were males and 20 were females. ME had 4 females and 61 males comprising the total class strength of 65 (Fig. 3.3). It was found, based on the responses, that most of the students, about 131, hailed from some or the other Hindi speaking area. There were a few students from Rajasthan as well who claimed to be speakers of Hindi but we know that Jharkhandi Hindi and Rajasthani Hindi are not really mutually intelligible. Be that as it may, it’s not being argued that the speeches of such diverse dialects are actually speeches of different languages. After all, even those who claim to be speakers of a different language, find that they understand each other very well. The case of Hindi and Urdu is a good example of people speaking the same language but claiming to be speakers of different language(s) (see Amrit Rai, 1984); Serbo-Croatian being another case in point. It’s the sociology and politics involved in such cases that makes linguistic issues too small to occupy serious concern in such matters of identity and existence. Most of the students in the study were below the age of 21. Only 15 students were either 21 or above, 1 being 27 years of age. 80

76 65 56

60

61

40 20

20

Total Participants

Female CS

Fig. 3.3 Branch-wise subjects’ details

Male Mechanical

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3 Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study

Amongst 141 student-respondents it was observed that 99 of them were staying at the university hostel whereas the others were staying outside the campus, some staying with their parents, and a few with relatives and still fewer in rented rooms. In terms of educational attainment of the parents—father of 107 students were reported to have either a graduation or a higher degree and only 61 mothers were either graduates or post graduates. In the case of fathers, 11 were farmers, 1 was priest, 39 were in business and the rest were in some kind of jobs—government or non-government. On the other hand, a huge percentage of mothers were homemakers: 122 mothers were homemakers, 7 were teachers and the rest were reported to be in some kind of salaried occupation (Fig. 3.4). As far as the languages spoken by the parents are concerned, the father in the case of 98 students spoke only Hindi, 1 spoke only English, 2 spoke some local language, 1 Malayalam, and one spoke only Urdu. The others reported that their respective fathers spoke Hindi and at least one more language, such as—Bhojpuri, or English or Punjabi or Telugu, etc. We need not go into the politics and structure of Hindi and Urdu (Fig. 3.5). 74

80 60

43 26

40 20

11

41

33

21

11

20

Father's education Mother's education

Fig. 3.4 Educational background of parents

117 103 80

Father

60

Mother

30

40

16

20 Monolingual Fig. 3.5 Linguality of parents

Bilingual

Multilingual

No more

Data on the Background of the Students

39

113 students reported that their respective mothers spoke only Hindi, 2 reported about their mothers speaking some local language, 1 mother spoke Malayalam, 1 spoke Urdu and the remaining informed that their mothers were competent in speaking at least 1 more language other than Hindi, it was also the case that 1 student reported of untimely death of his mother. The data clearly revealed that many students had fathers who were at least bilinguals. 38 fathers were reported to be bilingual whereas only 23 mothers were reported to be bilingual. There was an interesting case that one of the respondents reported her mother to be speaking Sanskrit, though not her father. A small note on the socio-economic background of the student-respondents is in order here. It was observed that 55 students reported their family income to be less than 3 lacks per annum. Another sizeable portion of the students, about 55, reported that their family income was, between 3 and 6 Lacks. 25 students were found with an annual income between 6 and 9 Lacks and the remaining reported to have annual family income that exceeded 9 Lacks. When asked about the social acceptance and recognition of the family, 81 reported that their respective families enjoyed fairly good recognition in society, 33 reported high acceptance of their families in the society and 5 reported very high social acceptance in the society. Another facet in the upbringing of the students that the author wanted to find out about was the exposure to English through other sources. This would obviously include his/her school, surroundings, friends and family but that may be considered a bit later. For now, it may be reported that the majority of the students responded by claiming to read English newspaper, only 22 out of 141 responded in the negative to the reading of English newspaper(s). Again, to the question of interest in reading, the majority responded by revealing that they were more interested in reading non-fiction (23), science fiction (45) and self-help books (37) in English language. Majority of the students admitted to admiring English songs on their gadgets, (about 101 students), 15 students preferred English news, and 8 said that they listened to audio—books. The others had other miscellaneous preferences to report. What the students preferred to watch on their laptop/desktop were the movies/songs (54), documentaries (33), video-lecturers (17), TED talks (7) and several other things.

Language in and by Family and Surroundings When asked about the age at which the students started speaking English, 70 of the total respondents claimed to have started learning English by or before the age of 5. It is actually a bit surprising, though, that their performance in classroom setting and even otherwise is not at par. Another 42 students reported by saying that they began to learn English between the age 5–10. 25 students reported to have begun learning English only between age 10–15 and finally 7 of them were such that they got exposed to English language really late and thus began to learn English only after they crossed 15 (Fig. 3.6).

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3 Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study

Age of learning English 80 60 40 20 0-5 years

05-10 years

10-15 years

>15 years

Fig. 3.6 Subjects’ age of learning English

When asked about the input they received from the surroundings, outside their families, most of them admitted to having heard Hindi. About 85% of the respondents responded claiming that their language input around them was only Hindi. Another substantial figure was that of those students who received input in 1 more language other than Hindi. 27 in all claimed that the initial input for them between birth and age 5 was in the language/dialect spoken in the area. Again, 13 students claimed to have been exposed to mixed languages (one of the variants). One student claimed to have received input in English and another one was exposed to only Telugu, while each was growing up. When it came to speaking to siblings, 90 students reported that they used Hindi and about 35 reported English as their choice. There were 49 respondents who claimed to use both Hindi & English. 8 students reported that they used their local languages/dialects to communicate, whereas 5 of the students claimed to use languages other than Hindi, English or one of the local languages/dialects. What is interesting is the feedback the author received on the languages used between the students and their respective parents. On one hand, where the responses suggest that 102 students had parents speaking to them in Hindi, only 97 claimed to be speaking to their parents in Hindi. This is slightly puzzling though not shocking. 1 student reported that his parents used only Malayalam to communicate and another reported that his parents used only English to talk to him. The one whose parents used Malayalam responded in Malayalam and the one whose parents used only English claimed to use only English with his parents. There were 13 students whose parents spoke to them in the local language/dialects of the area where they grew up and the students responded in the same local language/dialect to their respective parents. Interestingly, the responses showed that there were only 23 students whose parents used both Hindi and English or some other language (mixed), but there were 31 students who used both Hindi and English or some other language to communicate with their parents. 64 students reported that they played and grew up with the children who could speak English, 79 on the other hand responded in negative, i.e. their peers who played with them didn’t use English. However, a majority of students, about 95 of them reported that their parents encouraged them to speak English while 46 of them said that they didn’t receive any such encouragement from their parents as far as speaking English was concerned.

Language in and by Family and Surroundings

41

There were a few whose parents even read stories to them in English, i.e. 23 of the students, while 113 students were such whose parents didn’t read stories to them in English when they were growing up. The picture again changes dramatically when one considers the data on the number of students whose parents made effort to correct them whenever they made a mistake while speaking English. There were 99 in number, a stark contrast to the number of students whose parents read out stories to them. 42 students responded by writing that their parents didn’t correct them while speaking English.

Exposure at School Exposure at Elementary School The questionnaire had questions that tried to fetch information on English-speaking environment of the school. One of the questions asked was about the frequency with which the students spoke English at school between the years 6 and 10, i.e. during their elementary school phase. The choices given were: always, often, seldom, never. Alarmingly, about 32 reported that they never used English at school and 63 claimed to ‘seldom’ use it. This is three-fourth of the total respondents in the study. There were 41 of them who reported using English ‘often’ and 5 of the students claimed that they always used English in school settings. Another question enquired about the language of instruction at school. The question was to find out whether English was really used as language of instruction at school and to that about 74 replied in the affirmative. There were others about 40 students who answered that English was not the language of instruction during elementary school phase. And about 27 of the students revealed that even though English was officially the language of instruction in elementary classes, in reality it was not. Another question that was part of the questionnaire sought information on the total number of hours of English language instruction that took place at school in their elementary phase. 35 of the students responded by stating that they were exposed to English only for about 2 h or less per week. And about 78 students claimed that they received English language by 5 h/week in their elementary schools. Rest of the respondents claimed to have received up to 10 or even more than 10 h/week of English language instruction during their elementary schooling. 93 students revealed that English was either a second language or a foreign language in the elementary school period for them. This only means that they were exposed to English at schools. 48 students said that English was not second or foreign language for them at school in elementary classes. A question on the Englishspeaking friends at school received the following response: 95 students said that they had friends who could speak English and 46 students said that their friends at elementary school could not/did not speak English.

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3 Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study

Even with English speaking friends at elementary schools, not all spoke in English. This picture is brought out clearly by the responses to a question which sought information on the students’ use of English language with their peers/friends at elementary school. 51 students did respond by saying that they used English with their friends but 41 students claimed that to use Hindi with their friends. About 42 students used more than one language with their English-speaking friends, which included their first language or mother tongue and either English or some other language that they knew. The rest spoke one of the local languages/dialects or some other language because they didn’t feel easy.

Exposure at Middle School Questions with the intention of finding out more about the students’ exposure to English at middle school were also part of the questionnaire. The questions were largely similar to the ones asked for extracting data on exposure to English in the elementary school phase. 73 students reported that they often used English at school and 6 of them reported to have used English all the time at middle school. 55 students seldom used English and about 7 never used it. One cannot help notice the difference from the elementary school phase. 130 students reported that they used English with their teachers at middle school, 89 and 54 were the numbers of students who claimed that they were using English with their friends and siblings respectively while they were at middle school. The answer choices allowed them to choose from more than one options. 19 of the students responded by saying that they used English even with their parents between the age of 11 and 13 years. On questions pertaining to the use of English as a medium of instruction in middle school and English as a second/foreign language at the same time, the numbers were same for both the questions and both the answer choices. 98 students responded by saying that English was used as a language of instruction and it was also the second language of middle school. Only 43 students answered in the negative to both the questions. There seemed to be a change in the total number of hours spent on English during middle school for many of them. 27 students claimed that they received only 2 h of instruction on English language whereas 75 of the students claimed to have received 5 h of English instruction in a week. There were 27 students who reported to have received 10 h of exposure to English language in classes and the remaining vouched for more than 10 h of instruction on English per week. As far as the English-speaking friends are concerned, during the middle school period about 102 students claimed that they had friends who spoke in English and 39 claimed otherwise. Despite the fact that most of the students claimed to have friends who could and actually spoke English, not many seemed to have used the opportunity to use English themselves. It is for these reasons that we find that only 48 students claimed that they used English with English speaking friends and 54 of the students

Exposure at School

43

used Hindi with their English proficient peers at middle school. 28 students claimed to use a mix of languages with their English-speaking friends and the rest used some other language(s).

Secondary/Senior Secondary Phase Again, to get a view of what the life in senior or senior secondary phase was like as far as the exposure to English language is concerned, the author made it a point to frame questions on this phase of a student’s life at school. It turned out that 7 students always spoke English at their senior/senior secondary school level of schooling and about 92 students used it often, whereas 2 never used English at school. The remaining 40 seldom used English in their (senior) secondary schooling phase. 93 students claimed that they used English with their teachers at school and about 30 claimed to use English to communicate with friends. There was a serious drop in the number of students who used English with their siblings during the secondary/senior secondary phase of schooling, the reasons for which were unfortunately not sought by the author in the questionnaire. 112 students claimed that English was the medium of instruction in their secondary/senior secondary phase, but there were about 15 students who claimed that there was no instruction in English at secondary/senior secondary phase, 14 students spoke about English being the medium of instruction but only on paper not in practice. Simultaneously, English was claimed to be the second language in the secondary/senior secondary phase by 87 students, while 42 students claimed that it was not a second language for them at school. Then again there were 12 who shared that the language in question was the second language but only on paper. There was no sound of it ever heard during their secondary/senior secondary phase of schooling. The number of hours that they spent on English language at school during their secondary/senior secondary phase was reported to be the following. 23 students received only 2 h per week of exposure to English language, 76 claimed about 5 h per week of exposure, 27 students claimed at least 10 h of exposure to English overall in a week. The remaining claimed to have had more than 10 h/week of exposure to English. 113 students reported that they had friends who could speak English at secondary/senior secondary days at school, while the rest about 28 of the overall students reported that they didn’t have friends who were proficient in English. Once again there is a big difference in the total number of students who actually used English for communication with/among friends even when they had the opportunity to do so. Only 51 students claimed to have used English to communicate with friends at secondary/senior secondary phase in school, and 24 claimed to have used Hindi with their friends in the same phase of their life. Of the rest, 64 claimed that they used mixed language i.e. they used either Hindi or one of their local languages/dialects, which was their mother tongue & English while talking to

44

3 Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study

their English-speaking friends. Only 1 student claimed that he used one of the local dialects/languages alone to talk to his English-speaking friends. The other 3 used other language(s).

Overall Competence In terms of their respective teachers during their secondary or senior secondary phase of schooling, most of the students felt that their teachers were reasonably competent in English. On a scale of 1 to 5 where 5 was ‘very effective communicators’; 54 students rated their teachers on 3 (just okay). 45 rates 4 to their teachers whereas 18 felt that their teachers were very effective communicators. Relatively fewer seemed dissatisfied with their respective teachers as 19 students awarded only 2 points to their teachers and 5 awarded 1 point each to their teachers. This is a happy state of things, we may infer as the majority was exposed to some kind of English by their teachers which they themselves found satisfactory. When asked about their own abilities in matters of English language proficiency, 67 students awarded themselves 3 points on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 being the most effective communicators) only 32 students rated their abilities at 4 and 8 students rated their proficiency at 5 (the figure is definitely modest when compared with the number of teachers who were rated at 4 or 5). And again, there were a number of students who awarded themselves lower points on the same scale; 30 students gave themselves a meagre 2 and about 4 students rated themselves as very poor and gave only 1 point on the scale. These proficiency levels were up to class 12. There were only 5 students who reported to have received schooling/education up to 12th in villages; the others were raised in semi-urban or urban settings. 90 students claimed to have had schooling up to 12th in cities while 32 received schooling in towns. 7 of them each had their schooling in Metros and capital cities respectively. When asked about the language they preferred to communicate in, most of the students expressed their inability to decide, for 75 students opted for the option ‘depends’ which basically meant that they choose their language of communication based on the context/situation. 15 said they preferred Hindi and 35 of the students preferred English over any other language. There were some who used more than one language; these were 16 in number. One of the questions asked the students to note their overall linguistic abilities in terms of understanding and speaking. Only 4 of them claimed ‘Native like command’ for themselves, while 60 thought that they could ‘understand and speak with very little difficulty’. There were 64 students who felt that they could ‘understand and speak but had some difficulty in doing so’. 5 admitted to having the ability to understand but also expressed their inability to speak and 8 could ‘understand and speak but with a lot of difficulty’. Questions aimed at finding out about the students’ personal assessment of the specific language skills led to the following picture in the table given below. Students were asked to note their LSRW skills in both English and Hindi (Table 3.1).

Overall Competence

45

Table 3.1 Current overall competence in English and Hindi Skill-wise competence in English

Needs work

Good

V good

Excellent

7

33

17

28

32

Reading skills

8

11

26

33

40

Speaking skills

11

44

40

13

7

5

26

32

42

12

Listening skills

2

32

24

24

33

Reading skills

6

19

26

33

34

Speaking skills

3

19

40

27

28

Writing skills

9

46

26

30

6

Listening skills

Writing skills

Poor

Skill-wise competence in Hindi

Interestingly, many of the students professed better writing skills in English as compared to other skills of listening and speaking. In all, 32 students claimed to have ‘good’ command in writing English and about 42 rated themselves as ‘very good’. Students seemed more confident about their reading skills in English for 26, 33 and 40 of them rated their competence in reading as ‘good’, ‘very good’, and ‘excellent’ respectively. About 28 students rated their listening skills as ‘very good’ while a good number of them, i.e. about 32 students thought that their listening skills were ‘excellent’. What was not surprising was that few students thought that their production skills i.e. speaking and writing were ‘excellent’. Only 7 rated their speaking skills as ‘excellent’ and only 12 found their writing skills to be equally good. The question on domain wise competence in Hindi revealed expected response but there were some surprising elements too. Students consistently noted their specific skills in Hindi as either ‘good’, ‘very good’ or ‘excellent’. There were of course some who reported their LSRW skills as poor or as ‘requiring work’. We find that majority of the students found their skills within the acceptable range of ‘good’ and ‘excellent’. The alarming point in the analysis was the submission by the students themselves that many of them had ‘poor’ or ‘needs work’ levels of writing skills in Hindi. It meant that many of the students couldn’t write ‘Devanagari’. 9 students rated their writing skills as ‘poor’ and about 46 as ‘needs work’. Only 6 students confidently rated their writing skills in Hindi as excellent and about 30 thought that their writing skills were very good. When asked whether the university culture helped them improve English—65 of the students responded in affirmative, whereas 56 in negative. 20 students were not sure about the university’s culture being a factor. One of the questions wanted the students to mention the biggest hurdle in the learning of English. To this, 49 responded by stating that there was no culture for English at the University. 45 students were of the opinion that the faculty didn’t use only English and that was the reason their progress had halted. It was revealing also to find out that many (about 22) had given up on improving their English language

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3 Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study

skills because of the lack of any positive results despite their attempts and about 21 found the passive attitude of the non-English teaching faculty to be a big hurdle in the learning of English language. About 8 students thought that English language won’t be a problem and that they could survive even without English. The remaining 27 had cited other reasons for not working or trying to improve English language skills. 86 students felt that the real problem with reading comprehension was the problem of unseen/unheard words. For 52 students the problem was unclear pronominal reference in the text which made it difficult for them to understand it and about 31 found complex/compound sentences to be the root of the problem in their not being able to understand what they read. For 28 students, it was the lack of awareness of the area/domain of the text that led to a failure in understanding the text and 6 students reported other reasons for incomprehension. When asked about who they found it most difficult to speak to, the students responded in the following ways. 29 found that it was toughest to speak to classmates, 18 found talking to the seniors as difficult and a whopping majority, i.e. 81 confessed to finding talking to the faculty of English as the most daunting task. There were 24 students who found talking to their respective parents as the toughest whereas about 10 students found talking to non-English faculty most difficult. 28 students gave the names of other people who they found toughest to speak to in English. The author tried to examine the domain(s) the students found most difficult to talk about/describe and it was found that a lot of them i.e. about 60 students felt that they found it difficult to put their problems in words, 47 students found speaking on subject matter with the faculty as most difficult and 37 felt that talking about daily routine was their nemesis. There were 22 students who found discussions on subject matters with seniors and juniors as the area of difficulty. And about 12 students came up with other domains that they found problematic to discuss. One of the questions was addressed at enquiring about what skill in particular the students felt was the easiest to acquire. To this, about 78 students responded by claiming that the reading at a fast pace was the easiest to acquire, 49 found writing, 46 speaking and about 35 found comprehending an unseen text and inferring or extracting information to be the easiest of the skills to acquire. The areas that the students wanted to improve were many. However, it was found that each student had a particular domain of English language learning, that s/he wanted to improve. 63 students wanted to improve their speaking skills, 17 wanted to improve their fluency, 11 grammar, 23 vocabulary, 12 pronunciation and 4 writing skills. There were 2 students who expressed their desire to improve their listening skills. Through one of the questions, the author sought to know what the students felt, the university could and should do to help them learn English and improve their English Language skills. To this, 43 students stressed that the university should encourage more activities in English so that they could have better exposure to English language, 30 students sought more classes on verbal whereas 19 wanted classes on spoken English. 20 students felt that the university should improve its English culture and

Overall Competence

47

Fig. 3.7 Competence of SS school-teachers

SS School Teachers' Competence 18

19

Very poor Below Avg Average

45

Good 54

Very Good

17 felt that all the teachers should speak only in English. 13 students felt that the use of English should be made mandatory/should be enforced. 7 thought that the university needs to do something to promote the language. 10 were found clueless whereas 3 demanded better infrastructure and faculty (Fig. 3.7). What becomes clear from the probe was that all the students felt the need to improve their English language skills, only that their approaches and views on it were different. At this juncture, I am also reminded of the questions by students with regard to the compulsion of following ‘standard Englishes’. There used to be some brilliant questions on why do we need to imitate a particular style of writing or pronunciation and after all the discussion, the conclusion more or less used to be echoing Agnihotri (2001: 201), “Like all other varieties of English, Indian English is also highly variable and that variability is regionally and sociolinguistically conditioned”. The questionnaire revealed certain relevant factors which may impact the study. To begin with, it was noticed that the majority of the students out of overall data sample were from one or the other Hindi speaking areas in India. The total count of such students was 131, out of 141. Even those who didn’t belong to Hindi speaking areas claim to have an understanding of Hindi. Now this may give the reader a sense that since it’s Hindi that is the mother tongue to most of the students, the aspect of multiculturalism which is the backdrop against which this study is conducted, gets thrown out of the picture, but as Kelkar (1968: 5) puts it, “[n]ative speakers of Hindu in strict linguistic sense for whom it is the language casually and informally learned as the first thing in childhood are considerably fewer and are limited to regionally uprooted families…”. To this, the reader may be reminded that the cover term Hindi includes in it several dialects/microlects (see Kelkar, 1968) and even though the measures taken to standardise have partly succeeded in that the people who speak a language/dialect recognisably different from Hindi, they also claim to be speakers of Hindi. Here the socio-politics of being called a Hindi speaker takes over the reality. At the same time, it must not be forgotten that the speakers of the same language, grow up in cultures that have differences, because a culture is not just a language, it’s much more than a language. People may share the same language or dialect but may dress, eat or behave very differently given their demographics.

