English Language Teaching in its Social Context

220 A. SURESH CANAGARAJAHdownTamil synonyms for new lexical items like adding, tradition, and promotion and identifiedsome examples of count/noncount structures which the unit was supposed to teach: “Howmany employees are at the bank? How much money did you spend last week?” Indran hadsimply filtered out the necessary grammatical and vocabulary items from the supposedlyinteresting conversation.What the lived culture of the students suggests is a dual oppositional trend. On the onehand, they oppose the alien discourses behind the language and textbook. On the otherhand, they oppose a process-oriented pedagogy and desire a product oriented one. Indran’snotebook suggests that both trends could be connected: Seeing little possibility of relatingwhat they learned to their sociocultural background, students saw little meaning for thecourse other than the formal, academic one of acting through the examination and satisfyingthe English requirements of the institution.Postcourse contradictionAlthough the final interview with the students soliciting their own impressions of the contentand organization of the course confirmed some of the observations on their lived culture,it also contradicted many findings - at least at face value. Asked which subjects they hadenjoyed most and which they had worked hardest in, students mentioned their differentsubjects of specialization for the former but unanimously cited English for the latter. WhenI pointed out the flagging attendance in English and Contradicted their claim, I wasconfronted with a surprising piece of evidence.The majority of the students in the class hadbeen going for private instruction in English outside the university. As lndran put it conclusively,“For no other subject in the University do we go for tutoring, thus spending additionaltime and money on it. The fact that we do this only for English proves our motivation tomaster the languagc.”The students continued to affirm, as they had done at the beginningof the course, thc nced for English and the priority they had given to it.The admission that students had sought help outside the class was potentially anindictment of the university ESOL course. 1 then began exploring what it was that thestudents were getting in their private instruction that they were not getting in the university.It appeared that the tutors were using Sri Lankan or Indian textbooks - if they used any atall. But it was not the cultural relevance that students seemed to value in thec;e courses asmuch as the grammar instruction. In fact, the texts and pedagogy were overtly grammaroriented and were rarely contextuali7ed. Tharma praised his tutor (using lexical borrowingsfrom English): “He ‘cleared’ the ‘grammar.”’Other questions in the interview confirm the desire of the students for grammarorientedinstruction. When asked which section of the textbook they had enjoyed and whichthey had found useful (1 3 out of the 15 interviewed) replied that they found the grammartables and exercises (Sections b and e) useful although they had variously enjoyed theserialized story, conversation, and listening sections. Some conflated these distinctions:Jeyanthi said that she enjoyed the grammar section “because it is useful for the test.”Statements such as Jayanthi’s revealed that the desire of the students to learn the rules ofgrammar prescriptively was related to an examination-oriented motivation. In fact, thefinal 3-hr written test featured mody discrete-item questions on formal aspects. Later,asked specifically what the students had initially hoped to achieve through this course andthe extent to which the course had fulfilled their expectations, Siva said, ‘‘I expected thatthe course would prepare me for the test. . . that is, cover the necessary grammarcomprehensively.” It was not surprising, then, when all eventually agreed that the coursehad failed to satisfy their expectations.