Why experts are in a panic over English

Teachers at a forum organised to share experiences on language proficiency seemed to be in panic, the general concern being that the quality of English among students was deteriorating to alarming levels.

The problem has subsequently been passed on to the workplace, according to Emily Gumba, a former English teacher at Alliance High School and a participant at the meeting. Many graduates entering the employment market, she said, suffered from a huge communication deficiency.

“We keep lamenting the decline of English standards. What are we doing about it?” she asked at the meeting called to discuss ways to mitigate the problem.

“When you look at the schools that made us what we are, things have drastically changed. There were schools that were well known for a culture of teaching proper English. What happened to that culture? What happened to those schools?

“You go to some primary schools and teachers who failed English are the ones teaching the language because they don’t have a choice and have been told they must teach across the board. That is where the problem begins and nobody wants to talk about it,” Ms Gumba. complained.

OTHER CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM

The other cause of the problem, it was suggested, was the fact that in many tertiary learning institutions, English was treated as secondary to the technical skills being taught, even when it determined other performances.  

For instance, said Ms Zuhra Magut, an English lecturer at the United States International University, “When it comes to English and referencing and writing research papers, what I have experienced is that when we teach writing skills, students think that those only apply in the English context and not to the other subjects they learn.”

Ms Magut said she wondered how to inculcate the culture of proper usage of English across the curriculum because many times, the teaching members in other departments did not see the need for proper referencing and citations.

“You get papers from those other programmes which have been given excellent marks, but when you go through them, they have all sorts of (language) mistakes — spelling mistakes, punctuation errors, bad construction of sentences, and so on. It is just a mess. It is as if language skills don’t matter in those subjects at all,” she complained.

A financial and transactional expert, Mr Humphrey Wattanga, put the problem into context when he said: “We went to a renowned school of journalism in the country and asked the dean to give us 20 of the best students to hire to work with us in coming up with a marketing document that would be taken abroad to potential investors. The dean got us the 20.

“We gave them the topics but, sad to say, at the end of the assignment, we could not use any of the documents submitted by the students. We ended up writing these documents ourselves and for a good period of time, we had to retain these staff due to the stringent labour laws governing the South African firm with which we were working, even though we did the work ourselves. It is a huge problem and the industry feels it. We definitely need to find solutions.”

The urgency for this can be demonstrated by statistics shared by the executive director of knowledge management, central marketing, and governance at ETS Global, Mr Gerben van Lent.

He said: “Only 13 per cent of graduates from emerging countries are considered suitable for employment in global companies and the primary reason cited is lack of English skills.”

ETS Global, based in the Netherlands, seeks to promote the quality of education and professional development worldwide through research and assessment.

Mr Lent went further to explain that according to a study he has been doing in sub-Saharan Africa, the education level of the local population and English proficiency are the most important factors for UK and the US companies when considering outsourcing business processes, after cost.

Ms Alice Kiai of the Catholic University of Eastern Africa, representing the Department of English and Linguistics, said that for the problem to be effectively addressed, the involvement of all the other departments was necessary.

“We should have parallel programmes for university staff to be able to improve in areas they have problems in, such as English,” she said, adding to the general sentiment that teachers and lecturers too needed to expand their English language abilities for them to pass on the skill.

The forum, held on 10 April, was organised by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development, GTS Global, and Learning and Testing Services (LTS-Africa) for local universities and institutions of learning to chart a common way of promoting the English language.

LTS measures English proficiency and gives certificates to quantify and rank learners or employees.

“We are working on the modalities with local Kenyan public and private universities to find a workable solution for their respective curriculum with a view to integrating new language proficiency requirements for students,” said LTS Africa head, Mr Kuda Nhiwatiwa.

ABILITY TO WRITE AND SPEAK CLEARLY

Nhiwatiwa explained that speaking English informally did not automatically translate to being able to use the language to effectively communicate in the workplace.

“We have found that, while employers were keen to provide opportunities to workers with technical skills, their ability to write and speak clearly and consistently was increasingly becoming a challenge,” he noted.

Nhiwatiwa said LTS Africa would also bring on board local employers to use their test as the yardstick for assessing employee language proficiency.
There are different forms of tests.

The TOEIC Listening & Reading Test consists of two equally graded tests of comprehension assessment activities, totalling a possible 990 score. The newer TOEIC Speaking & Writing Test comprises assessments in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, fluency, overall coherence, and structure, totalling a possible 400 score.

Ms Gumba suggested that individuals take it upon themselves to do the tests to know their level so that they can work on any deficiencies.