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3 Languaging in an ESP Setting: An Empirical Study

Another point to which the reader’s attention may be drawn is that multilinguality in India is a norm. “[I]ndian multilingualism is motivated and sustained by the primary and secondary socialization processes at home and the work place; only a quarter of the multilingualism is contributed by formal learning in schools, and it is of the elite kind.” (Annamalai, 2001: 36). Even the speakers of very closely resembling dialects sharing borders are actually speakers of two different systems which can be said to have their own phonology, morphology, etc. As Hawkins (1983) puts, “The difference of kind between diglossia and stylistic variation lies in the fact that, in diglossia, both varieties exhibit a range of styles, and furthermore the range of each may overlap.” Almost all of us seem to possess a culture ‘communicative competence’ Hymes (1972, 83) that allows us to decide not only what to speak but also whom to speak, when and where. There is perhaps a lot more about languaging than mere having competence to make decision about what, how, when and where. And it is precisely the objective of this study to find out what is it that comes in the way of an individual that stops him/her languaging in the manner desired. Given the multiculturality of a place, there can be several challenges and it is hoped that we are able to put our focus on them; we would be able to help the students in future once there are sufficient studies of such problems and good theories have been proposed and tested. The data revealed a lot of factors that makes up for the current level of students’ command at English which, it turns out, is either the 2nd or 3rd language for most of the students who were part of the study.

Competence of Secondary/Senior Secondary School-Teachers To begin with, it was found that most of the students rated most of their own subject teachers only moderately competent in English language skills. These were the teachers who had taught them between 9th and 12th grades. Majority of the teachers got either 3 or less than 3 on scale of 1 to 5, where 5 was the ‘most effective communicators’. The students noted their own competence in English language as being largely okay. Majority of the students 67 of 141 gave themselves a score of 3 on scale of 1 to 5, where 5 was the most effective communicator (Fig. 3.8). As far as the place of schooling of the student participants is concerned, data reveals that most of them were brought in city, i.e. 90 out of 141. Only 5 reported to have been brought up in village. The upbringing of these students in urban dwellings is an indication that they had more access to better education than their batch mates who were not so lucky. It must be kept in mind that the data reveals that the students necessarily went to good schools and had good education, only that they had better access to good or comparatively better schools.

References

49

Fig. 3.8 Place of schooling in secondary and senior secondary

Place of Schooling 577

Metro City Capital city

32

City Town 90

Village

References Agnihotri, R. K. (2001). English in Indian Education. In C. J. Daswani (Ed.), Language education in multilingual India (pp. 186–209). UNESCO. Agnihotri, R. K., & Khanna, A. L. (Eds.). (1994). Second language acquisition: Sociocultural and linguistic aspects of English in India. New Delhi, India: Sage. Annamalai, E. (2001). Managing multilingualism in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Hawkins, P. (1983). Diglossia revisited. Language Sciences, 5(1), 1–20. Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative Competence. In J. B. Pride, & J. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269–293). Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Kelkar, A. R. (1968). Studies in Hindi-Urdu. Volume 1: Introduction and word phonology. Poona: Postgraduate and Research Institute, Deccan College. Matthew, R. (1997). English in India: A response to Mark Tully. ELT Journal, 51, 165–168. Rai, Amrit. (1984). A house divided: the origin and development of Hindi/Hindavi. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Schilk, M. (2011). Structural nativization in Indian English Lexicogrammar. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Tully, M. (1997) English: an advantage to India?. ELT Journal, 51(2), 157–164.

Chapter 4

Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Abstract This chapter presents description of the data on languaging, tools used and the feedback/responses received and follows it up with discussion on issues that form part of this study. All of this is presented with detailed analysis of the data. In some cases, the analysis is presented simultaneously, in some other, it may be presented at a later stage when the author feels it is appropriate to do so. The analysis begins with the Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS henceforth) of the subjects. BICS includes the Oral communication skills which will be analysed based on the framework of Pillar (2011) framework for testing communicative competence. For the oral communication skills, the author has some recorded data and also some qualitative data based on the subjects’ performance in the class. Keywords Socio-pragmatic variables · Languaging · Qualitative quantitative data · Data analysis

Description and Analysis of Qualitative Data The following section details the qualitative data and its interpretation. These data have been classified into three sub headings, namely—Linguistic challenges, Nonverbal challenges, Pragmatic challenges. Linguistic Challenges—Under linguistic challenges syntactic, lexical and prosodic challenges will be discussed. The linguistic challenges can be identified in day to day class-room behaviour. A class/course on BICS and CLAP necessarily involves the participation of the students. And the only way to participate is through oral/verbal and non-verbal communication. An instructor of the course can easily identify the level of comfort of one’s students when they communicate for varied purposes, such as—making presentation, participating in GD, taking peer-mock interview, giving impromptu talk, speaking for a minute, role play etc. The language is also involved in dealing with verbal aptitude. In order to train the students an instructor requires a constant feedback from his/her students, unless they understand the logic or rationale behind answer to a particular question the session or the class won’t serve the very purpose. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2020 R. K. Upadhyay, Heterogeneous Learning Environment and Languaging in L2, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3903-9_4

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Both of these components of language learning involve a different kind of discussion and discourse. For example, for presentation on a topic the student more often than not has a choice of his own which is essentially not the case with verbal aptitude. A student good in oral communication may or may not be equally good in verbal aptitude as well because knowing the language and knowing about the language are two different things altogether (cf. Yadugiri, 2007). To be precise, discussion in verbal aptitude class is often on the questions in the sheet or particular questions being discussed whereas the discourse in verbal aptitude classes is often open-ended. Coming back to the kinds of challenges involved in languaging, we find that a pattern of behaviour can be identified based on one’s schooling and the place one comes from. For the common class-room linguistic behaviour we will consider only one variable, i.e. medium of instruction in their schooling. Non-English medium background students are often relatively less exposed to English language and that’s why they are almost always weak in oral communication skills, although some of them are found relatively better in verbal aptitude section because of their training in English language grammar (some of the non-English medium schools teach English grammar as a compulsory subject). Their limitation in spoken English can be seen in the following instances: – – – –

Difficulty in framing and asking appropriate questions. Difficulty in expressing oneself-to ask, to repeat etc. Rebuttal statements in GD, debate. Agreeing and disagreeing in discussion.

Syntactic and Lexical Challenges: In all the four situations enumerated above, the students, for example in point 1, face the problem of finding appropriate words and putting them in proper syntactic order. Many a times, it’s been observed that some of the students fail to ask very pertinent questions, observations or point of views, in their mind, which could lead the discourse to an even more fruitful discussion. Thus, their limitations on this front arise primarily because of their limitations of word-power and also that of their expression. It, in no sense, implies that all the students who come from English medium schools are always very good in oral communication and they don’t face any such challenges at all. In fact, there are a number of students who have reported their schools to be English medium for the namesake but practically almost all the classes are held in languages other than English. The next point is quite similar to the first one- the non-English medium school background students hesitate to seek clarification and also to ask to repeat if they fail to understand a particular thing. They hold themselves for later and also sometimes for never. Such students prefer to meet the concerned teacher either after the class or seek time to see him/her in his/her cabin/office as per mutually convenient time. But again, there is caveat that the above inference doesn’t imply, at all, that all the students from English medium background school are very participative and they don’t feel any linguistic challenge at all. The point here is that if we compare the level of comfort of English-medium school students in using English in formal academic settings is much greater than their non-English medium school grad counterparts.

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53

The other discourse or act of communication which the author could observe was group discussion and debate. Most of the times, GD topics were assigned then and there, which used to bring out the limitations of English medium students too, to the fore. The performance of individuals or of the group depended largely on their familiarity with the topic. If the topic was familiar to both English and non-English medium school-grads, there was a strong possibility that the English medium school grad will end-up performing better than the non-English medium one. But if the topic was new to them or they didn’t have much to speak on, linguistic proficiency beyond a certain point didn’t matter at all. The reason for the relatively better performance of English medium school-grads, apart from their practice and exposure in the language, was the fact that most of these students had participated in such academic activities in their schooling days which the non-English school-grads obviously didn’t have. If we talk about which group had better or more to say, it will be a close call between the two because having idea on and about any topic of discussion requires much more than the language—it requires regular reading habit. It can certainly be said that on the front of content (though no agenda of discussion here) English medium school grads were not certainly clear winners. Agreeing and disagreeing in debate is an act of pragmatism and languaging. Along with the tone and pitch the selection of words to agree and disagree becomes quite important. Here more than the medium of instruction, it’s about the gender and individual behavioural pattern. Another important example of the limitations of subjects, which the author noticed was: when a teacher uses board for discussing a particular aspect of theory or discussing any example, it’s found that the students fail to use appropriate words to express what exactly they couldn’t understand and where is that written on the boardextreme left margin, extreme right margin, at the top, towards the bottom etc. instead they are found using the terms such as—it’s there sir, it’s here sir, or it’s below or above this or that line. It’s certainly not the case that learning and using these a few terms takes a great deal of time but it gives us a clue about not being regular and comfortable entirely in using the language of their business. On this case it has also been found that students, irrespective of their medium of instruction or their gender tend to use these kinds of expressions. The limitation in a subject’s language, during a discourse results in change of medium. Depending on the individual’s competence, this change can be of two types. If the student runs short of exact expression in English but is otherwise competent enough, s/he will resort to switching or code-mixing whereas if the student is running short of words in every sentence, and also just manages to communicate his/her ideas, after a couple o attempts of code-switching/mixing, s/he will resort to Hindi. We will also see in our next sections of discussion what varied kind of challenges these subjects face. But, through the observation it can certainly be summed up that the students from English medium schools are found to be more direct, upfront and also a little arrogant.

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Challenges on Prosodic Dimensions There are some instances of taken from class-room observation which we shall present here to take a sneak-peak into the overall situation of their understanding of this aspect of languaging: I. Let’s take an instance of note-taking in class-room setting. While students take note from casual dictation or elaboration, if they fail to understand or hear something they naturally ask the teacher to repeat it. This communicative ask of asking can be of varied type and this type depends on what background they come from. For instance- they may utter any of the following, depending on their exposure and training: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Please repeat! Sorry! (with rising tone) I’m sorry! Sorry (with falling tone)! Sir…! (after which the teacher looks at the student), sir I couldn’t write. Some of them peep into the note-book of their fellow students and when asked, what are they up to? Then only then open-up, ‘I missed some part’.

If we account for these expressions the background of these students come into play. The expressions 1, 2, 3 almost invariably comes from: (i) the students from cities and (ii) from those who invariably come from English medium of schooling. The fourth expression comes mostly from female students and also rarely from non- English medium background students. Expressions listed in 5 and 6 are invariably the features of the ones who remain a little low-profile, coming from non-exposed to English background. II.

Another interesting though usual observation is that the students from not so exposed to English background defer to seek clarification in the class-room (despite repeated promoting to ask questions, as many they can), they prefer to wait until the class is over. After the class, they approach the teacher concerned and start their question in a low tone and falling short on appropriate words/expressions they switch either completely to Hindi or they switch or mixed English-Hindi. Summarily, the students from Exposed to English background are found more vocal than their non-exposed counterparts, but that doesn’t really reflect through their performance in achievement tests. III. There are some typical phonological features, which have been subject of many more studies in past, that can be easily associated with the place students come from. A student from Bihar and some part of Jharkhand is almost exceptionlessly found struggling with /r/&/R/sound of English. /ú/is another sound which is found not pronounced correctly. Similarly, students from eastern part of Uttar Pradesh have, more often than not, problem with /s//S/and /Z/sounds. The students from UP west, Delhi, Haryana were not really found committing such mistakes. Thus, we can say that the students from UP east,

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55

Bihar and Jharkhand carry more of mother-tongue influence in their English than their counterparts from other parts of the country. IV. As far as the use of proper stress is concerned, they are a few among all 141 who put stress at proper place while speaking English. Most of them have a non-neutral accent, primarily owing to the fact that most of the students use the languages which are primarily considered to be non-stress timed languages. Tone is found almost plain with not much of variation. Though the pitch, while they speak, most often varies. When the students have any strong point to make, their pitch goes up, when they are not-confident of something their pitch goes low. V. Another important point that deserves our attention in this entire discussion is that their use of unusual pitch sometimes makes a ‘polite expression’ (in their understanding) sound impolite. And there are cases wherein the instructors have formally warned the concerned students to behave properly and to learn how to talk to an instructor. VI. Expression of agreement or disagreement in Group discussion or debate requires pragmatism not only in terms of carefully chosen words but also desired articulation. It’s often been observed that students irrespective of the medium of instruction of their schooling are found using high pitch to disagree which sounds really impolite and is uncalled for. Though after rigorous training and lots of practice they kind of restrain themselves but initially they use a high pitch to score point above the other participants. Female students are found relatively quieter while expressing their agreement or disagreement in a group-discussion or a debate. VII. The last point of discussion in this discourse is the use of pause, especially while reading a text. Sometimes some of the classes are devoted to reading exercise in order to make students understand its role in doing reading-comprehension stuff. It’s been found that students coming from no exposure to English during their schooling days always perform inferior to their English mediums schoolgrads. They rather ignore the coma, colon and semi colon and period and continue their reading without any stop or they stop whether their breath ends and disallows them to continue.

Non-verbal Challenges This portion of the book talks about the kinesics, i.e. body language and the proxemics (cf. Hall, 2016). In kinesics we talk about the use of gestures, postures, and eyecontact. Hall (2016) talks about personal and social space but later he added two more aspects to it—intimate and public space and an individual’s perception of these elements. As far as body language is concerned, the students from English medium instruction background have better understanding of these elements of communication and

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also, they do pose positive body language. They establish more eye-contact with the audience while making presentation, talking about an issue etc., they (both male and female students) use better hand-movements to assert their points in comparison to the non-English medium school-grads. As Allan and Barbara Pease (2006) also suggest in their master-piece “The Definitive Book of Body Language’, that exposure is one of the critically important elements in helping an individual use one’s body language positively, the findings from the study also support their claims. It’s not that the non-English medium school-grads don’t use any bodily gestures at all but they are found wanting, particularly with respect to the eye-contact. Because they haven’t had any experience of making presentation prior in their lives they are found nervous and in a huff they commit some non-verbal mistakes which mar the overall impression of their presentation or talk.

Pragmatic Challenges Turn taking in this respect is another thing that the author would like to brief a little on. It’s often found, as per the qualitative data, that when the students from non-English Medium have something to say during a GD, he would find it difficult to hold himself or contain himself. It’s seen that after making the point such students again get calm. Thus, instead of developing the discussion further they drop their argument/logic or factual information they have and they leave it to their communicative more competent counterparts to build an argument out of it. This once again portrays their limitation with the language and the exposure they couldn’t have during their schooling days.

Representative Quantitative Data and Analysis For the sake of clarity and for the ease of organisation of the data, the author intends not to present the entire data in the book. A representative sample data will be interpreted and analysed in the following section of the book. The author intends to present 20% of the population, as we have data size of 141 subjects. We present detailed data, interpretation and analysis of 32–33 subjects. The data is to be filtered on the variables, such as—Geographical, Educational, Economic, Family background so as the repetition and redundancy or discussion on similar data could be avoided. The highest number of subjects belongs to UP west and there is some sort of similarity in their background, which can be traced. In such case, probably data of not all such subjects need to be discussed. The subjects who belong to different states and are less in number are not filtered and their data per se is presented. The author intends to present detailed data of about one fourth of the subjects; that way author will present representative data of 31 subjects. Each subject has been assigned a code, such as: CS1F, CS21M, ME1F, ME5M, wherein first 2 letters are representative of branch and

Representative Quantitative Data and Analysis

57

the following numeric represents the number of the subject within specific branch whereas the last alphabet represents gender of the subject. The data in this chapter has been presented accordingly.

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads The data in tables will be presented, which is to be followed by detailed interpretation and analysis of the performance of individual subject’s data. CS1F Background See Table 4.1. BICS (class-room performance)—10 marks for each component See Table 4.2. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.3. Self-assessment See Table 4.3. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.5 and 4.6. Table 4.1 Background of CS1F Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

SU-UPW

Eng

E and H-PG-HM

H-G-B

3–6 Lac

Avg

5

Table 4.2 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr (10)

Error corr. (10)

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

6

6

5

6

6

6

7

7

Table 4.3 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4

5

4

5

5

5

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Table 4.4 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

5

4

2

3

Hindi

2

4

5

3

Table 4.5 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

10.5

10

10

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

11

9.5

10

Table 4.6 Performance in CALP CALP

Interpretation and Analysis The subject CS1F belongs to a lower middle-class family, which has an average social acceptance in the society. She claims to have started learning English at a young age of 5. Her father is a graduate whereas her mother is a post graduate. So, in all, she gets exposure to English primarily at her school and through formal, informal discussion with friends, seniors and teachers. The author intends to first present the data on Basic interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) which includes questions on basic grammar and composition of English language, such as: Parts of speech (PoS) identification; Subject-verb agreement; Voice-active and passive; Error correction on degrees of comparison, determiners, articles and Narration etc. Whereas the other half of the data (the qualitative one) of BICS comes from oral communication: Pitch, Stress, tone etc.; Kinesics which includes: eye contact and gestures and postures; and the proxemics, which is the art and etiquette of space. One sample question item on each topic of basic grammar is given below to clarify the nature of question as well the level of difficulty of the questions administered. 1. How did Kattapa kill Bahubali? (PoS identification). a. b. c. d. e.

Noun. Preposition. Conjunction. Adjective. Adverb.

2. Neither of those sharks circling your boogie boar____hungry enough to bite (S-V Agr).

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

a. b. c. d. e.

59

looks, look, looked, had looked, none of the above.

3. Her mother bought Mary some sweets (convert into passive). 4. Identify the error-free expression from the following: (error correction). a. b. c. d.

Without your help I must try to carry out my task all alone. Failing your help I must try to carry out my task alone. Barring help from you, I must try to carry out my task alone. Beside help from you, I must try to carry out the task alone.

The first half of the data of her performance, which is extracted through her performance in multiple choice questions indicates that her performance can only be rated as an average performance, whereas the other half of the data which is a qualitative data, gathered through class-room observation, presentation and informal interaction, shows her to be a better-than-average performer. She scores nearly 6 out of 10, i.e. about 60% marks in the BICS, which has questions on basic grammatical structure of English language. Her performance in the BICS matches with her performance in oral communication, whereas in the paralinguistic aspect of communication she appears to be doing a little better by scoring about 75% marks. On the other hand, her performance in Cognitive Aptitude for Linguistic proficiency (CALP) which includes questions which require a relatively higher degree of understanding, such as—Misplaced and Dangling modifiers; Reading comprehension with questions that require information extraction, Clausal Analysis, Nonfinite verbs—usage and kinds, Sentence types—simple, complex, compound and also Prepositions and placement of Adverbs. The examples given below will clarify the nature of the questions and also the level of the difficulty of questions on each topic: 1. While driving on M.G. Road yesterday afternoon, a tree began to fall toward Nikhil’s car (Misplaced modifier). 2. Breakfast was served after getting up in the morning (Dangling modifier). 3. As per the passage, Indian Prime Minister’s role goes beyond the duties related to internal affairs, because (RC). a. b. c. d.

Indian happenings influence the Asian affairs and politics. It is needed to avoid interference of Western powers. It helps strengthen the idea of non-alignment and peaceful co-existence. It helps in coordination among different power blocks.

4. The materials are transported with care until they arrive at the factory (Clausal analysis). a. Adjective clause. b. Verb-less clause.

