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Saturday 16 May 2015

THE NEED TO RELEARN GRAMMAR


At quite a very young age, we learn to recite the English Alphabets and write them. We undoubtedly learn our alphabets by memorizing them but this foundation becomes so rigid that all throughout our years in the educational system, we learn by memorizing. Memorizing has become synonymous to learning and this has raised many concerns. Our present educational system, in the recent years, has thus taken early steps and now our courses demand slight practicality in all subjects. But our ways of learning, which are still rooted in memorizing has increased the call and need to relearn grammar in our growing English-speaking society.
In kindergarten, we learn English by memorizing. So, our beginning steps to English are memorized steps, and some might argue that there cannot be any other step than the present one. This is certainly an interestingly debatable argument, because all of us learn by imitation, but what I wish to discuss on are the steps that follow these ‘foundation steps’ previously stated.
Grammar is the whole structure of English as a language. We learn grammar in the classes after kindergarten where our minds are better developed to understanding syntax, morphology and other intricate components of grammar. But during these beginning grammar steps, memorizing comes into sway. And most students end up memorizing the answers to the often unchanged and unchallenging “Fill in the Blanks” questions that come under the grammar section of our question papers. We fill them in as memorized and without proper or any understanding on it. This hinders our knowledge on grammar and in the next class, grammar becomes uninteresting because what should have been learnt last year, was not.
In middle school, during our time, the grammar subject was called “English II”. I remember a particular incident when our teacher asked us what the other name for “English II” was. Embarrassingly, no one could answer. All I heard being answered was “English” without the “II”. This incident subtly shows how less we know of grammar.
Grammar is a journey so intriguing and any child, if only given a push towards curiosity, will find its adventure breathtaking and unending. I agree with Ken Robinson’s statement that if a child is curious, he/she can take in massive amounts of knowledge without much aid from teachers. We all know this to be true, because we have all been children at one point. And we have all learnt a thousand things just because we were curious. It is worthwhile pondering on why in the incident above, my fellow students could not answer to the question that was asked. Could it be because no one had told us to memorize that? Could it be because something had failed to spark our inbuilt curiosity.
Grammar and its rules are like Mathematics theorems; if you learn them once, you can use it to solve all the ‘solutions’. Once you understand grammar in all its simplicity, you can get the answer to all your problems. Those hazy moments when you could not decide whether it should be ‘principal’ or ‘principle’ and ‘this’ and ‘these’ will definitely be solved.
The fad for memorizing our grammar answers has had such a damaging effect on the ‘English’ of a large amount of our educated population who sometimes cannot make out the difference between ‘send’ or ‘sent’. We ‘spell by ear’ and ‘write by ear’ and I am confident in saying that we would not be doing it had our beginning grammar steps been otherwise. Confusing ‘fate’ with ‘faith’, ‘save’ with ‘safe’, ‘advice’ and ‘advise’, muddling up tenses and putting plurals and singulars at wrong places, and often at the same places, are little instances that urge us to relearn grammar.
Simple and proper sentence construction has become a harder task than teaching our dogs to do their jobs at the right places. This is because we have been keen to memorizing and our expressive composition skills have been curbed in turn. We express in our own mother tongue or Nagamese and translate them to English both in composition and speaking and one can imagine the disarrayed result.
Sticking to textbooks and not venturing to other creative or literary books outside of syllabus has evidently grown into us. We forget to keep reminding ourselves that “One should be a great reader to be a good writer”. The need to read goes hand in hand with the need to relearn grammar. Those that are familiar with the musty scent of books are those that are familiar with grammar. The same hands that hold these musty books are the same hands that pen down grammar in all its true sense.
Grammatical errors have become a historical plague amongst our learned people. It is time we stop depending on technology to correct our errors and indulge in the journey of the need and want to relearn grammar. We should nurture in ourselves the spark of curiosity, acquire linguistic knowledge by ways apart from memorizing, write and spell by knowledge and attempt to be a good reader.
As a literature student, I have penned down passionate solutions to this malady of bad grammar. But I anticipate that scholars and students from other fields will come up with further varied, interesting and perhaps more practical ways to formulate a vaccine for this malady. Until then, let us keep up our thirst for grammar, simply grammar.
 

Friday 9 January 2015

A PAGE FROM MY DIARY


Dear Diary

     It takes time to get used to the new but anything becomes old and ordinary with time. Time, however, undoubtedly fixes and heals anything. Time can even turn the ordinary into the precious. A little ironic isn’t it? Explains how certain things become brown yet costly antiques and how certain people, perhaps even complete strangers, become people that have so much power over our hearts and our emotions. 

     Adi turned twenty four yesterday. Part of me feels that it is unrealistic to reminisce how far we’ve all come.  Indeed, Time has played its part. It can be both a friend and an enemy though. Will there ever come a time in our lives when we will wish that time had never crossed us, will there come a time when we wish that we could turn back time and change a thing or two, will there come a time when we wish for more time, will there come a time when we wish that we knew naught of time?

     Human life is full of surprises. It is amazing how much a human body can grow, how much a human brain can learn, how fast a human cut can heal, and how much a human heart can love and hurt at the same time

     I have started my quest for my future university. It is funny how trivial things can shake our dedication and test our patience. Uncertainty eats us up but somehow keeps self-complacency at bay. The mystery lies in the approaching revelation to certain anonymities of one’s future. The need for disclosure keeps us pushing forth with a power that can only be described as benign. The need to discern and discover this anonymity will always keep us on the search, driven by this benign force that all of us are given. Here’s to the search for all things new for life is all but too short.


Yours always,

Aren.