Teaching the English language

It is a measure of the incredible influence of the King James version of the Bible that English is spoken around the world. The book of the Protestant missionaries went along with the colonial masters’ muskets in the same way as the crucifix traveled with the conquistadores’ sword.

English is now an undisputed global language, not only of commerce and finance, but also of technology and communication. The question is, which English? Churchill said that the British and Americans are one people divided by a common language; Bernard Shaw lamented the fact that both people, in many respect alike, lack a common language.

Perhaps that is the strength of the organic lingo from old Celtic married to the Germanic Angles, later intruded upon by the Normans with their conquering Gallic-Iberian roots, making the language ideal for Europe. In Brussels, only 20 percent of EU documents at the outset were in English; now, submissions are hitting 60 percent

Crossing the Atlantic were English speakers confident that they were to teach the King’s language to the New World. In the magnificent rendition of the Greek logos in John’s Gospel, “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God and the word was God,” the word picked up an Elizabethan accent, became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Not always pleasantly so, some would add, but that goes with the whole imperial operatic libretto. The witness echoes from Wellington to the Hudson, New Delhi to Sydney, Kingston to Durban, Toronto to Oahu, California to Singapura.

While jurisprudence remains littered with the “whereas” and “wherefores” that echoes in salas with gowned wigs, bureaucratese code piles on paperwork of government bureaus and agencies’ file cabinets. A technocrat colleague confesses to listening to the poetry of the street to keep her sanity from the inanity of bound operating documents, manual of operations and program procedures lining many professional office shelves that she has to peruse but hardly anyone uses. They are properly crafted PhDs, edited by the grammar book and vetted by librarians.

Occasionally, cries to maintain the purity of the language issues from legislative halls, even among churches who are convinced that God speaks with a stiff upper lip, but the polyglot from the Caribbean patois to UC Berkeley’s Ebonics, the Boston-by-the river to the Aloha clipper, the Texas drawl and the southern soul, the Appalachian Kluxer to the Louisiana hustler speaks not of one English but of many dialects.

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe taught to his Man Friday his first word: “Master,” a telling indication of the imperial GB’s move to the rest of the world. The culture that freighted the language came along with the lingua’s flavor, along with the uniformed troops, save in our time the uniform bears the proud eagle of the Americana.

We speak English in the CNMI not because Nihonggo, Aleman, Español, and any of the Austronesia dialects are inadequate; rather, it is that English now spreads a wide context so broad that Austrian UN General Secretary Kurt Waldheim sent a golden disk on a space ship explaining the peaceful mission of the vehicle, in English. We speak English in order to be part of the globe!

For the same reason, we have taken it as our task to glocalize Zhongguoren’s linguistic orientation. Putunghua is quite adequate to 15 percent of the world’s population resident in China and scattered in many Chinatowns around the world but if the centrifugal force of the yin-yang is inward looking and supremely self-confident in its self-sufficiency and self-reliance, the centripetal force is relational and subject to the whims of the 85 percent it intends to relate to, a bit problematic given that the Zhongguo’s corporate social face holds a premium value.

Restating that last sentence, the Chinese is conditioned to keep up a good face, while English is a language that has evolved as a self-expression of authenticity and what is objectively real. China’s face open’s with Tiananman’s plaza; the new face in English is the persona.

A professor writes a scientific brief of his experiment to make steel stronger and lighter but his write-up of this relevant transport issues is lost in the translation. The write-up is technical and abstract, and most journal treatises are often of the same caliber. This is the same written and read English (along with its legalese form) that is taught in universities, and alas, also in the academic halls of the CNMI.

Thus, Oral English students expect to learn about oral English, rather than use it. Our pedagogy is focused on use and we begin by leaving the “face” outside the door, enticing students’ persona to “describe their seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching experiences, express their feelings about it, relate their ideas and thoughts about it to those of others, and then indicate what they are going to do about the experience.” It is the method we used while working with village folks around the world in an earlier pedagogical incarnation. (Our method is called “imaginal education” for those curious enough to want to Google the subject!)

An astute student (one I suspect was sent by the administration to spy on our teaching) came up after the last session and offered the following: “This course should be called Life 101.” No quarrel here, and we trust she relays her observation elsewhere.

English, anyone?

Jaime R. Vergara (jrvergarajr2031@aol.com) is a former PSS teacher and is currently writing from the campus of Shenyang Aerospace University in China.