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c. Adverb clause. d. Noun clause. e. Independent clause. 5. Every cricket team has a captain. He directs the other players (Combine the sentences using Infinitive) (Non-finite verbs). As per the data, she scores less than 50% of the marks in CALP. She scores the least (40%) marks in modifier—dangling and misplaced modifiers, and clausal analysis. Her performance is a little better in RC, Non-finite verbs, Sentence types, and prepositions and adverb and she secures some 50% in questions on these topics. Her performance in classroom test can be validated through her scores in term examinations given above. To test the achievement of the students and also to assign grades the university under study gives 3 term examinations for every course. As discussed already in Chap. 3 this particular course has two components—oral skills and verbal aptitude. For both the components written examination is held. It’s slightly unusual to give examination for oral skills but we plan the exam such that we can test the students’ linguistic ability of expression, building argument, participating in GD etc. Of course, one part of the assessment is classroom observation, presentation, peer-mock interview etc. So, as displayed above in the table, in BICS, she scores 10.5, 10 and 10 out of 15 marks in term- I, II and III exams respectively, which is almost as good as her performance during class-room teaching. On the other hand, in CALP her performance is relatively poor and she ends up scoring 11, 9.5 and 10 (about 50%) out of 20 in term- I, II and III examinations respectively. If we see the self-evaluation of the subject, Table 4.4 presents an interesting situation—despite the fact that she doesn’t have many to communicate with in English and primarily her means of communication in informal domains is almost always Hindi, she claims to have reading skills of 5 on 5, Writing skill of 4 on 5, speaking skills of 2 on 5 and listening skills of 3 on 5 in English. On the other hand, for her mother tongue, Hindi, she claims to have reading skill of 2 on 5, writing skill of 4 on 5, speaking skills of 5 on 5, and listening skills of 3 on 5. CS6F Background See Table 4.7. BICS (class-room performance)—10 marks each component See Table 4.8. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.9. Table 4.7 Background of CS6F Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

UR-BR

Eng

H-G-HM

HE-G-GJ

9–12 Lac

Good

2

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

61

Table 4.8 Performance in BICS PoS

SV agr

Error corr.

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

5

5

5

5

4

6

7.5

7

Table 4.9 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4

4

3

4

5

5

Table 4.10 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

Hindi

4

2

3

5

2

3

5

Table 4.11 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

8

9

9

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

10

9

9

Table 4.12 Performance in CALP CALP

Self-evaluation See Table 4.10. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.11 and 4.12.

Interpretation and Analysis The subject CS6F belongs to an upper middle-class family. Her family enjoys a high social acceptance as her father is a government servant with good salary. The subject gets exposure of English both inside and out of family. Her parents, as she claims, are communicatively competent in English and thus she started learning English language at a very early age of 2. Her father is a graduate and works with a govt. organization; her mother too is a graduate and is a homemaker. She is native to a semi-urban town from UP west and at present, she stays at the university hostel.

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Very much like the data of CS1F, the data of CS6F too will be presented. That way, first the data of her performance in BICS exams will be discussed, followed by the data of her performance in CALP. These two data points will be validated through her performance in Achievement tests. The data of BICS on basic grammar is a disappointing considering the fact she started learning English at an early age of 2. In fact, she scores on an average of less than 50%, with narration being the weakest of all; in rest all—PoS, SV Agr and error-correction she gets half of them right. It will be relevant to mention here that on each of these topics of basic grammar, each subject was asked to do 20 questions on each of the topic more than once, in classroom setting. The data being presented and discussed here are collected in a long duration of time, mostly in classroom setting; in the form of Quiz or a surprise test etc. It is equally important and relevant here to decree that the mark ‘out of 10’ has been reached at by taking the average of the subjects’ performance in multiple tests. The other half of the BICS data displays a little better performance, wherein she is graded 6 out of 10 in oral skills, and still better in para-linguistics—Kinesics and Proxemics. The performance of CS6F in CALP is relatively poor. She has scored as low as 30% in clausal analysis, this translates as—she could answer only 3 questions correctly out of the given 10. She has performed a little better in Modifier, Reading comprehension and non-finite with 40% of marks. She manages to answer 50% of the questions correctly on preposition and Adverbs and on sentence types. The data of her marks in achievement test in all three terms are—8, 9, 9 (out of 15). The average of her marks out of 45 is about 57%, which is again not very good and matches with her classroom performance of about 60%. As far as CS6F’s performance in CALP is concerned, she has scored much lesser than the BICS scores. She has barely managed to score 50% marks in term-I, 45% in term-II and term-III each. So, in totality, she stands at about 46% marks. If we compare her classroom performance with that of achievement tests, she looks following the same pattern of marks. Both, the marks of classroom and that of achievement tests are very much comparable. This way, the analysis of CS1F and CS6F clearly validates that both the tests and their results are in sync with each other. CS11F Background See Table 4.13. BICS (class-room performance)—10 marks each component See Table 4.14. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.15. Table 4.13 Background of CS11F Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

UR-UPW

Hindi

HE-PG-J

HE-PG-J

4–6 Lac

Good

6

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Table 4.14 Performance in BICS PoS

SV agr

Error corr.

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

7

6

7

6

7

6

5.5

6

Table 4.15 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis

Non-finite

Sentence types

Prep. and Adv. 10

6.5

7

6

6

7

6

Table 4.16 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

Hindi

2

1

2

4

5

4

3

Table 4.17 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

11

11

12

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

13

15

13

Table 4.18 Performance in CALP CALP

Self-evaluation See Table 4.16. Performance in Achievement tests See Table 4.17 and 4.18.

Interpretation and Analysis CS11F is an untypical case. This female subject received her entire education from state board (non-English medium schools). She belongs to a middle-class family from UP west. Her father and mother both are working and they together earn decent amount. She claims to have a modest social acceptance of her family. The important point is that she started learning English at the age of 6, through her parents as both of them speak Hindi and English languages but she doesn’t receive much of English from outside her family because the education she received till 12th standard was all

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imparted in Hindi. Whatever little English she must have picked up from outside her family would be in one of her subject papers of English. Performance of CS11F is much better than that of previous 2 subjects. In both BICS and CALP, she has outnumbered the earlier 2. The data on her performance at BICS reveals that she secured about 75% marks in BICS pertaining to basic English grammar, she does equally well in oral communication and para-linguistics section of BICS. She scores 7 on 10 in PoS questions, 6 in SV agreement, 7 in error correction, 6 in voice, 7 in narration. So, in all, as far as questions on basic grammatical input are concerned, she does fairly good by scoring about 6.5 out of 10. She is a little less fluent in oral communication and secures about 6 out of 10, which given her background is good. She is graded 5.5 in kinesics and 6 in proxemics. As far as her performance in CALP goes, it’s impressive! CS11F secures 6.5 out of 10, 7 in Reading comprehension, 6 in clausal-analysis, 6 in non-finite, 7 in sentence types, and 6 in preposition and adverb, 7 in Reading comprehension is anytime a very good score. Her score in RC displays that she doesn’t only have good understanding and sense of English language but also, she does have good analytical aptitude. An important prerequisite to score high in RC is analytical aptitude. Her score on every other topic of CALP is quite good. It’s also important to keep in the mind that she has had limited exposure of English in her schooling. One thing can clearly be made out that the subject must have made sincere efforts to improve her proficiency in English. Another inference about CS11F can be easily drawn that she has done well not only in BICS but also in CALP, which is again appreciable. As far as the marks in achievement tests are concerned, CS11F outperforms her own performance in classroom. In classroom setting she scores about 60% in BICS whereas in achievement test it’s drastically up and she scores as high as nearly 73%. If the score of classroom performance fails to account for the score of achievement test, one reason which can simply be that she could write the things on paper but because her limitation in oral skills she finds it difficult to convey in the classroom. She scored good in CALP achievement test as well and she did secure about 67% marks which is quite comparable with her marks in CALP in classroom setting. Once we find that her score of CALP in classroom and achievement test are similar our logic of accounting her inefficiency in oral skills that resulted in her poor marks in classroom settings stays justified and valid. We find something surprising about the subject CS11F that is—she underestimates her language skills. The 2 subjects whose description and analysis have been presented before CS11F’s, had scored fairly lower in both BICS and CALP but they had assessed themselves much higher on the 4 skills of—LSRW. CS11F assesses herself as following. She gives herself 3 of 5 in reading skills of English, 1 out of 5 in writing, 2 out of 5 in speaking, and 4 in listening skills in English. It’s very surprising that she assesses herself below average in writing skills but on the contrary her writing sample of about 10 lines doesn’t show error of spelling nor that of subject-verb agreement. So, in definitive terms it can be said that the subject undervalues her skills and underestimates herself. Even through personal informal and formal encounters with

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

65

the subjects I vividly recall that she didn’t have much issue with her language though she found it difficult to talk in English but she was very committed, hard-working and sincere graduating student. CS16F Background See Table 4.19. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.20. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.21. Self-evaluation See Table 4.22. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.23 and 4.24. Table 4.19 Background of CS11F Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

RU-UPW

Hindi

H-12-HM

H-G-J

Below 3 Lac

Below avg

7

Table 4.20 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice

Narration

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics 10

Proxemics 10

6

6

5

5

6

5

5.5

5.5

Table 4.21 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

5

5

5

5.5

5

5

Table 4.22 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

5

3

1

4

Hindi

2

3

4

5

66

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.23 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

7

12

9

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

8.5

10.5

10.5

Table 4.24 Performance in CALP CALP

Interpretation and Analysis CS16F is the first of the lot who stays with her parents and belongs to a village which is nearby the institute under study. She has had her formal schooling in Hindi medium schools always. She comes from a low-income group family with a low social recognition of the family in society. Her mother is a home-maker and couldn’t continue her studies after intermediate studies, while her father is the sole breadwinner of the family, who is a graduate and he does some job. Her parents are proficient in Hindi and use only that language for communication. The subjects CS16F reads only Hindi newspapers. She likes to write poems sometimes. Quite apparently, the subject has had a very low exposure of English language both inside and outside her house before she joined the university for her BTech course. As she herself has graded her spoken English 1 on 5, similar kind of reflection can be seen in her classroom performance. In terms of basic grammar, she succeeds in answering questions only 55%. She answers 6 correct out of 10 in PoS, she does equally good in questions on Sub-verb agreement wherein she succeeds answering some 60% of questions. As far as error-correction and finding the error/erroneous part of a sentence is concerned her success rate is about 50%. She has similar strike rate in the questions on voice conversion questions and she does it 50% of accuracy, whereas she fares a little better in narration and does 6 out of 10 correct in classroom setting. We also need to keep it in mind here that this performance is in BICS wherein the level of difficulty of questions is relatively lesser than that in the case of CALP. On the other hand, her oral communication skills require some work on it and she scores exactly about 50% of marks in her oral presentations (which has not much to do with the content, the marks are assigned on her tone, stress, voice-modulation etc.). The subject again has limitation with her non-verbal mannerisms—as in maintaining eye-contact, displaying confidence while making presentation, using hands and other gestures effectively. If we see her performance in CALP, she is overall 50% ier. If we analyse her performance topic wise—in answering the questions on misplaced and dangling modifier she succeeds by half of the time and fails half of the time. As far as reading comprehension is concerned, despite her claim in her self-assessment of being outstanding, she doesn’t display it through her performance in classroom settings. She

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

67

has been able to locate the right answer of RC questions only 5 time out of given 10. Though we need to reiterate the point here the RC is much more than just one’s reading ability but much beyond. Although there can be no denial that if one has good rate of reading, it will certainly help in going through the text quickly but drawing inferences and locating the correct answer out of 5 very proximate given options makes it very difficult to score good marks in English. And also, this CALP exam also tests a student on his/her time-managing skills. Sometime it has been observed by the author during class-room teaching that even ‘good students’ also make mistakes in Reading comprehension questions because many a times as soon as a student feels that s/he has got the answer to his particular question s/he stops reading there and switches to the next question, where in the very next line the earlier position (which student believes answers his question) is negated by a clause beginning with however, nonetheless, nevertheless etc. In the questions on clausal analysis also, she does no better and has a success rate of 50%. The subject does only a little better in questions on non-finite and her score, increasing marginally reaches 5.5 out of 10. In the rest 2 question types, viz.—sentence types—identification and conversion and second on preposition and adverb- identification, identifying error and doing away the error, she has same 50% marks in both of them. If we see her performance in the achievement tests, it is matching to the classroom performance. We find some variation in her marks in term- I, II and III. In term-I she scores mere 7 out of 15, which is quite less than 50%, but she improves a good deal and scores 12 in the second term. But she again drops to 9, though still better than I term marks. It can be clearly seen that she is not consistent in her performance. As far as her performance in CALP goes, she is much consistent and she scores 8.5, 10.5 and 10.5 in term- I, II and III respectively. So, on an average her performance in achievement test of BICS component is about 60% which is comparable with her performance in class-room setting. Similarly, her performance in CALP in classroom is nearly 50% which is very similar to her performance in achievement test. CS20F Background See Table 4.25. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.26. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.27. Self-evaluation See Table 4.28.

Table 4.25 Background of CS20F Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ru-UPE

Eng

H-G-J

HE-PG-B

3 Lac

Avg

5

68

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.26 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

6.5

6

5.5

6.5

6

6.5

6

6.5

Table 4.27 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

5.5

4.5

4.5

5.5

6

5

Table 4.28 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

Hindi

2

1

2

4

5

4

3

Table 4.29 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

11

11

12

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

9

9

12

Table 4.30 Performance in CALP CALP

Performance in Achievement test See Tables 4.29 and 4.30.

Interpretation and Analysis This description is the last one for the female subjects from computer science branch. The subject CS20F comes from a rural place of Uttar Pradesh east. Her father and mother both are working. Father is a post graduate and can speak Hindi and English languages whereas her mother is a graduate and she speaks Hindi language. Her family’s social acceptance is just average and her parents earn about 3 Lac per annum. She went to English medium school for instruction. She never feels like writing, reads some science fiction casually, likes to listen songs.

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

69

As far as her performance in BICS in class-room setting goes, her performance averages to about 60%. She scores 6.5 in questions on Parts of speech identification with respect to grammatical and functional category both, in subject-verb agreement she scores 6, in error correction she scores 5.5, in voice she scores 6.5, and also in narration she scores 6. Thus, her on-an-average score in basic grammar reaches to 6. As far as her understanding in advanced level of grammar is concerned, she is found wanting. Her performance in CALP dips to 50% from her performance in BICS. Coming on to validation of these classroom performances, let’s match classroom performance with that in the achievement test. In achievement test of BICS, she scores 11, 11, 12 (out of 15 each) in term- I, II and III exams respectively. These scores are very good and the average of these scores clocks to 75% which is much more than her classroom performance. Average of her class-room performance is about 63% but she does better in actual examinations for grading. On the other hand, for CALP her average of class-room performance is around 50%, which is very close to the average of achievement test marks. She has scored 9, 9 and 12 (out of 20) in term- I, II, and III respectively, which averages to 50%. If we see her self-assessment in LSRW skills, she grades her writing skills to be the worst of these all. She spends only 1 for her it out of 5. Perhaps the subject takes her limitation in writing very seriously. Her limitation with writing overtly displays in her written sample wherein the problems with sub-verb concord can be easily noticed. She doesn’t seem very content with her spoken skills as well, and the subject grades herself 2 on 5. For the remaining two skills—reading and listening in English, she assigns herself 3 and 4 respectively. As far as her LSRW skills in Hindi go—she finds herself the worst in reading skills and she isn’t ready to assign herself more than just 2 but she looks quite content with her writing skills in Hindi and she assigns herself full marks. She believes her spoken skills in Hindi to be very close to perfect. She gives her spoken Hindi 4. She finds that her listening skill in Hindi is not really up to the mark and she assigns herself 3 out of 5. CS21M Background See Table 4.31. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.32. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.33. Self-evaluation See Table 4.34. Table 4.31 Background of CS21 Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ru-UPW

Hindi

H-12-HM

H-8-shop

Bel 3 Lac

Bel avg

12

70

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.32 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics 10

Proxemics

5

4.5

5

5

5.5

4.5

4

4

Table 4.33 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

5.5

4.5

4.5

5.5

5.5

5

Table 4.34 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

Hindi

3

2

1

3

2

4

5

Table 4.35 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

7

8

8

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

11.5

8

10

Table 4.36 Performance in CALP CALP

Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.35 and 4.36.

Interpretation and Analysis The first subject from male candidates comes from a humble background. His parents have unfortunately had very limited formal schooling. His father couldn’t continue his education beyond 8th standard, whereas his mother has had formal education till 12th standard. His father runs a grocery store and his mother runs the house chores. As per the subject his family has below average social acceptance and his father manage to earn less than 3 Lac annually. In all, he comes from a disadvantaged background, with no English education and very little exposure to the avenues, such as—English newspaper, English movies, English (text) books etc., through which

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

71

he by himself could have earned some English. It will be interesting to see how he progresses and survives BICS and CALP courses at the university. Beginning with his performance in BICS, he is found particularly weak in oral skills and he could fetch only 4.5 marks in oral communication, use of kinesics and proxemics during presentation, just a minute session etc. As far as his understanding of basic grammatical structure of English is concerned, the situation there too is not very exciting. He manages to score on average of 50%. He secured 5 each in Parts of speech, voice, and error correction; 4.5 in sub-verb agreement, and 5.5 in narration. His overall score is about 50% in basic grammar section of BICS, whereas in the oral communication, Kinesics and proxemics section, he is found more wanting and could meagrely score 4.5 each in oral communication and only 4 each in his efficiency to use kinesics and proxemics. Thus, his non exposure to English in his schooling days comes out clearly in his graduating time. His a little better score in basic grammar can be credited to training he must have received during his schooling days wherein, like all other non-English medium schools, he must have been given input on rules of grammar, sentence formation, tense etc. and also to the input he must have received in his first and successive year of graduation. As far as the subject’s performance in CALP is concerned, he is found succeeding in similar fashion. His scores on individual topics are—5.5 in modifiers, 4.5 in Reading Comprehension, 4.5 in clausal analysis, 5.5 in non-finites, 5.5 in sentence types, and 5 in prepositions and adverbials (all out of 10). This way, he has equal competence in modifiers, non-finites, and sentence types wherein he has attained the highest marks, i.e. 55%, which given his background will be considered to be a decent performance. He comes out to be equally proficient in RC and clausal analysis, where he barely manages 4.5 in each. He scores just a little better in prepositions and adverbials by getting 5 marks. In totality, the subject looks like overcoming deficiencies of language through the input of classroom activities. As per our structure of data presentation, we will now look at his performance in achievement tests. As per the record of his grades—he attained 7 marks in his term I BICS exam, 8 marks in his term II exam, and again 8 marks in his Term-III exam. All these marks are out of 15 marks. In other words, he scored, in totality, 23 marks out of 45 marks which is just above 50%, which is as good as his performance in the class-room activities. Given the fact that he didn’t have much English in his schooling days, he can be discounted for his given performance. But the important point is that the data of achievement test more often than not validates the marks of class-room observation and result of class-room activity. Similarly, in achievement test of CALP, in the first term of examination, he manages a decently okay 11.5 out of 20, which is a little less than 60% marks but in the nest term, he fails to maintain the tempo and manages to score only 8 marks out of 20, that translates to a decline of 20% in marks from the previous term. In Term-III examination, he manages to score 10 marks out of 20 which translates to 50% marks, thus his overall marks in CALP remains just a little less than 50% which again is

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.37 Background of CS26M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

CC-HR

English

H-G-HM

H-G-Busi

3–6 Lac

Good

4

Table 4.38 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics 10

Proxemics

4.5

4.5

4

4.5

4.5

6

5.5

6

Table 4.39 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

3

3

3

4

3.5

4

Table 4.40 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

5

Hindi

5

4

3

2

4

3

2

Table 4.41 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

8

4

12

comparable to that of his classroom performance wherein the subject has secured just 50% marks. CS26M Background See Table 4.37. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.38. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.39. Self-evaluation See Table 4.40. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.41 and 4.42.

