Give Patois its rightful place in the classroom

I refer to an article by Ms Esther Tyson, 'Jamaican Creole or Standard Jamaican English', which appeared in The Sunday Gleaner of June 2, 2013.

To begin, I should like to allay Ms Tyson's fear that there is a "decreasing thrust to teach Standard Jamaican English at our tertiary institutions".

At the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, we are, in fact, stepping up efforts to ensure that our students graduate with excellent communication skills, both oral and written, in Standard Jamaican English.

This thrust has resulted in the introduction of new academic writing courses, including one specifically designed to address the weaknesses of students who leave their secondary institution with English-language proficiency levels below what is thought to be the threshold for academic success.

Our Writing Centre continues to play the vital role in this process that Ms Tyson recalls. Although it is true that it is not able to completely fulfil its mandate to assist students in developing their writing abilities because of financial constraints, it is certainly not the case that it has closed its doors.

Apart from the role of Standard English at the tertiary level, Ms Tyson raises two other matters in her contribution: the role which Jamaican Creole plays in the global marketplace, and its place in the primary-school curriculum.

On the first matter, Ms Tyson's assertion that "the best way to prepare our students to compete globally is to teach a language that is the acknowledged language of business and commerce globally", and that this language is English, fails to acknowledge the international currency which Jamaican Creole has gained.

Witness the now-famous Volkswagen advertisement; it is no longer the global music industry alone where players are competing with each other in demonstrating their fluency in Jamaican Creole, lifting that language from its erstwhile status of the first language of a tiny island population to a desirable language of communication in the global marketplace.

CREOLE has PART TO PLAY

While there is no doubt that a measure of fluency in Standard English continues to be highly desirable, Jamaican Creole, too, can contribute to one's international competitiveness.

Finally, Ms Tyson's point that our teachers "need to be trained and become adept at helping our children to acquire Standard Jamaican English as a second language" is well taken.

The Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy at The UWI, Mona, has been a strong and vocal proponent of this view. The current approach to English-language teaching, which takes it that children enter the educational system as 'bad English' speakers, completely disregards the most basic pedagogical principle, which is that knowledge is acquired incrementally, and that teaching, therefore, should build on prior knowledge.

Where children are denied the benefit of using the knowledge of their first language, which is what they bring into the classroom, they are placed at a disadvantage in the acquisition of a second language - which is surely the status that Standard English has for most of them.

In the final analysis, the local and international competitiveness of Jamaicans is best served by the ability to be fluent in both Jamaican Creole and Standard English. In order for us to achieve such true bilingualism, Jamaican language policy needs to take account of the global currency of Jamaican Creole, needs to give Jamaican Creole its proper place in the schools and elsewhere as the first language of a majority of Jamaicans, and needs to implement a policy of second-language teaching of Standard English.

Silvia Kouwenberg is professor of linguistics and head of the Department of Language, Linguistics & Philosophy, UWI, Mona. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and silvia.kouwenberg@uwimona.edu.jm.