Abstract
This paper focuses on remediation required for engineering students in India with reference to writing skills in English. The modern engineering aspirant needs communicative competence in the English language to survive and succeed, yet language proficiency is not a criterion for admission in any engineering college. The paper examines the history of language acquisition theories and their application in the Indian engineering education context, critiques the limitations of the current grammar-based and communicative approaches, and proposes a holistic, process-oriented approach to remediation that integrates grammatical and discourse competence. The paper argues that effective remediation must activate the cognitive learning process, address fossilization of errors, and help students develop both accuracy and fluency through meaningful communicative tasks.
Keywords: engineering students, English language teaching, remediation, writing skills, ESL, India, Tamilnadu, communicative competence, error analysis, fossilization
1. Introduction: Engineers in India Today and ESL Teaching
The modern engineering aspirants represent the upwardly mobile rising middle class of a resurgent India. They know that in order to survive and succeed they need “communication skills” or in other words communicative competence in the English language. The employers demand it and universities are waking up to provide it. Does our curriculum meet this demand? Are the materials sufficient? Is the methodology appropriate? It is time we take a fresh look at ELT in our engineering colleges. This paper seeks to focus on remediation required for the engineering students with reference to writing skills.
The present context is such that the need for English has become more manifold than it used to be. It is no more just a library language or language used for some occupational purposes. Today’s engineer has to communicate with more number of his counter parts across the globe. A large number of Indian engineers have to now travel to many continents and work away from their home country. Also, among the scientists, technologists and business experts from culturally and linguistically different communities, English has become the predominant language for communication.
The engineering students in Tamilnadu come from varied backgrounds. The universities in Tamilnadu are now attracting students from various states of India and overseas. The cultural and linguistic diversity and the rural-urban divide are posing a great challenge both to the curriculum developers and the practicing teachers. English is the medium of instruction in the field of professional education but language proficiency is not a criterion for selection in any engineering college.
1.1 Language Acquisition Theories: Influences and Contexts
In Tamilnadu awareness of the necessity to look for materials specific to the engineering register, came in the late 1970’s when ‘The Structure of Technical English’ by A.J. Herbert (1965) became a prescribed text book. An awareness of this led to the discourse oriented approach aimed at communicative competence advocated by Widdowson. From grammatical form, attention was shifted to the use of technical English to define; classify; to make hypothesis; to draw conclusion and so on. Formal grammar teaching became unfashionable when the communicative approach gained ground. Krashen put forward the theory that grammar is acquired naturally, if learners are exposed to sufficient ‘comprehensible input’.
1.3 The Wash Back Effect
The aim of the English course in engineering colleges at present is to teach language skills (LSRW) through natural acquisition of language. So the teaching or learning has no thought content to remember and reproduce in the examination. This makes the student assume that there is nothing to learn. Even the students who manage to pass require remediation when he has to actually use language in real life situations. The student does not learn the required grammar making the need for focus on form essential.
2. Views of Applied Linguists on Remedial Teaching
Allen and Widdowson advocated a shift of attention from the grammatical to communicative properties of the language, “…the difficulties which the students encounter arise not so much from a defective knowledge from the system of English, but from an unfamiliarity with the English use, and that consequently their needs cannot be met by a course which simply provides further practice in the composition of sentence but only by one which develops a knowledge of how sentences are used in the performance of different communicative acts” (122-142).
Pit Corder also decries re-teaching as a remedial measure. If the first teaching did not produce required results, there is no obvious reason why the second teaching should do so. He argues that for effective remedial teaching we should understand the nature of the learner’s difficulties. Only when we know why an error has been committed can we start correcting it in a systematic way.
2.2 Fossilization of Errors
During the process of internalizing a rule both correct and incorrect forms are used in the learner’s inter-language. Sometimes certain errors get so deeply established that they keep recurring even after the learner is made aware that it is incorrect. “Fossilizable linguistic phenomena are linguistic items, rules and subsystem which speaker of particular NL [Native Language] will tend to keep in their IL[Inter Language] relative to particular TL[Target Language]” (Larry Selinker 34).
2.5 Balancing Form and Meaning
When we teach writing skills, grammar at the sentence level alone is not sufficient. Writing involves two major aspects: grammatical competence and discourse competence. All the grammar teaching stops at the sentence level in most classrooms today. Use of grammar in a continuous piece is not given importance in our teaching. Sequence of tense is an area which the students have not mastered.
The teaching of writing has to be process oriented rather than product oriented. The case studies done by Vivian Zamel of writing as a process have revealed that “composing is a non-linear, exploratory and generative process” (165). It is a process by which meaning is created.
3. Conclusion
At the tertiary level our attempt has to be towards an integrated approach towards both grammatical and discourse competence. Individually the teacher has to assess the grammatical competence and assign further remediation. So teacher may have to constantly interfere in the writing process. Groups can discuss their writing and effect correction and improve themselves. Students have to put himself in the shoes of the reader and think of the impact he creates. Writing has a purpose. The learner has to check whether the purpose has been attained.
A combination of communicative exercises along with relevant grammar rules in a contextualized manner and an appeal to the individual inter language can make remediation successful.
Works Cited
- Brumfit, C.J and Johnson, K. The Communicative Approach to Language Teaching. London: Oxford University Press. 1979.
- Corder S.P. Error Analysis and Interlanguage. London: Oxford University Press. 1981.
- Corder S.P. Introducing Applied Linguistics. Middlesex: Penguin Education. 1973.
- Kennedy, C and Bolitho. R. English for Specific Purpose. London: Mcmillan. 1984.
- Lightbown P.M, and Spada. Studies in Second Language Acquisition: Cambridge University Press: 1990.
- Norris, J. M.and L. Ortega. ‘Effectiveness of L2 Instruction: A research synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis’. Language Learning 50.3 (2000): 417-528.
- Widdowson, H.G., “Exploration in Applied Linguistics.” London: Oxford University Press. 1979.
- Zamel, Vivian. “Writing: The Process of Discovering Meaning.” TESOL Quarterly, Vol.16, No.2, (1982) 195-209.