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

73

Table 4.42 Performance in CALP CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

5

6.5

6

Interpretation and Analysis The subject CS26M comes from an urban setting, whose schooling took place in a metropolitan city. He has had his schooling in English medium school throughout. His parents receive decent acceptance in the society. His father, who is a graduate, runs a business for living and earns decent amount of money. His mother on the other hand is also a graduate and she looks after the house chores. The subject started learning English at young age of 4. As a graduating youth he prefers using English as he claims it in the questionnaire. He has rented a flat in nearby area and stays there, which means he doesn’t stay in university hostel. He prefers and reads only 1 newspaper, that is, The Times of India. He is not much into reading, as he says though he grades himself 5 on 5 as can be seen in Table 4.40. There is a contradiction in hi claim—in the questionnaire he claims that he native like command of English language but in later part of questionnaire where he is asked to grade his command in English on all the four skills, he doesn’t give himself full grade. Beginning with his performance in BICS, he is found decently good in oral skills. He is graded 5.5 in oral communication whereas his non-verbal mannerism is also found to be okay. He is graded 5 for his kinesics and 6 for his proxemics (all out of 10). The other half of the BICS which is on and about basic grammatical input of English, he scores much inferior than his performance in oral skills. If we see his topic-wise performance, it’s like—4.5 in PoS, 4.5 in sub-verb agreement, 4 in error-correction, 4.5 in voice, and 4.5 in narration as well. So, his performance dips to more than 10%. It’s very clear that he is able to speak the language but his sense about the concepts of grammar is perhaps not decently in place. An important point is that the only skill to which he grades himself excellent is, reading. A full 5 on 5, but unfortunately his performance in reading comprehension in classroom setting doesn’t make any such reflection. His cumulative performance, for all the RC sheets done in the classroom, clocks to 3 out of 10, which doesn’t essentially reflect the skill of a native. On the other topics of CALP as well he is found equally wanting. His performance in dangling and misplaced modifiers is 3 out of 10, in clausal analysis also he is found performing no better and scores exactly the same marks as the previous 2. He is found better in non-finite and preposition and adverb section wherein he scores 4 each. But again, in case of sentence types— identification and conversion she clocks to 3.5. In this way, his overall performance in CALP indicates that he needs to work a good deal in order to clear High-stake examinations. If we talk of his marks in achievement test in both BICS and CALP, CS26M projects similar efficiency there as well. There is something intriguing about his

74

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

performance—inconsistency. He scores 8 in term-I examination, 4 in term-II examination and 12 in term-III examination. Such a wide variation in the achievement test marks is definitely puzzling. Given his educational and social background he can be expected to perform well in oral examination which he does but perhaps his limitation with basic grammar of English dented his prospects of scoring high in term-Ii examination. Though he ended up scoring very good in the term-III examination. Noteworthy point is that despite his good performance in the term-III exam, his overall percentage of marks in BICS remains as low as 50%. His performance in classroom clocks to 48%, which is very much matching with his performance in BICS performance in achievement test. In achievement test result he has following performance—5 out of 20 in term-I, 6.5 in 20 in term-II and 6 out of 20 in term-III. Overall the average of performance reaches to 38% in achievement test, which is very close to his performance in classroom setting. Thus, the results of achievement test validate the data of classroom performance. The subject being discussed here feels that he has equal competence in all the four skills in both Hindi and English. He grades himself as the following on LSRW: For listening he assigns himself 2 in both English and Hindi. For speaking skills, he rates himself 3 on 5 again for both Hindi and English, whereas for reading and writing skills he credits himself 5 and 4 respectively, in Hindi and English. CS31M Background See Table 4.43. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.44. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.45. Self-evaluation See Table 4.46. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.47 and 4.48. Table 4.43 Background Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

U-UPw

Eng

H-G-HM

HE-PG-GJ

6–9 Lac

Very high

5

Table 4.44 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics 10

Proxemics 10

6

5.5

6

6.5

6

6.5

5.5

6

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

75

Interpretation and Analysis The subject belongs to a decently well-off family from a small city. He has had his schooling in the same city through English medium instruction schools. His father holds a postgraduate degree and works for some government organization and can speak Hindi and English. His mother is a graduate and is a homemaker. The subject CS31M reads Hindi and English newspapers and he is not that into writing habit. As far as his performance in classroom is concerned, he is decently ok in BICS but is relatively inferior in CALP. His overall performance in BICS is that of above 60%. If we talk of topic-wise specific performance, he has equal hold on oral communication and non-verbal mannerisms and also on basic grammar topics. He scored 6 out of 10 in Parts of speech questions, 5.5 in Sub-verb agreement, 6 in error correction, 6.5 in voice, and in narration he scored 6 out of 10. He scored equally well in grammar related questions and got 6.5 in his oral skills, 5.5 on his kinesics, and 6 on his proxemics. His overall grade in BICS goes above 60%. CALP looks like being tough for him. His scores on none of the topics of CALP look convincing. He is found particularly weak in RC wherein he scored just 3.5 out of 10, a little better in modifiers, clausal analysis and preposition and adverb where he scores 4 out of 10 on each of these topics. The subject has a little better understanding of non-finites and sentence types where he scores 4.5 on each. These scores are in CALP are not up to the mark. Moving on to the subject’s performance in achievement test, in BICS he has shown progressive improvement. In term-I exam he scored 9 marks, in term-II he scored 10 marks and in term-III he succeeded in scoring 12 marks (out of 15). If we see the performance in BICS, he looks such a promising student but unfortunately that’s not the situation in CALP. His overall score in BICS is 68% which establishes a very synchronic correlation between the performance in the classroom setting and that in the achievement test. His performance in CALP test presents an entirely different picture altogether. Though the term-III marks are better than the rest of the 2 terms’ marks, but inferior marks in term-I and term-II don’t let his score soar high. The subject scored 8, 6.5 and 11.5 in term- I, II and III respectively. All these scores are out of 20 marks. Thus, his overall percentage clocks to about 43%, which is whopping 25% less than the score of BICS. If we compare the two scores (Class-room performance and achievement test performance) they are pretty much similar. CS36M Background See Table 4.49. Table 4.45 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4

3.5

4

4.5

4.5

4

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.46 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

2

3

4

4

Hindi

3

3

5

4

Table 4.47 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

9

10

12

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

8

6.5

11.5

Table 4.48 Performance in CALP CALP

BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.50. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.51. Self-evaluation See Table 4.52. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.53 and 4.54. Table 4.49 Background of CS36M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

R-UPw

Hindi

H-8-HM

H-PG-GJ

3–6 Lac

Low

10

Table 4.50 Performance in BIC PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics 10

Proxemics 10

7

6.5

7

6.5

6.5

4

4

4

Table 4.51 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

6.5

6

5.5

6

7

6

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

77

Table 4.52 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

3

2

5

Hindi

5

4

2

3

Table 4.53 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

9

10

12

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

13

14.5

13

Table 4.54 Performance in CALP CALP

Interpretation and Analysis The subject whose data we are going to discuss here comes from a rural area, with all his schooling education from non-English medium school. As per the subject his family enjoys a relatively low social acceptance. He doesn’t read any English newspaper. He also claims that he has no writing habit and he reads whatever he finds interesting, no specific choice for reading. Coming to his performance in the class-room setting, as mentioned already, the subject didn’t really perform to his potential. In BICS, we find a contrast in oral communication and his understanding of basic grammar. In oral communication and non-verbal mannerism section, he scores on average off 40%, precisely 4 marks each out of 10 in oral communication, kinesics and proxemics, whereas in basic grammar section, the average of his marks is close to 70%. Thus, we see a huge gap of about 30% in these two skill sets. His topic wise scores are—7 on 10 in PoS, and error correction each, 6.5 on 10 in s-v agreement, voice and narration each. It’s explicitly clear here that he is particularly weak in spoken English and paraphernalia, but he is decently good with his grammar. If we evaluate his performance in CALP, there too he doesn’t fail to do decently okay. The subject manages to score above 60% in this section of verbal aptitude. He scores 6.5 in modifiers, 6 in reading comprehension, 5.5 in clausal analysis, 6 in non-finites, 7 in sentence types and conversion and 6 in prepositions and adverbials. Given his background of non-English instruction school and rural background, this score in CALP is appreciable. If we compare these class-room performances with that in the achievement tests we find sync in these, nonetheless we find that his performance in class-room is a little inferior than what we see in achievement tests, although the gap isn’t very wide. In BICS he scores 55% marks in achievement test whereas classroom performance clocks to 51%, whereas his performance in CALP in class-room on an

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

average, reaches to 61% and his achievement test performance clocks to 67%. This has reference to his schooling background, wherein he neither not got exposed to much of English nor did he himself have avenues to use much of English. One thing which is quite significant in his performance and can clearly be noticed, that is his consistency, for instance—he scores 8 in term-I of BICS, 9 in term-II, again 8 in term-III (out of 15). Similarly, his performance in CALP also follows the similar pattern of scoring. He scores 13 in term-I, 14.5 in term-II and 13 again in term-III. CS41M Background See Table 4.55. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.56. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.57. Self-evaluation See Table 4.58. Achievement tests See Tables 4.59 and 4.60. Table 4.55 Background of CS41M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

U-UPe

Eng

H-G-HM

HE-12-J

3–6 Lac

Low

5

Table 4.56 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice

Narration

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics 10

6

5.5

5.5

5.5

5.5

6.5

6.5

6.5

Table 4.57 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4

4

4

4.5

5

5

Table 4.58 Self-assessment of subject on RWSL Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

2

4

1

Hindi

4

3

5

2

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

79

Table 4.59 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

10

9

8

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

7

8.25

11.5

Table 4.60 Performance in CALP CALP

Interpretation and Analysis The subject belongs to an urban place from UP east, has had his schooling from English medium school. His father didn’t have much of education, he could attain only his schooling degree and does some job. His mother, on the other hand, is a graduate and is a home-maker. His family doesn’t enjoy a high social acceptance. The subject CS41M, for graduating degree, stays at university hostel, at present. The economic condition of his family is just average and so is his family’s social standing. As far as the subject’s language proficiency is concerned, it would not be unfair to say that he, despite having attained his entire education through English medium educational institutes, is just average in this respect. To be specific, his overall languaging in oral communication is at 6.5 on 10, in basic grammatical understanding is just about 5.5 on 10 and in CALP is much inferior viz. 4.5 on 10. The grades earned by the subject in achievement tests are not much different from that earned in the class-room setting. His term-wise BICS score (out of 15) are—10, 9, 8; which together make it to 60%, which is alright. Though his performance in CALP is not equally satisfactory where he scores 7 in term-I, 8.25 in term-II, and 11.5 in term-III. The only positive take-away point of this result can be his a little improvement in each successive term. But that doesn’t really suffice and he ends up scoring just 45% marks in totality. The performance in class-room and achievement test matches each other. His selfassessment about LSRW is what helps us determine his perception about himself. He grades his reading skills in English 3 on 5, his writing skills 2 on 5, speaking 4 on 5, and surprisingly just 1 out of 5 to listening skills. He also grades his listening skills in Hindi low and assigns just 2 on 5. The subject assigns 5 on 5 to his speaking skills in Hindi, 3 on 5 to his writing skills and 4 on 5 to his reading skills. CS46M Background See Table 4.61. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.62. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.63.

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.61 Background of CS46M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

U-J and K

Eng

H-12-HM

HE-G-GJ

6–9 Lac

High

14

Table 4.62 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics 10

Proxemics 10

5

5

5.5

5.5

5.5

6

6

5.5

Table 4.63 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

3.5

4

3.5

4.5

4

4

Table 4.64 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

Hindi

4

4

2

5

2

5

3

Table 4.65 Performance in BICS (achievement test) BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

9

8

8.5

Table 4.66 Performance in CALP (achievement test) CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

8

8

8.5

Self-evaluation See Table 4.64. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.65 and 4.66.

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

81

Interpretation and Analysis The subject CS46M is from urban area of Jammu. At present, for studies, he is staying in a rented room near university campus. His father is a government servant who holds a graduate degree and is comfortable using Hindi and English. His mother couldn’t attain much of education and is just 12th pass and looks after the family. The earning of his family is between 6 and 9 Lac and it enjoys a high social acceptance. Perhaps, the subject misunderstood the question, ‘at what age did you first begin learning English?’ which he replies—‘at 14’. Although his entire education has taken place in English medium schools, so there is no doubt that he must have started learning English much before he was 14. Perhaps the subject though the question to be, ‘when the subject by himself started making efforts to learn English’. Talking of his performance in class-room setting, the subject, like other English medium students, is better in oral communication skills, wherein he scores 6 on 10 in oral skills, 6 in kinesics, 5.5 in proxemics. His performance in BICS’ other aspectbasic grammar, is a little inferior to that in oral communication. He scores 5 in PoS, 5 in s-v agreement, 5.5 in error-correction, 5.5 each in voice and narration. Thus, his overall score in BICS clocks to around 55%. His performance in CALP is much inferior to his performance in BICS. He manages around 40% in achievement test of CALP but his class-room performance is slightly poorer than that. He scores 3.5 in modifiers, 4 in RC, 3.5 in clausal analysis, 4.5 in non- finite, 4 each in sentence types and prepositions and adverbials. If we see the gap in these two aspects of language proficiency, a marked gap can be noticed. The gap is of about 15%. That once again proves the inference about difference between BICS and CALP being right. In BICS the subject manages to score 9, 8 and 8.5 (out of 15) in term- I, II and III respectively, in achievement tests. His score (out of 20) in CALP is 8, 8, 8.5 which translates CALP proficiency to 40%. Surprisingly the subject looks like underestimating his oral skills in selfassessment but he was found decent in classroom as far as oral communication is concerned. He grades his spoken English 2 on 5, 5 on 5 to his listening skills in English, 3 to his reading skills, 4 to his writing skills, though his writing sample shows much errors of pronominal reference and sub-verb agreement. His assessment about his skills in Hindi is a little confusing. He rates his spoken Hindi 5 on 5 but to his listening skills 3 on 5. He grades 2 to his writing skills, which can be understood because of his schooling and family background. He again surprisingly grades his reading skills 4 on 5. Overall, the subject strengthens the reader’s view on BICS and CALP. And also does his performance in both class-room and achievement tests to the author’s view on the impact of English medium schools on BICS and CALP. CS51M Background See Table 4.67.

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.67 Background of CS51M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

CC-RJ

Eng

H-PG-HM

HE-PG-J

3–6 Lac

Good

2

Table 4.68 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics 10

Proxemics 10

6

6

5

4.5

5.5

5

5.5

5.5

Table 4.69 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

5

4.5

5.5

5.5

5

5.5

Table 4.70 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

Hindi

3

5

3

2

2

1

4

Table 4.71 Performance in BICS (achievement test) BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

9

11

9

Table 4.72 Performance in CALP (achievement test) CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

12

10.5

9.5

BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.68. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.69. Self-evaluation See Table 4.70. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.71 and 4.72.

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

83

Interpretation and Analysis The subject CS51M belongs to the capital city of Rajasthan. He has had his schooling at his native place, through English medium instruction schools. His father holds a postgraduate degree and is into job and uses English and Hindi languages for communication. The mother of the subject too holds a postgraduate degree and is a homemaker. The is interested in reading science fiction and he wants to improving his speaking and drafting skills. Coming on to his class-room performance in BICS, he scored 6 on 10 in PoS and subject-verb agreement, 5 in error-correction, 4.5 in voice, 5.5 in narration, 7 in oral skills, 6.5 in kinesics and 6.5 in proxemics. Thus, overall percentage of marks in classroom context in BICS is around 59%. His performance in CALP is not up to the mark. He scored 5 in modifiers, 4.5 in RC, 5.5 each in clausal analysis and non-finite, 5 in sentence types, 5.5 in prepositions and adverbials. Thus, overall score in CALP in classroom setting is 54%. If we compare the scores of achievement test with that of the classroom setting, we don’t find much of a difference. In fact, it is too minimal to be identified as difference. In achievement test of BICS the subject has scored 9, 11 and 9 (all out of 15) in term- I, II and III exam respectively, which in totality clocks to about 63%. On the other hand, following the same pattern of scoring, in CALP the subject has scored 53% by the means of scoring 12, 10.5, 9.5 in term- I, II and III respectively (out of 20). Incidentally, there is not a very wide gap in his performance in BICS and CALP, it is nearly 10%, which is okay; given the fact in some of the cases we have also seen the difference as wide as more than 25% or so. If we talk of his self-assessment of LSRW skills—he really believes that he better sense of English than that of Hindi. In fact, in each of the four skills he has given himself more marks to his skills in English language. He gives 4 on 5 to his reading skills (though it doesn’t reflect through his marks in RC), 5 on 5 to his writing skills, which stands controversial because his writing sample has not only problems of sub-verb agreement but also of failing to give a complete sense of the structure. The subject claims that his listening skills in English are 3 on 5 whereas his speaking skills are 2 on 5, which reflects rather higher through his classroom performance. As far as observation about his Hindi is concerned, he grades himself his reading skills in Hindi as 3 on 5, writing skills 2 on 5, and spoken skills 1 on 5 and his listening skills 4 on 5. His marks for his skills in Hindi can be justified because the place he belongs to doesn’t have Hindi as its native language. Though people from the capital city understand and use Hindi but Rajasthani is structurally quite different from what Hindi is. It also helps us establish the multi-linguistic and multi-cultural nature of the learning environment. CS56M Background See Table 4.73. BICS (class-room performance)

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.73 Background of CS56M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ur-UK

Eng

HE-PG-HM

HE-PG-J

9–12 Lac

High

3

Table 4.74 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics

8

8.5

7.5

8

8

9

8

8

Table 4.75 Performance in CAL Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal Analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

8

8

7

8

7

8

Table 4.76 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

2

3

5

4

Hindi

2

3

4

5

Table 4.77 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

12

12

12

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

15

15.5

15.25

Table 4.78 Performance in CALP CALP

See Table 4.74. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.75. Self-evaluation See Table 4.76. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.77 and 4.78.

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

85

Interpretation and Analysis The subject is exceptionally good and different in the sense that he is the only candidate in the analyses done so far who is almost equally good in both BICS and CALP. Though he grades himself only 2 on 5 in reading skill in English, he is found to be good in RC, in both class-room setting as well as in the achievement test performance. The subject CS56M is from an urban area of Uttarakhand, which came in existence as 27th state of India in the year 2000. At present, for studies, he stays at the university hostel. He likes to read autobiography of famous people, though he says that he doesn’t have habit of writing. He loves watching documentaries. He claims further that he started learning English at a very young age of 3. As far as his parents are concerned, both mother and father are post grads, and speak Hindi and English language. His mother is home-maker whereas his father does some decent job which gets his family 9–12 Lac/annum. As per him, they enjoy high acceptance in the society. The subject also says that a young graduate his preferred medium for communication is English followed by Hindi. If we detail his performance in BICS in classroom, it is very good. He scores 8 on 10 in PoS, voice and narration each, he scores slightly lower in error-correction wherein he scores 7.5 and he scored 8.5 in sub-verb agreement. As far as his spoken skills are concerned, he I equally good there as well. He scores 9 in overall communication skills, 8.5 each in kinesics and proxemics. His overall score thus clocks to about 81%. On the other hand, his performance in CALP too is good. Topic-wise his performance is as—8 each in modifiers, RC, non-finites, and prepositions and adverbials, and 7 each in clausal analysis and sentence types/conversion. His overall performance in CALP in class-room setting is around 76%. Coming on to compare the subject’s performance in class-room setting with the achievement test performance—we find that the subject has been the most consistent of all the candidates discussed so far. He scored 12 each (out of 15) in all the 3 terms: term- I, II and III of BICS. No more, no less! In CALP also he has equally consistent performance—he scored 15 in term-I, 15.5 in term-II, and 15.25 in term-III. There are two important take-away points in his performance: (i) he has been quite consistent. (ii) The gap between his marks of BICS and CALP is lowest of the all discussed above. If we see his self-assessment about his skills in English and Hindi, we find that he doesn’t really think so high of himself and he surprisingly grades his reading skill both in Hindi and English on 2 out of 5; 3 out of 5 to his writing skills in both English and Hindi; 5 on 5 to his speaking skills in English, and 4 on 5 to his listening skills in English. For his speaking skills in Hindi he grades himself 4 on 5 but for his listening in Hindi he credits himself 5 on 5. If we evaluate the performance of CS56M, we find that his performance is the best so far. In terms of variable if we analyse, we see that both his father and mother are post graduate, and his family enjoys a high social acceptance but one thing which is distinct in his background is that he claims to be using English language always since he was 6. Perhaps this is the variable that accounts for his good performance.

86

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.79 Background of CS61M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ur-JH

Eng

HETe-G-J

HETe-PG-J

9–12 Lac

Good

4

Table 4.80 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics

6

6.5

6

6.5

6

7

7

7

Table 4.81 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

6

5.5

5.5

6.5

7

6

Table 4.82 Self-assessment Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

5

Hindi

5

4

2

3

4

3

2

Table 4.83 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

10

11

10

Once we are done with all the interpretation, we will look into the variable with comparative perspective and will try to look for the account for it. CS61M Background See Table 4.79. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.80. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.81. Self-evaluation See Table 4.82. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.83 and 4.84.

