‘Gujlish’ goes viral in English textbooks

If you learn English in a government school in Gujarat, you might grow up saying macrowave avon for a microwave oven and brust into laughter instead of bursting into laughter. To top it all, you might not even be able to spell the word "correct" correctly!

The state education department recently discarded functional English in schools, preferring communicative teaching over grammar and vocabulary. The result is an English mangled beyond repair.

The new textbooks, right from Class V when English becomes a compulsory subject, are riddled with errors like dealogue, availble, probleme and rellay, leave alone grammatical mistakes.

The problem is more pronounced in pronunciation. For instance, dip the cotton is taught as "deep..." and problem becomes probleme in English textbooks from Class V-VIII.

Sample these: "Where does Nooru aapa works?" and "How does the area became barren?" are some of the questions of an exercise of Class VI textbook. It was difficult to ascertain whether these errors were glossed over while proof-reading or could not be detected at all.

"With stress on proof-reading, we have also brought about some changes in content after the pilot study that spanned over a year in more than 560 schools across the state. The new curriculum for English has been inspired from the one already being taught in Maharashtra and Kerala, but only after modifying it in Gujarat's context and adding a local touch," said Dr Vijay Sevak, principal of Waymade College of Education, Vidyanagar. He is part of the panel of experts that has framed curriculum for the subject.

These textbooks have been revised and designed as per the latest curriculum by an expert panel of more than 250 members. The curriculum was implemented from this academic session in 40,000-odd state-run schools in the state.

According to experts in the panel, 90 per cent stress is on the use of English as a spoken language while only 10 per cent of it will emphasise on learning and writing.

... contd.

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