A Letter to English Language Teachers

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A Letter to English Language Teachers

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 Dear Colleagues: 

You have been honing on the linguistic needs of your non-native English-speaking students, helping them advance their reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in the English language in the US and around the world. You empower your ESL students with your knowledge of syntax, phonology, morphology, semantics, and, hopefully, pragmatics. I wanted to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on the pivotal role you play as educators in making your students informed global citizens.

Speaking of the primary role of a university, India’s first Prime Minister Nehru professed, “A university stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas, and for the search of truth.  It stands on the onward march of the human race towards even higher objectives.  If the universities discharge their duties adequately, then it is well with the nation and the people.”  I concur wholeheartedly with Nehru's concept of a university and concur wholeheartedly with him that the classroom should be a place where creative ideas are conceived, where our students learn lessons in tolerance, humility, and cross-cultural awareness, where both faculty and students embark on the journey of knowledge and wisdom by forging an intellectual alliance, where every individual is dedicated to the interactive process of teaching and learning, and where our students become better individuals by setting higher objectives for themselves.

English language programs must envisage pedagogy, which furthers these principles, fostering non-obtrusive teaching styles through the following methodology.  The educational institution offering English language courses invests authority in the teacher to impart knowledge to adult language learners through a variety of pedagogical techniques.  The teacher facilitates a conducive learning atmosphere by discouraging passive learning styles and by encouraging active student participation.  Curricular goals for each level of proficiency are clearly defined and assist both the teacher and the students in improving reading, writing, listening and speaking skills.  Collectively, the teacher and the students isolate and resolve linguistic insecurities, using a wide range of heuristic aids.

The great twentieth-century teacher, Gilbert Highet, once reasoned, “You must [be able to] think, not what you know, but what they do not know; not what you find hard, but what they will find hard; then, after putting yourself in their minds, obstinate or puzzled, groping or mistaken as they are, explain what they need to learn.”  English language teachers must continually strive to locate impediments to linguistic growth.  I fervidly believe that complacency hinders professional development.  Therefore, vigilantly breaking new ground, we must plumb the depth of the psychology of language learning, constructing bold new sensitivities to unperceived and formerly intractable problems of English language learning.


I wish you continued success in your professional endeavors and the patience to go through the intellectual adventure with your colleagues and students. What you do as English language teachers at home and thousands of miles away from home makes a significant difference in your students' lives, as they gradually become proficient in the English language in addition to the linguistic system they have already acquired, and I salute your courage and perseverance.

Sincerely, 

Jilani Warsi

  

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