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

87

Table 4.84 Performance in CALP CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

13

12

12

Interpretation and Analysis The father of the subject is Telugu speaking guy from Andhra Pradesh, who stays at Jharkhand for his occupation. His mother is from Jharkhand and both of them are multilingual—they speak Telugu, English and Hindi. His father is a post graduate and works as an accountant, whereas his mother is a graduate and she is a teacher. They earn decent of money and they enjoy good social acceptance. The subject likes to write on issues of national importance. From his birth to 5 years of age he has heard English and mixed language in his family, between 6 and 10 years of age he has used English often, and from 11 to 17 also he uses English language for communication, often. If we analyse his performance in BICS in class-room setting, he is decently okay. He scored 6 each on 10 in PoS, error-correction, and narration; 6.5 each in sub-verb agreement, and voice. For his oral communication skills, he has been graded 7 out of 10. In each of the area of oral skills and non-verbal mannerism he scores equally. Thus, his overall score in BICS clocks to 65%. If we see his performance in CALP, we find that he is just 60%. He scored 6 in modifiers and preposition and adverb; 5.5 each in RC and clausal analysis; 6.5 in non-finite and 7 in sentence types. His overall percentage of marks in CALP in class-room setting is just 60%. If we compare class-room performance with the achievement tests’, we don’t find much of a difference. In achievement test of BICS the subject scored 10, 11 and 10 in term- I, II and III respectively. Thus, the overall percentage of marks clocks to 68%. He scored almost as much marks in class-room assessment as well. In CALP, he scored 13, 12, and 12 in term- I, II and III, which in totality reaches to 61%, which is the nearly the same score he secured in class-room assessment. The subject looks like overestimating his skill in some aspect and underestimating in some other. For reading skills in English he grades himself 5 on 5 which the both qualitative and quantitative don’t support. He graded himself 4 on 5 for his writing skills, about which author is not out rightly certain about. He underestimates his speaking skills and grades himself 2 on 5 which, the author feels, is lower than his actual class-room performance. For listening skills in English, he grades himself 3 on 5 which is rather real. The subject rates himself 5, 4, 3, and 2 for his reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in Hindi. Incidentally, the author doesn’t have any conversational analysis of Hindi performance so the data can’t be validated, but that’s how he claims in the questionnaire. CS66M Background See Table 4.85.

88

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Table 4.85 . Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn eng

CC-UPe

Eng

H-G-HM

H-G-GJ

3–6 Lac

Good

5

Table 4.86 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics

5.5

6

7

6

6

6

5

6.5

Table 4.87 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types

Prep. and Adv. 10

4.5

4

4

5

5

4.5

Table 4.88 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

5

4

2

Hindi

4

2

3

5

Table 4.89 Performance in BICS (achievement test) BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

9

11

9

Table 4.90 Performance in CALP (achievement test) CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

8.5

5.5

12.5

BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.86. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.87. Self-evaluation See Table 4.88. Performance in Achievement tests See Table 4.89. CALP (through Multiple Choice questions) See Table 4.90.

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

89

Table 4.91 Background of CS71M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ru-UPe

Eng

HB-12-HM

HB-G-GJ

3–6 Lac

Good

2

Interpretation and Analysis The subject CS66M belongs to the capital city of Uttar Pradesh. He comes from a well-off family. As per him, the social acceptance of his family is good. As far as his family is concerned, his father is a graduate, speaks Hindi and is in a government job, whereas his mother is a graduate and speaks Hindi and is a home-maker. The subject claims to have started learning English at the young age of 5. Between the age of 6 to 10 he never used English and after that, he claims, he uses English often in his communication. His writing sample displays errors of s-v agreement and pronominal references. His performance in BICS in class-room situation is ok kind of. He scored 5.5 on 10 in PoS, 6 each in subject-verb agreement, voice and narration, but he scored 7 in error-correction. In oral skills, his overall oral performance in classroom is judged to be 6, for kinesics he is graded 5 and for proxemics, he has been graded 6.5. Thus, his overall percentage of marks in BICS in class-room situation is about 60%. If we take a look at his performance in CALP, we find nothing really exciting about his performance. He scored 4.5 in modifiers and prep and adverbs, 4 each in RC and clausal analysis, and 5 each in non-finite and sentence types and conversion. Thus, his overall score reaches to about 45%. If we compare class-room performance with his performance in achievement tests, we don’t find a great deal of difference in both. But one thing, which is very peculiar is his inconsistency in achievement tests, in CALP in particular. In CALP he scored 8.5 in term-I, 5.5 in term-II and 12.5 in term-III. So, if we see between the marks of II and III term, there is a difference of 35%. In BICS he scored 9, 11 and 9 in termI, II and III respectively. As far as, the self-assessment of the subject about his skills is concerned, he looks to be overestimating his skills in English language, particularly in speaking and writing skills where he rates himself 4 and 5 out of 5, respectively, which doesn’t reflect through his performance in class-room and in achievement tests. He rates his reading skills in English 3 out 5 and to his listening skills 2 out 5. As far as his skills in Hindi language are concerned, he rates himself 4 on reading, 2 on writing, 3 on speaking and 5 on listening. CS71M Background See Table 4.91. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.92.

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.92 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics 10

7

6.5

6.5

7

7

7.5

5.5

5.5

Table 4.93 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis

Non-finite

Sentence types

Prep. and Adv. 10

6

6

5.5

6

6.5

5.5

Table 4.94 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

4

5

2

Hindi

5

4

3

2

Table 4.95 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

9

11

12

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

11.75

14

11.75

Table 4.96 Performance in CALP CALP

CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.93. Self-evaluation See Table 4.94. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.95 and 4.96.

Interpretation and Analysis The subject CS71M is peculiar in the sense that he is one of the few people who accept and acknowledge the minor and local languages heard, used and learnt by them. He belongs to rural area from UP east, the place which is bordering area of Bihar. His father and mother speak Bhojpuri and Hindi and the subject claims to have heard only Bhojpuri from his birth to 6 years of age. His father is a graduate whereas

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

91

his mother is 12th pass. His father is a government employee and earns between 3 and 6 Lac, and his family has decent social acceptance in society. The subject makes an interesting claim and he says that often his parents talk to him in Bhojpuri but he prefers to talk to them only in Hindi. The primary level of schooling of the subject took place in Hindi medium school and between the age of 6 and 10 he seldom used English, but form the age of 11 he has been using English often. Rest of his schooling took place in English-medium school. The subject has been found doing good in BICS in class-room situation. He scored 7 each in PoS, voice and narration and 6.5 each in s-v agreement and errorcorrection. For his oral communication skills, he has been rated 7.5 but his kinesics and proxemics were found to be wanting. His overall score in BICS in classroom was 66%. In CALP he scored 6 each in modifiers, RC and non-finites, 6.5 in sentence types and 5.5 each in clausal analysis and prepositions and adverbials. Thus, his overall average score in CALP clocks to about 60%. In achievement tests, of both BICS and CALP, he is found doing better than classroom situation. The rationale for that might be that he must be working hard for examinations. His score in BICS achievement test is 9, 11, 12 in term- I, II and III exams respectively, which averages to around 71%. Thus, the difference is of 5%, which is not really critically significant. In CALP he scored 11.50, 14 and 11.75 in term- I, II and III respectively. His scores average to about 62%, with the difference of +2% from the classroom situation. CS76M Background See Table 4.97. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.98. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.99. Self-evaluation See Table 4.100. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.101 and 4.102. Table 4.97 Background of CS76M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

Ru-BR

Hindi

HB-8-HM

HB-8-PJ

Below 3 Lac

Below avg

14

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.98 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics

5

5

5.5

6

6

3.5

3

3

Table 4.99 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4

4

3.5

4

5

4.5

Table 4.100 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

Hindi

5

3

1

2

3

4

2

Table 4.101 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

10

8

9

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

7.5

10.5

10

Table 4.102 Performance in CALP CALP

Interpretation and Analysis The subject comes from a humble background. His parents stay in a small town of Bihar. The father and mother of the subject had their education only up to 8th standard. Both of them speak Bhojpuri and Hindi languages. His mother is a homemaker, whereas his father is the sole bread-earner and does some job in private sector. The social acceptance of his family is below average. The subject started learning English when he was 14. Until he was 10, he never spoke any English, between 11 and 13 years of age he seldom used English but 13 onwards he has started using English often for communication. He admits that he manages to speak English somehow, but with great difficulty. His impression in the class-room situation gets marred because of his limitation with spoken English. He barely manages to say very little of what he has got to say, that’s precisely the reason that his oral communication is rated 3.5 on 10, 3 each for kinesics and proxemics. His understanding about basic component of grammar is

Data and Analysis of Computer Science Grads

93

also limited. He scored 5 each in PoS and S-V agreement, 5.5 in error-correction, 6 each in voice and narration. Thus, because of his limitation in oral skills, his overall performance in BICS remains as low 45%. His performance in CALP too isn’t very encouraging either. He scored 4 each in modifiers, RC, and non-finite; 3.5 in clausal analysis; 4.5 in preposition and adverbs; and 5 in sentence types. This way, his overall percentage of marks in CALP clocks to nearly 42%. If we compare the class-room performance with that in the achievement tests, there is a wide gap. In classroom situation in BICS his score is 45% whereas in achievement tests he scores 10, 8 and 9 in term- I, II and III respectively, which averages to 60% marks. A big difference of 15% can be clearly seen there, that can be accounted to his huge limitation with spoken English. But because of relatively better writing skills he manages to score better in BICS achievement test. In CALP he scored 7.5, 10.5 and 10 in term- I, II and III respectively, which clock to 45% marks in totality, which if we compare with class-room performance isn’t much different. That also justifies the rationale of his limitation in oral communication being the reason for his low grading in class-room setting.

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads Once we are done with the analysis of sample data of Computer Science subjects, we will present the data of Mechanical Engineering subjects in the similar fashion and we will look for the variables responsible and accountable for differences in the performance. Total sample size of Mechanical Engineering subjects is 65 out of which 61 are male candidates and 4 are female candidates. Incidently, all the 4 candidates belong to same geographical reason, similar educational background and almost similar family background the author decided to analyse performance of only 2 female candidates. As far as male candidates are concerned, out of 61—the largest 33 belong to UP west, 12 to UP east, 5 each to Bihar and Rajasthan, 2 each to Delhi and Haryana, and 1 each to Kerala and Jammu. So the sample data that we are going to analyse next will have representation of students from all the places, that’s why we decided to analyse 4 cases from UP west, 3 from UP east, and 1 each from Rajasthan, Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Kerala and Jammu. The data of the students has been coded and will be presented accordingly. This way m, the total number of data analyses will be 2 + 12 = 14. ME1F Background See Table 4.103. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.104. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.105. Performance in Achievement tests

94

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.103 Background of ME1F Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

Ur-UPw

Eng

H-PG-HM

H-G-Bu

9–12 Lac

High

5

Table 4.104 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics

6.5

6.5

6

6

6.5

7

6.5

6

Table 4.105 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

6.5

6.5

5.5

6.5

6

6.5

Table 4.106 Performance in BICS (achievement test) BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

10

8

10.5

Table 4.107 Performance in CALP (achievement test) CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

10

13.5

13.25

Table 4.108 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

2

Hindi

3

3

4

5

5

2

4

See Tables 4.106, 4.107. Self-evaluation See Table 4.108.

Interpretation and Analysis The first female subject from Mechanical Engineering is from a well-off family of western part of Uttar Pradesh. She at present stays at University hostel. Her father is

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

95

a graduate and runs his own businessman, whereas her mother too is a graduate and looks after the domestic chores. Her family enjoys a high social acceptance. The subject had her schooling since beginning in an English medium instruction school. She started learning English at young age of 5. Between 6 and 10 years of her age, she seldom used English but after that she has been using often. Her performance in class-room situation has been good and she scored 6.5 each in PoS, subject-verb agreement, and narration; in error-correction and voice she scored 6 each. She is good in oral communication skills as well and she scored 7 in oral, 6.5 in kinesics ad 6 in proxemics. Thus her overall percentage of marks in BICS totals to 63.75%. As far as her performance in CALP is concerned, she is good there too. She scored 6.5 each in modifiers, RC, non-finite and preposition and adverb; 5.5 in clausal analysis and 6 in sentence types. Her overall score in CALP is 62.5% in class-room situation. If we see her performance in achievement tests, we find that it’s the replica of her class-room performance. She scored 10, 8 and 10.5 in term- I, II and III respectively, making her total percentage to 63% which is very close to the class-room assessment. In CALP her term-wise performance is 10, 13.5 and 13.25, which makes her percentage of marks to 61.25%, which again is very close to her class-room assessment. As per our pattern of description, we will now talk about the self-assessment of the subject about her language skills. She rates her reading skills in English 2 on 5, writing skills 3 on 5, listening skills 4 on 5 and speaking skills 5 on 5. Similarly, for her reading skills in Hindi she rates herself 3 on 5, for writing 5 on 5, listening 2 on 5 and for speaking 4 on 5. ME3F Background See Table 4.109. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.110. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.111. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.112 and 4.113. Self-evaluation See Table 4.114. Table 4.109 Background of ME3F Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ur-UPw

Eng

H-12-HM

H-PG-priest

3–6 Lac

Good

3

96

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.110 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr.

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

5.5

6

6

6

5.5

7

6.5

5.5

Table 4.111 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

6

5

5

6

6.5

6

Table 4.112 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

8

10

10.5

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

13.5

9

11.5

Table 4.113 Performance in CALP CALP

Table 4.114 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

Hindi

4

4

5

2

2

3

5

Interpretation and Analysis As mentioned above already, the 2nd female subject from Mechanical Engineering also belongs to western part of Uttar Pradesh. Her mother received formal education up to 12th standard, she uses Hindi language for communication and is a homemaker. Her father is a priest and has had his formal education till postgraduate degree. Coming on to her performance in class-room situation, she scored 5.5 each in PoSfunctional and grammatical category identification and conversion and narration; 6 each on 10 in subject-verb agreement, error-identification and correction, and voice. Thus, her overall performance in class-room assessment clocks to about 61%. She is just a little inferior in CALP and she scored 6 each out of 10 in modifiers, nonfinites, and prepositions and adverbials; and 5 each in RC and clausal analysis and she scores the highest 6.5 in sentence types and conversion. Her overall score, in this way, reaches to about 57.5%. If we compare her performance in class-room situation with that in achievement tests, we don’t find much of a difference. In fact, the scores are very close. In

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

97

achievement test of BICS she scored 8, 10 and 10.5 respectively in term- I, II and III examinations, which in totality clocks to 63%. The scores, on comparison, show the difference of just 2%. In CALP, she earned 13.5, 9, and 11.5 in term- I, II and III respectively, which clocks to 57.5%, whereas her score in class-room assessment was 57%, which shows the deflection of just 0.5%. On surface, her observation about her own language skills in English, by and large, appear justified both through author’s class-room assessment and her achievement marks. She rates her reading skills as 3 on 5, writing skills 4 on 5, listening skills 5 on 5 and speaking skills 2 on 5, though her spoken skills in classroom didn’t appear this bad. As far as her skills in Hindi are concerned, she rates her reading skills 4 on 5, writing 2 on 5, listening 3 on 5 and spoken skills 5 on 5. ME5M Background See Table 4.115. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.116. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.117. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.118 and 4.119. Self-evaluation See Table 4.120. Table 4.115 Background of ME5M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

Ru-UPe

Eng

H-G-HM

H-G-GJ

3–6 Lac

Good

8

Table 4.116 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics 10

Proxemics 10

6.5

6.5

6

6

5.5

5

4.5

4.5

Table 4.117 Performance in CALP Modifiers

RC 10

Clausal analysis

Non-finite

Sentence types

Prep. and Adv. 10

6

6.5

5

5.5

6

6

98

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.118 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

8

6

10

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

11.5

10

12.25

Table 4.119 Performance in CALP CALP

Table 4.120 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

3

2

5

Hindi

4

3

2

5

Interpretation and Analysis The subject ME5M is the first male subject from Mechanical Engineering department in this discussion. The subject belongs to a rural place of Uttar Pradesh East. His father and mother both are graduates and they use only Hindi as medium of communication. His father is the bread-winner of his family and earns a decent amount. The social acceptance of his family is good. The subject received all his education through English-medium schools. He is interested in reading non-fiction stuff but doesn’t have habit of writing. The subject is unique in the sense that he is the first subject (of all the data presented and discussed so far) who has scored more marks in CALP than BICS, although the difference is not major (it’s just about 2.5%), still it holds a value by the very existence. If we see his topic wise scores, he scored 6.5 each in PoS and subject-verb agreement, 6 each in error-correction and voice, and 5.5 in narration. His score in oral communication and non-verbal mannerism is relatively inferior and he could score 5 in oral skills and 4.5 each in kinesics and proxemics. His performance in CALP in class-room setting is just a little superior. Topic-wise, he scored 6 each in sentence types, preposition and adverbs and modifiers, 5.5 in clausal analysis; 5 in non-finite and the highest 6.5 in Reading comprehension, which again is peculiar in this particular case. His performance in achievement tests is of similar grades. He scored 8, 6 and 10 in BICS examination in term- I, II and III respectively. His overall percentage of marks clocks to about 53% which is 3% lower than his class-room assessment. As far as his CALP performance goes, he scored 11.5, 10 and 12.25 in term- I, II and III respectively. His overall percentage reaches about 58% which is about 2% lesser than his class-room assessment. One thing significant about this subject’s performance is that he scored higher in CALP than in BICS.

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

99

He grades his language skills in both Hindi and English languages same. He grades his reading 4 on 5, which very clearly reflects in his assessment where he scored highest in RC. For his writing he graded himself 3 on 5, for his spoken skills he graded himself 2 on 5 which again reflects in his grades in class-assessment. As per him his listening skills are top-notch and he graded himself 5 on 5 for listening skills in both Hindi and English. ME11M Background See Table 4.121. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.122. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.123. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.124 and 4.125. Self-evaluation See Table 4.126. Table 4.121 Background of ME11M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

M, CC-ND

Eng

H-8-HM

HE-G-GJ

6–9 Lac

Good

3

Table 4.122 Performance in BICS PoS

SV agr

Error corr.

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

6.5

6.5

5.5

6

6.5

7.5

7

7

Table 4.123 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types

Prep. and Adv.

4.5

4

5.5

5

6

6

Table 4.124 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

5

12

12

100

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.125 Performance in CALP CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

11.5

10

12.25

Table 4.126 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

Hindi

4

3

2

5

3

2

5

Interpretation and Analysis The subject ME11M belongs to the capital city of India. On economic front, his family is modestly okay. His mother didn’t have much of formal education and she received it only up to 8th standard. She looks after the domestic chores. The father of subject is a graduate and a government employee. Both of them use Hindi, while his father also uses English for the purpose of communication. The subject had all his education from English-medium school. He started learning English at 3. He prefers to use mixed language. He prefers to read stuff on and about cars and automobile industries, though he has not habit of writing. There is a wide gap in his understanding of BICS and CALP. In BICS his classroom performance in oral skills was good and he scored 7.5 in overall oral skills, 7 in use of body language and 7 also for his proxemics. But for his understanding in basic grammatical input, he received comparatively inferior grading and got 6.5 each for narration, sub-verb agreement and PoS; 6 for voice and the lowest 5.5 for error-correction. His overall score in BICS in classroom assessment clocks to nearly 65%. As far as his performance in CALP is concerned, he got an inferior grading in it. For RC his grading was as low as 4 on 10, for modifier 4.5 on 10, for clausal analysis 5 on 10, for non-finites 5.5 on 10, and the highest 6 each for sentence types and prepositions and adverbs. His overall class-room performance in BICS reaches close to 51%. If we compare the class-room performance with that of the achievement tests, we find them being very close. The difference in percentage of marks is as close as meagre 1%. In achievement tests of BICS he scored 5, 12, 12 in term- I, II and III respectively. Thus, his overall percentage of marks is 64%, which is again very close to the class-room assessment score. In terms of performance in CALP, the subject scored 8, 11.5 and 11 in term- I, II and III respectively and thus his average score, in totality, reaches to 50%, which too is close to his performance in CALP class-room assessment score. ME16M Background See Table 4.127.

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

101

Table 4.127 Background of ME16M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ur-UPe

Eng

H-PG- HM

H-PG-GJ

6–9 Lac

High

7

Table 4.128 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr.

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

8

8

7.5

7.5

7.5

6

7

7

Table 4.129 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

6

7.5

7

6.5

7

6.5

Table 4.130 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

10

12

12

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

13.5

12.5

13

Table 4.131 Performance in CALP CALP

Table 4.132 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

5

Hindi

4

4

2

3

2

5

3

BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.128. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.129. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.130 and 4.131. Self-evaluation See Table 4.132.

