Frank Talk: Mama or Papa? [Archives:1999/46/Culture]

Dr. Pramod Kumar 
Taiz University 
And when the clapping dies down you look around and wonder from where all this applause erupted. It is a silent and solitary spread where the eagles soar. Mind is its own subject. Here where ideas jostle and cajole to define each other, in turn, get classified themselves. Simple truth, half truth, relative truth, absolute truth, apparent truth, uncertain truth and all manner of truths take form and dissolve and re-form. It is indeed a protean spectacle! Subjective and objective truths, at two ends of the spectrum, go ding-dong for our recognition. Ultimately, the question boils down to making a choice between Mama and Papa. 
Grammar or literature? Which should be the basis of teaching language? Battle lines are clearly drawn. Blood-letting, sufficient to create perennial river, has left the issue inconclusive. Very often, when we beat about the bush, the solution lies just round the corner, perhaps, just a jargon-length beyond. Especially in academic fields we are tempted to presume complexity where none exists and attempt simplification where none is possible. Evidences of such defaults abound. Prejudice, vested interest, personal preference and such tend to get the better of objectivity. 
Schools are formed around the run-of-the-mill issues. Unproven, half-cooked theories and doctored facts and figures are paraded as the final work. They come and go like the changeable weather. In fact, there is no dearth of trouble-shooters in every field, least of all in academics. These trigger-happy pundits fall over one-another to masquerade evidences from the works of Shakespeare or Milton to show that they were short on grammar. The Puritans may be tolerated but not her charlatans. 
My training and experience tell me to be wary of dogmatism, especially in such a sensitive case. My preference would be not to put the learners in any sort of pre-fabricated strait-jacket. I would rather suggest giving them the freedom to wobble around the shallow waters of the calm sea and through certain confidence building measures induce them to master the art of floatation every passing day. 
Rather than prescribing a lot of exercises on structure drill, I would suggest wide and intensive reading of select texts and follow up by doing free writing practices based on them. The grammatical corrections (done with a pencil) would only be incidental. An over-active instructor would interfere rather than facilitate learning. My thesis is that if the text is suitable and the learner is absorbed in the content he should be left to himself to sort out the technicalities of sentence patterns. 
Time and tense and organization of grammatical class-forms into acceptable sentence structures get automatically assimilated at a deeper level of the mind. There is a threshold, a minimum level of exposure to the quantum of language performance, which, when attained, triggers transformational generative process. Thus, the primary effort in any language learning programme should be to create conditions where a pupil is actively exposed to abundance of optional reading material and listening opportunities. The input channels (reading and listening), if fed with appropriate codes, set the mind to classify, analyze, categorize, store, compare and prepare for output (speech and writing) when the need arises. The output is consequent on the input. It is the result of the abstractions and inferences mode by the mind working on the input material. 
For L1 acquisition, listening forms the base initially and gets enhanced if complemented by reading. The performance in language thus internalized is effortless and uninstructive. A similar pattern seems to emerge for L2 acquisition. A new factor gets introduced here, that is, a comparison between the existing (L1) and the variant (L2) forms. But, this continues only to a certain point. When the threshold level is attained, the L2 exists in its own right independent of L1. The translation or transference or interference gets eliminated from the system. Then it becomes merely a matter of code switching. 
Having created a model for language acquisition, the next step would be to conceptualize its application. The sole purpose of a grammar-oriented course should be to aid and facilitate a recognition task. It helps to identify and locate what already exists in a prescient state. In this sense, grammar lessons help to sort out and name what already is stored in memory. 
The mind is pre-programmed to process language but, as breaking up language into its components is a mechanical process it needs training. The terminology used for this purpose (metalinguistics) is not an essential element of language learning process and does not contribute to the enhancement of language performance capabilities. 
The model I am suggesting is valid for a target group aiming at attaining a high level of proficiency in L2. For localized and very specified needs, there is neither the scope nor necessity for internalization of the various underlying principles of the second/foreign language. For example, a French tourist, on a short-sight-seeing visit to Yemen can manage with merely a handful of catch words and expressions from Arabic, or a receptionist working in a hotel for foreign tourists can handle his traffic with limited number of stereo-typed expressions. Here the difference is similar to that between short-term memory and long-term memory. The language for specific purposes does not get internalized and abstracted while it does as second language. 
Does it make any difference if rules of grammar are taught followed by exposure to literature of the subject? I think the difference would be substantial, may be as that between a man riding a donkey or a donkey riding a man. Teaching structure and then expecting the learner to impose the pattern on his input content is like putting the cart before the horse. A more profitable course would be to expose the mind to a variety of language contexts and then prompt it, even provoke it, to formulate and respond. Nursery rhymes can do wonders where rules of grammar would flounder and fumble. 
So, if I am forced to make a choice between Mama and Papa my preference for Mama would be a fore-gone conclusion. There are too many subterranean roots between us to be over-looked. I can bet on “Twinkle twinkle little star/ How I wonder what you are!” doing the trick any day than teach the rules of grammar to show how to make an exclamatory sentence. I have the fortune of staying close to some illustrious teachers of language and linguistics and when I have scratched them deep below their skin my conviction has got confirmed that they have a vest reservoir of literary background form where they draw freely and profitably. The connection between the eagle soaring in the firmament and the rabbit nibbling the grass is, of course, a linear one. And when the clapping dies down you look around and wonder where the rabbit is. 

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