102

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Interpretation and Analysis The subject comes from a well-to-do family from urban are of eastern part of Uttar Pradesh. His mother is well qualified and holds a post-graduate degree but look after the domestic chores, whereas his father also holds masters’ degree and works for a government organisation. Both of them use only Hindi as medium of communication. The subject, on the other hand is interested in reading books on mythology but not in habit of writing. He had all his schooling from English medium schools. He started learning English at the age of 7. As a young graduating engineer his preferred language for communication is Hindi and as per him, his parents promote him to learn and use more and more of Hindi. The assessment of his class-room performance suggests that he has a good sense and understanding of English grammar, though he found lagging in oral skills. His performance in BICS, particularly in basic grammar, is very good. He scored 8 each in PoS and Subject-verb agreement (perhaps the highest in the description so far), 7.5 each in error-correction, narration and voice. He scored little lesser in oral communication section of BICS and attained 6, 7, and 7 in oral communication, Kinesics and proxemics respectively. As far as his performance in CALP is concerned, he is seen doing brilliantly good in RC and his strike rate was 75% in reading comprehension questions. He was decent in Sentence-types and non-finites and secured 7 (out of 10) each in them. He scored 6.5 in prepositions and adverbials and in modifiers he secured the least i.e. 6 on 10. He analyses his reading skills in English to be top-notch (5/5) and that truly reflects through his 7.5 (of 10) in RC. As per him, his writing skill too is good and he graded his writing as 4 on 5. He feels that he is poor in communication skills, though perhaps not as poor as he thinks but of course, as his assessment in class-room situation also suggests, it’s a little inferior in comparison with his skills in and understanding about other related skills of language cognition. He rates his speaking skills as 2 on 5, and his listening skills 3 out of 5. He rates his spoken skills in Hindi to be very good and assigns it 5 out 5. He rates his reading skills in Hindi as 4 on 5, and also for his listening skills in Hindi he rates himself 3 out of 5 and he feels himself weak writing in Hindi and he grades it 2 out of 5. If we validate class-room assessment through the results of achievement tests, we find that they are quite in sync. In achievement test of BICS, the subject scored 10, 12, 12 in term- I, II and III respectively. His overall percentage of marks is 75%, which is very much comparable with his class-room assessment which clocks to 73%. If we analyse the performance of the subject in CALP, he is seen being consistent in his performance. He scored 13.5, 12 and 13, which takes his average performance 65%, which has a minor difference from his class-room assessment marks. ME21M Background See Table 4.133. BICS (class-room performance)

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

103

Table 4.133 Background of ME21M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

Ur-UPw

Eng

HS-12- HM

HE-PG-GJ

3–6 Lac

High

4

Table 4.134 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics

6

6

6

6.5

6.5

6.5

6.5

6.5

Table 4.135 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

5.5

6.5

6.5

5.5

6.5

6.5

Table 4.136 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

6

7

9

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

10

10

11.5

Table 4.137 Performance in CALP CALP

Table 4.138 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

Hindi

5

2

4

5

2

3

4

See Table 4.134. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.135. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.136 and 4.137. Self-assessment See Table 4.138.

104

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Interpretation and Analysis ME21M is a one of the top performers of Mechanical Engineering branch. He used to discuss lot of his ideas about different issues both in and outside the classroom. Even through cursory look at the Table 4.138 clearly indicates that there is a steep difference between his marks in class-room assessment and that in achievement tests. To discuss about the same issue, as soon as after the results of term-I examination results were out, the author had a detailed discussion with him. The subject is interested in reading newspapers, he regularly read a couple of them. He is interested in reading non-fiction stuff and also writes his view on the issues of politics and reforms in Indian society etc. He didn’t have all his schooling through English medium schools. He had his primary and middle level education through Hindi medium schools and his secondary and senior secondary level of schooling through English medium school. Between the age of 6 and 10 he seldom used English and also between the age of 11 and 13 he used English seldom but 14 onwards he started using it quite often. At present, he stays at his home with his parents. As far as his class-room performance goes, he is a lively person in class. He responds on most of the things, actively participates in the discussions etc., which may or may not reflect through his marks. He scored 6 each in Parts of speech identification-both grammatical and functional categories, subject-verb agreement, and error-identification and correction; he scored a little better, 6.5 each, in narration and voice. This was about his performance in basic grammatical skills. As far as his performance in oral skills is concerned, he scored 6.5 each in oral communication, kinesics and proxemics. Thus, his overall score in BICS, in classroom situation clocks to about 60%. If we talk about his performance in CALP, the qualitative data that the author, first hand, has experienced, there was nothing that he would let it go without understanding the concept entirely. He scored 5.5 each in modifiers, clausal analysis and 6.5 each in rest all the topics, i.e. Reading comprehension, non-finite, sentence types and prepositions and adverbials. In this way, his overall score in CALP in class-room settings reaches to about 61%. In fact, he stands out to be one of the very few of the subjects discussed so far, who are equally proficient in BICS and CALP both. His score in BICS, achievement tests are 6, 7, and 9 in term- I, II and III exams respectively which gets his total percentage of marks to be about 42%. In CALP he scored 10, 10, and 11.5 in term- I, II and III exams respectively. If we compare the marks we find gap of about 18% in BICS (42% achievement tests and 60% classroom), on the other hand in CALP also we see a gap (though not as wide as in the case of BICS) and we find that there is still a difference of about 9% (52% in achievement tests and 61% in classroom assessments). ME26M Background See Table 4.139. BICS (class-room performance)

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

105

Table 4.139 Background of ME26M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ru-UPe

Hindi

H-12-HM

HE-G-PJ

3–6 Lac

Avg

16

Table 4.140 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr.

Voice

Narration 10

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

5

4.5

5

5

5

5.5

4

4

Table 4.141 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4.5

6

4.5

5

6

5

Table 4.142 Performance in BICS (achievement test) BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

6

6

8

Table 4.143 Performance in CALP (achievement test) CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

10

8.5

11.75

Table 4.144 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

5

Hindi

3

4

3

2

2

5

4

See Table 4.140. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.141. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.142 and 4.143. Self-evaluation See Table 4.144.

106

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Interpretation and Analysis The subject that we are going to talk about comes from a humble background. He is from a village of a district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, bordering with Bihar. His father is a graduate and does some private job. His mother didn’t have had much of formal education and she is a school graduate. Both of them use Hindi as a means of communication. The income of the family is below 3 Lac. And it enjoys an average acceptance in the society. The subject at present stays at a rented room near the university premises. He had all his schooling from non-English medium schools. Between the age of 6 and 10 he never used English, between 11 and 17 he seldom used English. At present, he says, he stays at a rented room near university premises. He manages to speak English with great difficulty. As far as class-room performance of the subject is concerned, he scored 5 each in Parts of speech, error-correction, voice, narration and 4.5 in subject-verb agreement. In oral communication he was rated 4.5 out of 10 and for kinesics and proxemics he was graded 4 each. Thus, his overall percentage of marks in BICS was 47%. As far as his performance in CALP is concerned, he was graded 6 each in RC and sentence types, 5 each in non-finites and prepositions and adverbials and 4.5 each in modifiers and clausal analysis. His overall percentage of marks in CALP in class-room situation clocks to about 50%. If we see his performance in achievement tests, we find the similar results there as well. In achievement tests of BICS, the subject scored 6, 6, and 8 in term- I, II and III exams respectively, which gets his percentage of marks to 44% which is close to the class-room assessment. In the CALP he scored 10, 8.5 and 11.75 in term- I, II and III examinations respectively and thus his marks in CALP strike around 50%, which again is close to his class-room assessment. The obvious reasons for his dismal performance are his educational as well as family background wherein he hardly had any exposure to English language. Despite the fact that he is technically very strong and is a student from the top section of his branch of study, there are possibilities that just because his inferior performance in Verbal aptitude examinations, corporate may not readily accept his candidature for placements. ME31M Background See Table 4.145. BICS (class-room performance) Table 4.145 Background of ME31M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ur-UPw

Eng

H-PG-HM

H-PG-GJ

6–9 Lac

Good

5

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

107

Table 4.146 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics 10

Proxemics

6

5.5

5.5

6

6

7.5

7

7

Table 4.147 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4.5

5

4.5

5.5

6

6

Table 4.148 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

10

7

10

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

6.5

10

10.25

Table 4.149 Performance in CALP CALP

Table 4.150 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

Hindi

5

3

5

2

2

4

3

See Table 4.146. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.147. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.148 and 4.149. Self-evaluation See Table 4.150.

Interpretation and Analysis The subject belongs to western Uttar Pradesh, very close to the place where the university under-study, is situated. As far as his performance in class-room situation is concerned, he was graded 6 each in Parts of speech, narration and voice; 5.5 each

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

for subject-verb agreement and error-correction. In oral skills he was rats high—7.5 and for kinesics and proxemics he was graded 7 each. If we look at his performance in CALP in class-room situation, he was rated 4.5 each in modifiers and clausal analysis, 5 in reading comprehension, 5.5 in non-finite and 6 each in sentence type and preposition and adverbials. His overall score in CALP in class-room assessment clocks to about 52%. If we compare these performances with that in the achievement tests, we find that there is not much of a difference. In BICS he scored 10, 7 and 10 in term- I, II and III exams respectively, which makes his overall percentage of score to 60%, which is very close to his performance in class-room assessment. On the other hand if we see the subject’s performance in CALP, he scored 6.5, 10 and 10.25 in term- I, II and III respectively, which takes his overall percentage of marks in CALP to about 52%, which displays a modest difference of about 5%, but If we scrutinise the marks of CALP we notice difference in marks from term-I to term-II. Even otherwise, the difference of about 7% is acceptable. His self-assessment about his language-skills is on higher side. He grades his spoken skills in English as 5 on 5, 4 to his reading skills, 3 to his writing and 2 out of 5 to his listening skills. He grades his language skills in Hindi as 5 out of 5 to his reading skills, 4 to his spoken skills, 3 to his listening skills and 2 to his writing skills. ME36M Background See Table 4.151. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.152. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.153. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.154 and 4.155. Self-evaluation See Table 4.156. Table 4.151 Background of ME36M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

SU-BR

Eng

H-12-HM

H-G-J

3 Lac

Avg

4

Table 4.152 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr. 10

Voice

Narration

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics

8

7

7.5

6.5

6.5

8

7

6.5

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

109

Table 4.153 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

6.5

6.5

6

6

6

6.5

Table 4.154 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

9

13

12

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

11.5

12.75

12.75

Table 4.155 Performance in CALP CALP

Table 4.156 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

4

2

5

Hindi

2

1

3

5

Interpretation and Analysis The subject’s performance in class-room has always been enthusiastic, that is evident through his grades in class-room assessment. He scored 8 in PoS, 7.5 in errorcorrection, 7 in subject-verb agreement, 6.5 each in voice and narration. In oral skills and non-verbal section, he scored 8 in oral communication skills, 7 in kinesics and 6.5 in proxemics. Thus, his overall class-room performance clocks to above 70%. In CALP, he was assessed as 7 each in non-finite and sentence types, 6.5 each in modifiers, RC, and prepositions and adverbials. He scored the lowest 6 in clausal analysis. Thus, his overall performance in CALP reaches to nearly 60%. The subject has scored very good marks in term- II and III wherein he scored 13 and 12 respectively. He couldn’t score good in I term exam, wherein he scored 9, thus his overall percentage of marks in achievement marks in BICS strikes to 75%. In CALP, he scored same marks in term- II and III and a little lesser in term-I. Termwise he scored 11.5, 12.75 and 12.75 successively. The overall percentage reaches to 62%. Both these marks of achievement tests are very much comparable with the grades of class-room assessment. The self-assessment of the subject about his language skills look underestimated on his part. He grades his spoken skills in English as 2 on 5 which is not at all the case. His grading for other skills is: 3 on 5 for reading skills, 4 for his writing skills

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

and 5 out of 5, for his listening skills in English. For Hindi, he grades 5 on 5 to his listening, 3 to his spoken skills, 1 to writing and 2 to his reading skills in Hindi. ME41M Background See Table 4.157. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.158. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.159. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.160 and 4.161. Self-evaluation See Table 4.162. Table 4.157 Background of ME41M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

SU-RJ

Hindi/Eng

H-G-GJ

H-PG-GJ

6–9 Lac

Good

18

Table 4.158 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr

Error corr.

Voice

Narration

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

6

6.5

6.6

5.5

6

5.5

5

5

Table 4.159 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4

4

4

4.5

4.5

4.5

Table 4.160 Performance in BICS (achievement test) BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

8

8

10

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

8.5

6.5

9.75

Table 4.161 Performance in CALP CALP

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

111

Table 4.162 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

3

4

2

5

Hindi

2

1

3

5

Interpretation and Analysis The subject belongs to a town from Rajasthan. His father and mother both are government servants. Both of them use Hindi use Hindi as medium of communication. His father is a post-graduate while his mother is a graduate. His family enjoys high social acceptance. The subject has had his half in non-English medium school and the other half in English medium school, viz. up to the 8th standard, the subject studied in non-English medium school and afterward he switched to an English medium school. He doesn’t use English much often. He is interested in fiction and shortstories. He says that he started learning English at 18. The author doubts that perhaps the subject misinterpreted the question. As far as the subject’s class-room assessment for BICS goes, his performance in subject-verb agreement and error-correction is graded 6.5 each, in PoS and narration he is graded 6 each, and in voice he is graded 5.5 for oral skills he is graded 5.5, and for kinesics and proxemics he is graded 5 each. His overall grading in BICS clocks to about 57%. In CALP, he scores 4 each in Modifiers, RC and clausal analysis, and 4.5 each for non-finite, sentence types and preposition and adverbials. His overall score in CALP remains about 43%. In achievement test of BICS, the subject scores 8 in term- I, and II each, and in term-III he scored 10, the overall percentage of marks gets to 57%. On the other hand, for CALP, he scored 8.5, 6.5 and 9.75 in term- I, II and III respectively, which on average takes his percentage in CALP to 41%. Both these scores viz. achievement test scores of BICS and CALP are very much similar to that of the class-room assessment. The self-assessment of subject looks almost realistic. He graded 1 to his reading skills in English, 2 to his writing, 3 to his spoken skills and 4 to his listening skills. For skills in Hindi, he graded his spoken Hindi as 5 on 5, 4 to his reading skills, 3 to his listening skills, and 2 to his writing skills. ME46M Background See Table 4.163. BICS (class-room performance) Table 4.163 Background of ME46M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

SU-UPw

Eng

H-G-HM

H-PG-GJ

6–9 Lac

Good

5

112

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.164 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics 10

7

6.5

6.5

5.5

6

6.5

6

5.5

Table 4.165 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

7

6.5

6.5

6

7

7

Table 4.166 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

8

9

10

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

13

12.5

14

Table 4.167 Performance in CALP CALP

Table 4.168 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

1

Hindi

1

2

3

4

2

3

4

See Table 4.164. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.165. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.166 and 4.167. Self-evaluation See Table 4.168.

Interpretation and Analysis The subject ME46M belongs to a semi-urban area of the western Uttar Pradesh and he is a day-scholar in the university. The father of the subject is a government employee; a graduate and uses Hindi for communication. The mother of the subject

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

113

too is a graduate and looks after the domestic chores. The family has high social reputation. The subject on the other hand likes to read fiction, doesn’t write and also doesn’t read English newspaper. He likes to write about his own experiences of life and also runs a blog. As a young graduating engineer, he likes to use Hindi as medium for communication. The subject is very few of the students who scored better marks in CALP in comparison to that in BICS. His class-room performance has been rated as 6.5 each in sub-verb agreement and error-correction each, 6 for narration, 5.5 for voice and the highest 7 for the PoS. His overall performance in class-room situation thus clocks to nearly 61%. If we talk about his performance in CALP, he is found more sound there. He is graded 7 each in sentence types, preposition and adverbials and modifiers; 6.5 each in RC and clausal analysis; and he is graded the lowest 6 in non-finites. His overall performance in CALP thus reaches to nearly 67%. If we closely observe the scores of the subject in achievement tests in both BICS and CALP, we find that the scores of class-room assessment and that of the achievement ones are quite much in sync. In BICS achievement tests he secured 8, 9 and 10 marks in term- I, II and III examinations respectively. His overall CALP score is thus 66%. In CALP 13, 12 and 14 are the scores that he secured in term- I, II and III which by all means and ways are very decent scores. Thus his overall CALP score reaches to 67%. His self-assessment about language skills in Hindi and English are very simplistic. He observes the reading 1, writing 2, speaking 3 and listening 4 to both the languages. The author, based on his class-room assessment certainly feels that he has underscored himself on these language skills. ME51M Background See Table 4.169. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.170. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.171. Table 4.169 Background of ME51M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

SU-KL

Eng

M-12-HM

M-G-GJ

6–9 Lac

Good

4

Table 4.170 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics

6.75

6.75

6

6

6.5

7.5

7

7

114

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.171 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

6

6.5

5.5

6.5

6.5

6

Table 4.172 Performance in BICS (achievement test) BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

8

8

10

Table 4.173 Performance in CALP (achievement test) CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

10

11.5

12

Table 4.174 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

4

4

4

Hindi

1

1

2

2

Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.172 and 4.173. Self-evaluation See Table 4.174.

Interpretation and Analysis The subject belongs to a sub-urban area of Kerala. His father is a graduate and government servant. His mother didn’t have much of formal education and she is schoolgraduate and looks after her family. Both, his father and mother use Malayalam. The family receives good social recognition. The subject likes to read newspaper regularly. He is interested in reading biographies and likes to watch documentaries, though he doesn’t habit of writing. He started learning English at an early age—4 years. He has had all his schooling through English medium school. At present, the subject stays with his relative in the town. As far as the class-room performance of the subject in BICS is concerned, he is found good in spoken skills, which also reflects through his class-room assessment grades. In oral skills section of BICS, out of 10, he scored 7 each in kinesics and proxemics, and 7.5 for oral communication skills. For the basic grammar section of BICS the subject scored 6 each in error-correction, 6.5 in narration, and the highest

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

115

6.75 each in parts of speech identification and subject-verb agreement. Thus, the overall percentage of marks in BICS clocks to 66%. On the other hand, if we see his performance in CALP, we see an almost consistent performance on all the topics of CALP. Out of 10, he scored 6.5 each in RC, non-finites, sentence-types; 6 each in preposition and adverbials and modifiers; and the lowest 5.5 in clausal analysis. Thus, his overall performance in class-room assessment clocks to around 61%. If we see his performance in achievement tests of BICS, out of 15, the subject scored 8 each in term-I and term-II whereas in term-III he scored 10, which takes his score to nearly 67%. In the simultaneous examination of CALP, the subject, out of 20, scored 10, 11.5 and 12 in term- I, II and III respectively. His overall score in CALP in achievement tests reaches nearly 61%. If we compare the scores secured in achievement tests with that of the class-room assessment, we find the scoring pattern to be very much similar. In fact, there is little difference in the marks. Because of coming from non-Hindi speaking place, he has very limited understanding of Hindi language and he barely manages to speak and understand Hindi, see the Table 4.66. For English language skills, he grades his listening, speaking, reading and writing all the skills a 4 on 5. ME56M Background See Table 4.175. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.176. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.177. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.178 and 4.179. Self-evaluation See Table 4.180. Table 4.175 Background of ME56M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father L-E-P

Income

Social acceptance

Started learn Eng

Ru-J and K

Hindi/Eng

H-12-HM

H-G-Bu

6–9 Lac

Good

15

Table 4.176 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm. 10

Kinesics

Proxemics 10

5.75

6

5.75

6.5

6.5

6

5.5

5.5

116

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.177 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4.5

4.5

4

4.5

4.75

4.75

Table 4.178 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

11

8

7.5

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

9

8

7.5

Table 4.179 Performance in CALP CALP

Table 4.180 Self-assessment of subject Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

2

1

3

Hindi

4

2

3

3

Interpretation and Analysis The subject comes from a rural place of Jammu. His father has a business and he has had formal education up to graduation. His mother didn’t have much of formal education and she is a school graduate, she looks after the domestic chores. Both of them use Hindi for communication. The subject on the other hand, has had all his formal education up to 8th standard in non-English medium instruction school. His secondary and senior secondary level of schooling was no different because although the school for namesake was English medium school but English was hardly used there for the instruction. The subject had all his schooling in village. He began learning English at the age of 9. Between the age of 6 and 10 he never uses English and between 11 and 13 he seldom used it. At present, as per he himself, he speaks but with some difficulty. At present he likes to read science-fiction, to watch video-lectures. He doesn’t have habit of writing. If we see his class-room performance, he scored 6.5 each in voice and narration; 5.75 each in PoS and error-correction and 6 in subject-verb agreement. In oral communication section of BICS he scored 6 in overall communication skills, 5.5 each in kinesics and proxemics. Thus his overall percentage of marks in BICS clocks to nearly 60%. As far his assessment in CALP in class-room situation is concerned, he scored 4 in clausal analysis, 4.5 each in modifiers, RC and modifiers, and the highest 4.75 each

Data and Analysis of Mechanical Engineering Grads

117

in prepositions and adverbials and sentence types. His overall grading in CALP thus reaches to about 45%. The achievement test marks also show similar kind of performance. IN BICS the subject scored 11, 8 and 7.5 I term- I, II and III respectively, which gets percentage of scores to nearly 59%. In CALP, in achievement test, the subject scored 9, 8, 8.75 in term- I, II and III respectively. This way, his overall percentage of marks reaches to 45%. The overall score of both class-room assessment and that of the achievement tests project very likening image. ME61M Background See Table 4.181. BICS (class-room performance) See Table 4.182. CALP (class-room performance) See Table 4.183. Performance in Achievement tests See Tables 4.184 and 4.185. Self-evaluation See Table 4.186. Table 4.181 Background of ME61M Native

Schooling

Mother L-E-P

Father

Income

Social acceptance

Learn Eng

Ru-UPw

Eng

M-G-HM

M-G-GJ

3–6 Lac

Good

9

Table 4.182 Performance in BICS PoS 10

SV agr 10

Error corr. 10

Voice 10

Narration 10

Oral comm.

Kinesics

Proxemics

5.75

5.0

5.5

5.5

6.5

5.5

5.5

5.5

Table 4.183 Performance in CALP Modifiers 10

RC 10

Clausal analysis 10

Non-finite 10

Sentence types 10

Prep. and Adv. 10

4.25

4

4

4.25

4

3.75

Table 4.184 Performance in BICS BICS

Term-I (15)

Term-II (15)

Term-III (15)

6

9

10.5

118

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.185 Performance in CALP CALP

Term-I (20)

Term-II (20)

Term-III (20)

7.5

8

8.75

Table 4.186 Self-assessment of subject on 4 skills in English and Hindi Reading 5

Writing 5

Speaking 5

Listening 5

ENG

4

Hindi

4

5

2

3

2

3

5

Interpretation and Analysis The subject comes from a rural area of western part of Uttar Pradesh west. His father is a post-graduate and is in government service, whereas his mother is a graduate and she looks after her family. Both of them use Hindi language for communication. The family enjoys a high social acceptance. The subject on the other hand, has had his formal education up to 8th standard in non-English medium instruction school. His secondary and senior secondary level of schooling was no different because although the school for namesake was English medium school but English was hardly used there for the instruction. The subject had all his schooling in village. At present he likes to read science-fiction, to watch video-lectures. He doesn’t have habit of writing. He began learning English at the age of 9. At present, as per he himself, he speaks but with some difficulty. The performance of the subject in both BICS and CALP hasn’t really been very encouraging. In class-room continuous assessment, in BICS, he scored the highest 6.5 in narration and voice each, 5 in subject-verb agreement; 5.5 in error-correction and 5.75 for parts of speech identification. For oral skills he was graded 5.5 in overall oral skills, 5.5 for kinesics and proxemic each. His overall score in BICS clocks to nearly 55–56%. As far as his performance in CALP is concerned, he scored the highest 4.5 in sentence types, 4.25 each in modifiers and non-finites, 4 each in RC and clausal analysis. He scored the lowest 3.75 in preposition and adverbials, which takes his overall score in CALP to about 41–42%. In the achievement test too he displays similar performance and the subject scored 6, 9 and 10.5 each in term- I, II and III, which gets his performance in BICS to about 56%, in CALP, he scored 7.5, 8 and 8.75 in term- I, II and III which takes his performance to about 40–41%. The subject grades his language skills in English as 4 in reading, 5 in writing, 2 to his speaking and 3 to his listening. At least, for the first two skills the researcher, based on his interaction with the subject in class-room both in formal and informal settings, doesn’t feel convinced about. For his language skills in Hindi, he graded his reading as 4, 2 for his writing, 3 to his spoken skills and finally 5 to his listening skills, which the researcher, because of very limited first-hand data is unable to verify and validate.

Overall Interpretation from Data

119

Overall Interpretation from Data Thus far, we have discussed and presented the analysis of 7 female subjects (5 from Computer Science and 2 from Mechanical Engineering), 25 male subjects (12 from Computer Science and 13 from Mechanical Engineering). The students, as mentioned already, were taken from varied cultural, social and economic background. The subjects that have been taken for this particular case-study were all taking an ESP course designed by the faculty members of the university under-study. The course has two components- oral skills and verbal aptitude, thus it aims to cater both the skills, viz. BICS and CALP. The syllabus is designed such a way that the class-room assessment was an important integral part of overall assessment scheme. And the overall assessment has a room for class-room assessment marks. The attempt was made to see the performance in the view of the subjects’ performance in achievement tests, and in class-room situations. The performance of students in class-room setting was observed and documented, which has been used here for the purpose of cross-validating the scores of achievement tests. Through all the data, we see that there is not much variation in their scores in both the CALP and BICS. In fact, the subjects were found scoring similar marks in achievement tests and class-room situation. Thus it validates the overall assessment of individual subjects. For the data analysis above, the things the variables like- background of the subject, his/her score in achievement tests and the scores in the class-room settings. We also considered the self-assessment of the subjects about their language skills, i.e. LSRW in two of the prominent languages in use at the place under-study. Although the self-assessment wasn’t really found to be useful in this context because what was observed that many a people rated their skills in English much higher than their performance in class-room or in achievement test reflects. There were also cases wherein the subjects under-rated their skills in English and their performance in aforesaid situations were much better. Keeping this point in view, for the stage of assessment and data-analysis, we decided to drop this aspect as a variable. As can be witnessed from the description above, the one by one analysis of the subjects somewhat fails to capture the essence of an overall analysis and it requires some sort of rethought. As, the chapter of literature-review also suggests that there is a dearth of frameworks on languaging aspect of communicative competence, there is no widely accepted framework or model for linguistic analysis of such kind. There have also been not many studies of such kind wherein the performance of subjects in multicultural settings in BICS and CALP courses is looked into. Fact of the matter is that there has been not much work in the area of communication challenges with respect to oral communication and verbal aptitude in “high-stake examinations”. These examinations, by the very nature and the requirement of the task for which the candidates are to be selected through these examinations, are such that in order to be cracked require understanding of not only the basic communication skills (in this context, English language specifically) but also that of the verbal aptitude (the higher level skills of grammatical structure, reading comprehension, writing ability and logic etc.).

120

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Variable-Wise Analysis of Quantitative Data Coming back to the analysis of the performance, having done the individual analysis of subjects’ performance, which was not really fructifying exercise in terms of locating the responsible variable or element of an individual’s performance, the researcher thought of presenting the entire data of BICS and CALP for all 141 subjects and making an attempt to locate the elements responsible for the individual’s performance. For which the researcher plans to go about the description, interpretation and analysis of the said data, of achievement tests in both BICS and CALP from both the branches of Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science Engineering, in the following order: Gender, Place of schooling, Medium of schooling, Frequency of use of English at different stages of life, Branch of study, Place of birth (geographical location). For each of these variables, the data of top 35 and bottom 35 will be taken into account for the study, thus we will be able to capture the performance of about 50% of the subjects. Depending upon the requirements, the analysis on some of the variables may be presented branch-wise and for rest of them, the data that of entire subjects will be presented and analysed.

Gender Top 35 BICS As detailed in earlier chapters, the total number of participant subjects in the study is 141, out of which 76 are from Computer Science branch and rest 65 are from Mechanical Engineering branch. Out of which there are 24 female subjects in totality in which 20 are from Computer Science Engineering and rest 4 are from Mechanical Engineering branch. The 1st table of Table 4.3.1 represents the situation and ranking of top 35 subjects in BICS, the 2nd table denotes the situation of bottom 35 subjects, whereas the 3rd one talks about the situation of top 35 subjects in CALP and the 4th and the final Table in 4.3.1 displays the situation of bottom 35 subjects in CALP. The green columns indicate the value of BICS whereas the red columns indicate the value of CALP. AT stands for achievement tests (which have already been mentioned in the chapter above, while presenting the individual’s data-analysis. SD in the columns here represents the standard deviation from the average performance of the lot. As the table shows there are 9 female candidates who appear in top 35 performers in BICS. Out of 9 subjects, 8 are from computer Science and 1 is from Mechanical Engineering. As mentioned already, total number of female candidates is 24 out of which 20 are from Computer Science and the rest from Mechanical Engineering, which means that out of 20 female subjects in CSE, 8 are in top 35 performers in BICS, which translates that 40% share overall in top performers. On the other hand out of 4 female subjects in ME, 1 secures her position in top 35 which makes

Gender

121

the percentage of share in top performers to about 25%. Although 4 may not be a good sample to say something conclusively on on-an-average performance of female subjects of ME, but certainly it gives us an idea of how the things are at present in the branch. Thus, CSE female candidates supersede the ME female candidates in terms of performance in BICS. As far as the performance of the male candidates is concerned there are 26 male candidates in top 35, out of 26 males 13 are from Mechanical Engineering and 13 are from Computer Science branch out of total number of 61 and 56 respectively. So, the percentage of representation in top 35 of BICS of CSE subjects is about 23% whereas that of ME is 21%, which is contrary to the commonly held view among students and the teaching faculty in general that the CSE students are more proficient in BICS than the students of other branches. Thus, if we see the overall performance in BICS gender-wise we find the CSE female students doing the best, followed by the female students from ME. At least, as far as gender as a variable is concerned, female gender in totality can be considered to be better in BICS.

Bottom 35 BICS If we talk about the performance of bottom 35 subjects in BICS, we find that the gap in terms of both gender and branch gets very clear. Out of bottom 35 performers, a huge lot of it, i.e. 22 is from ME branch, all of which are male subjects. In totality there are only 2 female candidates who are in bottom 35, both of which are from CS branch. Out of 4 from ME, there is none in bottom 35. As far as the male subjects of CS are concerned, there are only 11 students who fall in this category. If we see this analysis gender wise it quite emphatically displays that overall the female subjects are relatively better than their male counterparts. And if we see the female’s performance branch-wise, we don’t get very clear picture categorically because there is no female candidate from ME in bottom 35, but that certainly gives us an idea that the female of both CSE and ME have better insight and understanding of CALP than their male counterparts. The data of bottom 35 in BICS also strengthens the view generally held that the CSE students are relatively better than the ME students (Table 4.187).

CALP Top 35 Out of top 35 positions in CALP, 10 are held by female subjects whereas rest 25 are occupied by male subjects. Out of 10 female 8 are from CSE and 2 are from ME, which is 1 more than the top 35 in BICS, which translates to female being relatively better in CALP than in BICS. As far as the performance of male subjects is concerned, the performance is almost similar to that of the top 35 BICS but CSE

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.187 Gender-wise performance

(continued)

122

Table 4.187 (continued)

Gender 123

124

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subjects have improvised performance in CALP and they are 14 in number (1 more than what they are in BICS top 35) whereas the number of male ME subjects has gone down from 13 to 11, which again clearly reflects that branch-wise CSE beats ME and gender-wise, in terms of percentage the female outperform the male counterparts.

CALP Bottom 35 The last data in this series of discussion only strengthens the opinions formed on the basis of discussion on earlier 3 data that were analysed. In bottom 35 CALP, there is just 1 female and rest 34 are male subjects. That female too comes at 34th position, the second best out of the worst 35 in CALP. That itself indicates that the female candidates summarily surpass the male candidates in CALP and BICS both. Out of rest 34 male candidates, only 14 are from CSE whereas 20 are from Mechanical Engineering stream. That once again supports the view of CSE students being better than the Mechanical Engineering ones.

Place of Schooling The next variable, that we are going to weigh our data on, is the place of schooling of the subjects. The statistics, of place of schooling of 141 subjects under-study, is given below: – – – – –

City: 90 Capital City: 07 Metro City: 07 Town: 32 Village: 05

Thus, the highest percentage of subjects is of those who have had their schooling in city (C). And that percentage clocks to about 62%. Rest 38% is flocked by subjects who have had their schooling in Capital city (CC), Metro City (MC), Town (T) and Village (V). Following are 4 different columns: 1st column displays the top 35 BICS subjects and their place of schooling, the 2nd one displays the details of bottom 35 BICS, the 3rd one has the details of top 35 CALP subjects, whereas the last 4th one has the representation of bottom 35 CALP details. Columns in green colour represent details of BICS and that of red colour show the details of CALP (Table 4.188).

Table 4.188 Place of schooling

(continued)

Place of Schooling 125

Table 4.188 (continued)

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Place of Schooling

127

Top 35 BICS In the list of top 35 BICS performers, the highest 24 subjects were either from city or have had their 10th and 12th level schooling in city (C). Out of 7 subjects from capital cities, none of them could find place in top 35 of BICS, out of 7 from metropolitan cities, there are 2 who find place in top 35 in BICS. Out of total 32 from town, 9 find place in the top 35 list of BICS, whereas out of 5 from village none find place in too 35 BICS. If we see this data in view of percentage, the situation that emerges looks a little surprising. The subjects from town have better percentage of representation if we compare with that of city. The subjects from city have 26.6% share in top 35 BICS whereas the subjects from town have a slightly better representation in the BICS top 35 with 28.15%, which is almost as good as the performance of subjects from metropolitan cities, who have 28.5% representation. None of the subjects from villages and capital city, which are total 14 in number combined, could find place in top 35 BICS performers. Does the data above mean that the place of education doesn’t have any great impact in an individual’s BICS performance? Well, at least on the surface level, the primary data prima facie, indicates something in the same direction. Because if none of the subjects from capital city find any place in top 35 of BICS, this data negates the entire discussion on exposure and its role in linguistic proficiency of an individual. Nonetheless, probably as the sample size of the data from these places is not very substantial, we must refrain from making any conclusive remarks but the data in Table 4.188 gives us a reason for rethought on the role of exposure in the language-learning or second language acquisition. Before making any final remarks on it, let’s analyse the data on rest 3 parameters and see whether the rest of the data are in the same direction or do they support a view long held.

Bottom 35 BICS If we talk about the bottom 35 performers in BICS, out of 90 from city, 20 fall in this category, 2 out of 7 from capital city (remember, there were none in top 35 BICS), null from 7 of metro cities, 12 out of 32 from towns and 1 out of 5 from villages. If we see this data into percentage, we find that the highest 37.5% of the subjects from town are in this category whereas the subjects from city have the 2nd highest representation with 28.5%, followed by city, nearly 22% and finally by village by 20%. Once again, it will be pertinent to reiterate that because of the small size of the data, nothing very conclusive can be drawn at least in the case of village, capital and metropolitan cities. Nevertheless, the data in hand, certainly gives us an idea that situation with the subjects from these disadvantageous backgrounds (those from

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

towns and villages) is not as poor as we might expect it to be. Perhaps the situation in CALP might give us a further clue in this regard.

CALP top 35 The data of CALP top 35 presents a slightly different picture from that of BICS. In CALP, the exposure seems to be working. The stats in the CALP top 35 has 3 subjects from capital city out of 7 in total, the number from metro cities has remained constant, i.e. 2, but the number of subjects from town has gone down, whereas from city, which has highest population in total number of subjects under study, the number has gone marginally up—25 from 24 of BICS top 35. In terms of percentage—the percentage of subjects from city has gone up slightly up from 26.6% of BICS to 28% in CALP. There was none from capital city in BICS top-35, but there are 3 in top 35 CALP which take their percentage to 43.8%. The number of subjects from metro cities has remained unchanged and so has the percentage. The number of subjects from town has come down if we compare their performance in BICS with that of CALP and so has share I terms of percentage, which has come down from 28 to 15%. One thing which gets evident through the analysis of these data is that being good in oral skills doesn’t really mean that you should be good at Verbal aptitude as well. BICS and CALP are about two different skills altogether. Many a times researcher comes across students who have good communication skills but they don’t do equally good in verbal aptitude thing. Similarly, there are some students who are good at verbal aptitude but they have severe limitation with their oral communication skills.

Bottom 35 CALP As far as bottom 35 of CALP is concerned, except for subjects from towns and villages much of data from cities remain largely unchanged. There were 20 subjects from cities in bottom 35, the same as in the case of BICS; the same number—2 in the case of capital city; 1 from metropolitan city; 8 from town and whopping 4 out of total 5 from villages. The last datum in the series of data tells us something. Perhaps it’s really difficult for subjects from villages to understand and master the CALP course, which in a way strengthens our observation in 4.3.2.3 that BICS and CALP require two different kinds of learning, training and skills.

Medium of Schooling As is widely believed that the medium of instruction has huge impact on one’s skills in a given language, the next variable in the order is the medium of instruction during schooling days. There are 3 sages identified for schooling- Elementary, 8th standard

Medium of Schooling

129

(matriculation), and 10th and 12th (secondary and senior-secondary schooling) in the similar fashion, i.e. to analyse the top and bottom 35 from both BICS and CALP. We also thought of adding another dimension of analysis by looking into the composite SD of BICS and CALP and see whether that brings about any change in the overall scenario. If the composite SD projects an entirely different picture from that of the BICS and CALP in isolation, we will continue looking into the things with the Composite SD angle as well in upcoming variables of analysis (Table 4.189). The data of three stages of schooling of subjects tell us that the number of students having been taught through a particular medium of instruction is not consistent. The Table 4.190 gives a clearer picture of the situation: i. Elementary education. If we see the performance of subjects with the view of their medium of schooling at elementary level, we find that there is nothing very unusual in the result and because the elementary level of education in itself is at such an early stage of life that locating its impact on an individual’s performance, in absence of backup from other data, may not be considered justifiable. Still, on overt level we find that the subjects who didn’t have English medium instruction at this level have performed slightly better in CALP than in BICS. For rest, we will hold our analysis until we have all the data in hand. ii. Matriculation education. The Table 4.191 displays that there out of 98 total English medium students 28 are in the top 35 of BICS whereas in CALP the number goes up to 31. This way, it clearly reflects that earning mastery in CALP is relatively much difficult for the non-English background subjects. The bottom column of both BICS and CALP also supports this analysis because in bottom 35 of BICS there are 13 subjects whereas in CALP bottom 35 there are 18 which are 5 more in number. The top 35 column sees decline of non-English medium students from 7 in BICS to 4 in CALP. This all supports to our inference that for understanding in CALP a student requires a greater exposure of English since early time. However, we withhold our final analysis until the entire data of schooling is presented here.

Secondary and Senior-Secondary Schooling Now if we see the data carefully, we find that there is variation in number of number of students receiving education from a particular medium. There are 74 subjects out of 141 total population who probably had their entire schooling through English medium. Because in elementary level that’s the number which goes on increasing to 98 in matriculation level and 112 in secondary and senior secondary level. So, there are at least 24 subjects who moved from non-English medium to English medium schools for their 8th standard schooling and for secondary and senior secondary level schooling as well there are still 14 who moved to English medium schools. These both the numbers exclude the subjects who have had their schooling from such schools

4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.189 Medium of Schooling

(continued)

130

Table 4.189 (continued)

Secondary and Senior-Secondary Schooling

131

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.190 Elementary school board-wise English as a medium

Top 35 BICS

Bottom 35 BICS

Top 35 CALP

Bottom 35 CALP

Yes: 74

Yes: 24

Yes: 12

Yes: 24

Yes: 12

No: 40

No: 4

No: 16

No: 6

No: 15

Not really: 27

N.R.: 7

N.R.: 7

N.R.: 5

N.R.: 8

Table 4.191 Matriculation School, board-wise English medium

Top 35 BICS

Bottom 35 BICS

Top 35 CALP

Bottom 35 CALP

Yes: 98

Yes: 28

Yes: 22

Yes: 31

Yes: 17

No: 43

No: 07

No: 13

No: 04

No: 18

Table 4.192 Secondary and senior secondary schooling Yes: 112

Yes: 30

Yes: 23

Yes: 29

Yes: 25

No: 15

No: 04

No: 08

No: 01

No: 05

Not really: 14

Not really: 1

Not really: 04

Not really: 05

Not really: 05

who officially had English as the medium of instruction but more often than not, almost always it was English which was used for instruction purposes (Table 4.192). As per the data in Table 4.3.3.4, we find that this table too supports the conclusions drawn from the earlier two tables. In BICS top 35 there are only 17% of the total students from non-English medium schools who find place in BICS top 35 whereas from English medium schools the percentage was 27%. In BICS bottom 35 we had 23 from English medium whereas rest 12 were from non-English medium schools, which take their percentage to 20.5 and 41% respectively. Similarly, in Top 35 of CALP we had 20% students from Non-English medium schools whereas 26% from English medium schools; for Bottom 35 the percentage of English and non-English medium was 22 and 34% respectively. Due to the variation in numbers we have, and no consistency in medium of instruction and also due to a small size of non-English medium school students we may have to consider the Table 4.3.3.1 again for saying something conclusively. And as per the table we find the following figure. In BICS top 35 there are 4 who had their schooling in non-English medium schools all through; in Bottom 35 of BICS there are total 7 who had no English in their secondary and senior secondary level; for top 35 of CALP there was only 1 who had his schooling non-English medium schools throughout. And lastly for bottom 35 CALP there were 5 in all who didn’t have English at all in their secondary and senior secondary schooling level. As mentioned already in the beginning of this section of discussion, we will also see the composite SD of the subjects and will try to find out the role of medium of instruction in the performance of the subjects (Tables 4.193 and 4.194).

Secondary and Senior-Secondary Schooling

133

Table 4.193 Composite top 35 Composite top 35 Yes

No

Not really

Elementary

23

06

06

Matriculation

31

04

00

Senior and senior secondary

30

01

04

Yes

No

Not really

Table 4.194 Composite bottom 35 Composite bottom 35 Elementary

12

16

07

Matriculation

20

15

00

Senior and senior secondary

25

04

06

The Table 4.3.3.5a and b also suggest the same as the researcher had drawn earlier. Based on the data and description above, we can say that CALP is certainly much more difficult than BICS to get hold on, for the non-English medium school students. This data in hand also brings out the limitation of the study that it didn’t have adequate number of subjects from both English and non-English medium instruction schools so that something decisively could be claimed. Nonetheless, the data gives us a peep into the difference between BICS and CALP and it can safely be assumed that for non-English medium students it’s difficult to understand and also to score in CALP viz-a-viz BICS.

Frequency of Using English at Different Stages of Life This variable is another attempt by researcher to find out the potential reasons for subjects’ performance in BICS and CALP. Through the analysis of this data we will try to find the correlation between the frequency of using English at varied stages and walks of life and its correlation if any in their performance in BICS and CALP. The data of the Table 4.195 has to be located in and corresponded to the data of entire 141 subjects, which has been Table 4.196.

BICS Top 35 In top 35 of BICS between age 6–10 (refer to Table 4.3.4.1) there are 7 subjects who had never used English, there were 14 who had seldom used English, there were

Table 4.195 Frequency of using English at varied stages

(continued)

134 4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.195 (continued)

Frequency of Using English at Different Stages of Life

135

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4 Locating Languaging in Socio-Pragmatic Variables

Table 4.196 Overall data on frequency of using English Never

Seldom

Often

Always

6–10

31

64

41

05

11–13

06

55

73

06

14–17

02

40

92

07

10 who had often used English and there were 4 which together made it to 35. If we see this data in terms of percentage, we find that the percentage of ‘never’ and ‘seldom’ English users is almost same i.e. about 22%. Whereas the percentage of Always is the highest with 80%, the second highest is that of often user of English in that duration with a little more than 24%. Which looks very natural except for the fact that there is not much of difference in the percentage between the never and seldom users’ chunk and that of the often users. Something substantial will be said only once we have data on other age group. If we talk about the age range of 11–13 the number of never users drops down substantially and also there is a decline in number of subjects using English seldom whereas there is growth in number of English users with the frequency of often. There is a slight drop in the number of subjects using English always. In top: 35 of BICS there are 21 out of total 73 who used English often, followed by 11 out of 55 who claim to have used English seldom and there is just 1 out of 6, who used English never and 2 out of 6 who used English always, with the average of 16% for never, 20% for seldom, 29% for often and the highest 33% for always. Whereas in the last age range 14–17, there are 23 students such who used English, rest 12 have 9 from seldom frequency and 3 from always, which generates the average of 0% for never, 22.5% for seldom, 25% for often and 43% for always. The overall data once again suggests that the students with more exposure in English do better in BICS than the ones who have lesser exposure and lesser avenues to use the language.

Bottom 35 BICS In bottom 35 of BICS there are 11 students who used English never between the age of 6 and 10 with 54.5%, 14 who used English seldom with the percentage of about 22%. The ones who used English often, they were total 9 in bottom 35, with percentage totalling to about 22% which is roughly the same as the percentage of the ones who claim to have used English seldom. Moving on, the last one of the series always frequency had 1 in bottom 35 with the percentage of 20. If we look into the performance of bottom 35 for the age between 11 and 13, there is 1 who had used English never, 16 each who used English seldom and often and 2 from the ones who claim to have used English always. Thus the percentage of these subjects is 17% for never, 29% for seldom, 20% for often and 33 and for always.

Frequency of Using English at Different Stages of Life

137

The data is surprising in the sense that out of 6 for both the frequencies—never and always, there is just 1 within bottom 35 of BICS for never whereas for always there are 2 such subjects. For the frequency of usage of English between the age 14 and 17, we find the following data. There were 2 subjects in 141 who claimed to have not used English in this age range and both of them find place in bottom 35. For seldom English users in this range the percentage is 32.5, which translates to 13 out of 40, whereas for often English users, the percentage is about 20 which in terms of number translates to 18 out of 92. As far as the number of ‘always’ English users is concerned, it’s 2 out of total 7. Thus the data for Bottom 35 BICS also look like supporting the generalisations drawn from the BICS top 35.

CALP Top 35 For the age-range of 6–10 years, in top 35 of CALP there are 3 in 35 who had never used English. There are 13 in top 35 CALP who had seldom used English. Again, there are 17 in top 35 who had often used English in this phase of life. And finally, there were 2 in top 35 CALP who had always used English in this span. This way, the representation percentage of the subjects with these frequencies of usage is 9.6% for never, about 20% for seldom, nearly 41% for often and 40% for always English users in this age-range. For the age between 11 and 13 there are none in top 35 who had never used English, there are 10 who had seldom used English, there are 22 who had often used English and there are 6 who had always used English. If we see these numbers in terms of percentage, we will find that the percentage representation of never is 0%, that of seldom is 25% and quite alike of often is 24%, whereas the always has highest representation with nearly 50%. For the age span of 14–17 we find again that there is none from never user of English in top 35, 4 from seldom users of English, 29 from often users of English, and 2 from always users of English. Which takes their percentage of representation to 0% for never, 25% for seldom, 24% for often and 50% for always, that justifies and validates the earlier finding of the role of exposure and usage of English for CALP courses.

Bottom 35 CALP Bottom 35 of CALP is the last in this sequence of data-analysis with the variable of frequency of using English at different stages of life. As per the data, in the agerange of 6–10, there are 10 who used English seldom. 9 who used it often and 16 who used English never this span of age. Thus the share of percentage of seldom users of

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English is 15.6%, that of often users is 22%; whereas for never users of English it is nearly 52%. For the age span of 11–13, the average of the ones who never used English is 50%, that of the seldom users of English is 31%, often users had representation of nearly 19%, whereas for the ones who used English always is nearly 16.6%. For the age between 14 and 17 never had representation of 50% in bottom 35 of CALP, seldom had 42.5% of representation, often had 16% whereas always had nearly 28.5% of representation in bottom 35. The overall picture that emerges out of this analysis of data with the view of frequency of use at different stages of life, quite clearly indicates that BICS requires a lesser exposure and training to gain an understanding at but CALP requires a serious prior exposure of the subject to get a hold of concepts in it. There is one caveat that these subjects are from 2nd year of BTech course, in the first year of their program they had 2 semesters of course in BICS which may have facilitated them scoring better in BICS in comparison to CALP, still it goes without saying (as the data explicitly tells) that the students with prior exposure and training do better in CALP.

Branch of Study As scrolling through the data, we found that apparently there was an unalike performance by students of Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering branch students. In fact, this difference was observed not only in the case of number of subjects in top and bottom but also in terms of the marks scored as well (Tables 4.197 and 4.198). As the data is congruent and consistent with our earlier findings, we thought of taking out the branch-wise average of SD (standard deviation) and find out whether or not and to what extend is the variation found in the performance of the students from both the branches. This, in a way, is an attempt to numerically establish the things in perspective. For this we have taken the SD average of all the 65 subjects from Mechanical Engineering and all 76 from Computer Science branch (Table 4.199). If we see the composite SD of both the branches it clearly indicates to the kind of performance the students of these branches have displayed in the achievement tests. When we took the average of the SD there was a huge difference in the average of SD of ME and CSE. The average of SD of CSE was whopping +3.10 whereas the average of SD of ME was −0.34, which is a huge difference, especially considering the fact Table 4.197 Branch-wise details BICS top 35

BICS bottom 35

CALP top 35

CALP bottom 35

CSE (76)

21 (27.6%)

13 (17%)

22 (29%)

15 (19.7%)

ME (65)

14 (18%)

22 (34%)

13 (20%)

20 (31%)

Branch of Study

139

Table 4.198 Composite SD TOP 35

Bottom 35

CSE (76)

22 (29%)

12 (16%)

ME (65)

13 (20%)

23 (35%)

that the average was that of the SD not of the total marks scored. Thus, again it can be safely concluded that the CSE students have much better understanding of both BICS and CALP in comparison with the understanding of Mechanical Engineering students. The data in both the tables above clearly show that the subjects of CSE branch outperform the students of Mechanical Engineering. There may be couple of behavioural reasons: – It is widely assumed that the students of CSE due to presence of female students in the class-room not only behave decently but also do they feel a positive peer-pressure to perform better in the classroom. Though we are not able to say something concrete on it as we don’t have any specific data pertaining to this behavioural aspect of learning. – Most of the computer science graduates look to work for IT companies and corporate of that kind which require its prospective employers to be good at both communication skills as well as verbal aptitude. This may one of the bones of the contention which must be encouraging the students to not only take these courses seriously but also to perform well. – The third and the last reason that researcher can think of at present is that either the students opting for Computer Science branch are already very good at verbal aptitude and communication skills because of which they opt this branch so that they could capitalise on their already honed skills or the other reason may be the role played by faculty members of the particular branch. In the sense that the faculty of CSE branch are better in communication skills than those of Mechanical Engineering, but again we have no data to substantiate this point. There can be further interesting study by some researchers to look into these behavioural aspects to account for the performance of students from a particular branch and even otherwise.

Native Place (Geographical Location) Some of the linguists and language researchers have based their study on the role of exposure in one’s communicative ability and efficiency and have found that the exposure does play a vital role in one’s overall linguistic ability and competence. That’s why we thought of taking place of stay as one of the variables for the study and find out the role of the said variable in the present study. We will details the

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Table 4.199 Composite data on branch of study

(continued)

Native Place (Geographical Location)

141

Table 4.199 (continued)

related data and interpretation followed by the analysis with both the SD of BICS and CALP followed by that of the composite SD. The Table 4.200 which displays the native place of the subjects gives us an idea as in how the students from a particular place tend to behave in terms of their basic communication skills and the verbal aptitude. In BICS top 35 there are 6 students from Bihar which is about 50% of their total number in this study, which is quite good. The students from DL (Delhi) (despite being a metro city), J & K (precisely

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from Jammu), JH (Jharkhand) and KL (Kerala) none of the subjects could secure position in top 35. Haryana (HR) has 1 subject in top 35 which takes the place’s percentage to 20%. Rajasthan (RJ) has 2 candidates out of total 11, which translates to their percentage to 18.1. Uttarakhand (UK) has out of total 3, taking its percentage to 33.3% whereas UPE and UPW has the second largest and the largest number respectively. UP East has 13 subjects in top 35 of BICS from its total sample of 30, which takes their percentage representation to nearly 43.3% on the other hand, UP west has an average of 17.6% which is much lesser than that of the eastern part of Uttar Pradesh. Thus, if we see the data above it clearly indicates that UP east has the highest percentage of representation in the overall BICS achievement test. One of the limitations of this research is that the number of students on varied parameters is not very consistent that’s why it becomes difficult to make any claim decisively. Though howsoever small sample of the data is, it certainly gives us an idea of how the things are going. In this case as well, although Delhi, Jammu, Uttarakhand have a very small number of subjects, it gives us an idea of how the things are. If we see the BICS bottom 35 the maximum number of subjects as well as the highest percentage is that of Uttar Pradesh West with nearly 28%. UP east has representation of about 16.6%, Bihar has 25% of the subjects; Haryana has the highest 60% of the subjects in the bottom 35 of the BICS. Rajasthan has nearly 27% of its students in the bottom 35. This way, the overall situation is such that UP east has again better performance than UP west and Haryana has in particular bad performance in this segment. In CALP top 35 the best performance is again of the subjects from UP east, which has total 11 subjects in top 35 with percentage of 36.6 whereas the western part of Uttar Pradesh has total 15 subject which takes their percentage to about 22%. Bihar on the other hand has 25% of representation of its total number. The last in the sequence, the BICS bottom 35 UP west has slightly improved performance as its percentage has down from 28% to nearly 22%, which indicates Table 4.200 Data on native place BICS top 35

BICS bottom 35

CALP top 35

CALP bottom 35

BR: 12

6

03

04

02

DL: 02

0

00

00

00

HR: 05

1

03

00

03

J & K: 02

0

00

00

02

JH: 07

0

01

01

02

KL: 01

0

01

00

00

RJ: 11

02

03

03

04

UK: 03

01

00

01

00

UPE: 30

13

05

11

07

UPW: 68

12

19

15

15

Native Place (Geographical Location)

143

that the subjects from UP west tend to be better at CALP than in CALP. On the other hand, the performance of the subjects from UP east has worsened in comparison to the performance in CALP. Its share in bottom 35 has increased from 16.6% to nearly 23%, which is almost comparable with that of the UP west. Bihar has improved its performance slightly and has gone down from 25% to nearly 17%. Thus, concluding it can be said that UP east has better performance in BICS than in CALP whereas West has slightly better performance in CALP than in BICS. Overall, UP east has most consistent performance of all. In order to validate and certify the interpretation and inference drawn above, we thought of locating the performance of the subjects in terms of overall SD and average SD with reference to the place they belong to. In the Table 4.201 place-wise data has been given against the name of the place. The table certifies the conclusion drawn above. This table gives a much clearer picture of the overall skills in English language, per se. As per the data, the subjects from Uttarakahand have performed the best of the lot, though it has a very small number. Overall second position has been bagged by UP east with 4.38 as the average SD, which is followed by Bihar with 3.23 average SD. Delhi and UP west has similar performance as far as composite average SD goes. Rest all the places have their average SD in negative. As observed, perhaps that learning of language remains confined to spoken ability of the individual- may be addition of new words in their active lexicon, some idiomatic expressions etc. at least that is what the data at hand suggests. RC which otherwise should be the easiest thing to do, troubles the students greatly. Why it should be easier is because it is the only question which has answer right there, and why it becomes difficult for the kids, has multi-facet reasons: the text not from their area of interest/reading, lesser exposure to what and whereabouts, novel/strange words/expressions as well as the negating conjunctions such as—however, nonetheless, nevertheless etc. negate whatever has been said earlier. As Llosa (2017: 7) puts, Table 4.201 Composite data on Native place Overall SD BR: 12 DL: 02

38.8 2.05

Avg. SD 3.23 1.25

HR: 05

−38

−7.6

J & K: 02

−13.2

−6.6

−5.95

−0.85

KL: 01

−2.35

−2.35

RJ: 11

−25.85

−2.35

32.45

10.81

JH: 07

UK: 03 UPE: 30 UPW: 68

131.5 88.75

4.38 1.3

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“[C]orrelational studies… have found a relationship between the presence of complex linguistic features in test items and greater relative difficulty of the items”. As RC also tests the time-management, many of the students in order to save time tick the option as soon as they find answer to the question without reading the entire text ignoring the however/nonetheless part of the text. This observation necessitates that the students must be trained such that they could “[b]roaden their communicative experiences, their worldviews, and their understanding of the active, creative roles” (Hall, 2016: 117) they are expected to play. With all this data in hand, there is always a possibility of allusion to what data says and how an individual does languaging in real life situation. As Dewaele (2007: 162) puts it aptly, “[i]t is important to remind ourselves that the different factors that determine oral proficiency cannot easily be considered in isolation, and that any attempt to do so, while statistically feasible, may show only part of the more general picture”.

Summing Up Coming to the terminal point of our discussion, it’s only imperative to discuss on multiple facets of languaging in English in Indian heterogenous setting. In this context of L-1, L-2 dichotomy, the following remark by Afendra et al. (1995) assumes significance, “[F]or a quick definition I would be inclined to say, as vaguely as necessary, that a native language is one that is learned early and fairly well. I prefer to talk of L 1, although those who object to ‘non-native’ and ‘new’ will probably not be happy either with ‘2’. I take it that L1 and L2 refer to circumstantial features of languages, i.e. different forms that they take in certain circumstances that are fairly well known. Any L1 is capable of being, under other circumstances, an L2, and vice versa”. English, among the younger generation in India, to say the least, is hugely popular. “The aspiration of us colonials had been to speak English like Englishmen”—Ved Mehta, The stolen Light, In Krishnaswamy & Burde (1998: 1). The above line finds a true reflection in the data above. We find that the parents even from villages, with a little social standing and relatively lesser resources, also send their kids to English medium schools so that if not much, at least the kid would be able to speak English. “[E]nglish seems to have become so entrenched a language and is such an integral part of India’s multilingual, urban culture that it can hardly be ignored or dislodged. Even the most vociferous pro-English and anti-English voices have been quietened considerably, if not totally silenced, by a sense of indispensability of English in the national interest”. (Sheorey, 2006: 17). And in order for a young graduate to succeed in this world s/he needs to have a thorough understanding of English Language “Students need both declarative knowledge (knowing about grammar) and procedural knowledge (how to use it appropriately)”. (Myhill, 2005: 87). Davis (2003: 196). Schneider (2007: 161) makes a very important remark with reference to English language in India, “[G]iven the current situation, Indian English is likely to stay and

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to defend the compartmentalized domains which it controls, and probably to keep growing further in terms of speaker numbers and competence levels. At present it seems unlikely, however, that the language is going to cross the line and acquire new, emotionally more laden functions in Indian society”. English in India is largely learnt and treated as a second language (refer to Table 1.2, Chap. 1), inevitably it has its own typical intricacies, though perhaps not as much different in morphology and syntax as, it is, in phonology and pragmatics. As Agnihotri (2001) puts, “So far as syntax is concerned, there is no structural feature that may be said to be uniquely associated with the English used by the fluent Indian users of the language.” As cited in Agnihotri (2001). In the line of argument, there are many who have contributed on standard/non-standard, native/non-native debate. Singh (1995: 285). “[t]he only motivation for Fig. 2 (classifying world Englishes in native/non-native varieties) is a wish to distribute equality unequally. It looks as though all it takes to propagate a prejudice is a convenient graphic representation and clever labelling.” Though there is a lot of discussion on what in and how really should Grammar be taught. There are some who hold relatively lenient view on grammar, “[I]f you help students understand how to use language appropriately for their specific writing situation, how to make editing an integral but not stifling part of their writing process, and how to understand the way language works in our society, then you are teaching ‘grammar’.” (Budden et al., 2002: 83). On the other hand there are scholars who hold on a stark contrast position, “whether traditional notions of grammar can continue to be used when the social environment is such that conventions around representation no longer “hold”; when student learners assume to them- selves notions of agency which undercut the power relations and forms of authority on which notions of grammar have traditionally been based.” Kress (2010: 233). Behrens (2014: 47) opines, “[u]nderstanding how language works, then, does not mean sitting through the traditional, old-fashioned type of grammar lessons. Language is more than grammar, and even grammar can be understood in more meaningful ways, as a description of the rules our intuition relies on to determine if a sentence ‘sounds right’ or not. Citing the ubiquitous belief that teaching grammar is only ‘okay’ in context.” Myhill (2011: 75) explains that ‘[i]n essence, the professional debate divides those who see no place for grammar, because of no demonstrable impact on students’ learning, from those who believe that knowledge about language in its own right has a role in a language curriculum’. It is oft-heard in academic discussions on ELT and ESP, that in order to create the ease of learning, both the content and language shouldn’t be unfamiliar. While offering the course to the subjects it was ensured that they receive a familiar content so as their performance on languaging doesn’t get hampered. As is echoed by Byrnes (2008: 45) “[c]ontent knowledge in an L2 learning environment is even more a developmental matter than is the case for native language instruction, content assessment would benefit from principles that identify how content and language abilities develop simultaneously in language learning.” Llosa too doesn’t seem to hold any different opinion, “[I]t may be helpful for educators to be able to identify sources of students’ difficulty in accomplishing a task, whether it be language, content, or both” Llosa (2017: 10).

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As the theories on language learning also suggest that a language is learnt best with peers, the students should be given more and more avenues to do and learn rather than learn and do. “[W]e all learn to communicate by experience, so growing older has its communicative advantages”. Dewaele (2007: 162). In the context of the study, and as the data suggests the subjects require still more avenues to express themselves freely. If so, the students with rather limited proficiency should be encouraged and motivated to handle stage during programs, beginning with smaller level programs to bigger events. Thus, such students should be able to “extend [their] language” (cf. Cummins, 2009: 34). Students with limited proficiency may also be assigned senior students as mentors and they must be encouraged to write for the university magazines and journals. Such students joining their seniors can create their “Communities of Practice” (cf. Wenger et al. (2002: 7), in Hall, 2016: 99). To sum the book up I would borrow Davis (2003: 116), “I am therefore led to conclude that both for the non-native speaker (learner) and for the analyst, it is necessary to define the nature of that shared communicative competence; this requires that we establish this definition at a sufficiently abstract level so as to avoid all individual confinement. What this means is that communicative competence ceases to be the impossible requirement for the second-language learner it has appeared to be. It becomes instead the articulation of linguistic competence in situation; that is the practice of interaction and the recognition of appropriacy. All else is individual experience.”

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