I refer to the article ‘English as a foreign language’ (May 31) and endorse the arguments made by James Corby et al. from the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, University of Malta.
Traditionally, English has been a national language together with Maltese for several decades. Bilingualism is at the core of Maltese society. Laws, newspapers and even street advertisements are written in English and Maltese. The tourism industry functions through English.
English is not a foreign language in Malta. It is a foreign language for those who have no knowledge of English and come to Malta to learn it. The degradation of English to a foreign language will inevitably result in increasingly lower competency in this language.
Furthermore, it will lead to lower educational standards all round since other subjects, including physics, chemistry, biology, maths and science, are taught through English and knowledge available globally through internet search engines is acquired through English.
If it is correct that the Cambridge Examinations Board has commercial interests in the EFL industry, then there is a conflict of interest that impacts on the interests of the Maltese.
While no clear explanation is given regarding what constitutes ‘standards’ and how these are not being achieved, it would be realistic to consider that the influx of students into Maltese schools from countries where English is not spoken may well result in an unfair situation for Maltese students. The argument to lower standards to enable the least able or most reluctant students to pass exams, rather than seeking solutions for improvement, is neither wise, nor fair.
An article on the same subject (May 25) says that, overall, Maltese youths had a good level of language proficiency but highlighted gaps in their abilities, the way they were being taught and the assessment models used in exams.
The article points out that the Cambridge English language assessment tests students’ ability to read, write, speak and listen in English, and that while English O level exams test writing and reading tasks, the ability of speaking was not clear.
The standard of English O level exams requires in-depth knowledge that is far beyond that of English as a foreign language. This underpins high level skillsin speaking.
The main focus of dispute is in speaking, a scenario that brings in dialects and accents. What English accent would Maltese students be required to have, bearing in mind that in the UK, dialects and accents are attributes of specific regions and also carry differences in vocabulary?
For example, the London (Cockney) dialect uses the word moggie for cat. How are students in Yorkshire, Scotland and Ireland likely to fare in their English speaking exams?
Would Pakistani- and Indian-based English accents be accepted as adequate pronunciation of English?
Would they be tested for pronunciation on the Oxford or Cambridge model or would their local dialect of English be acceptable? To further highlight the lack of appreciation of English as a national language in Malta, there is a plan to roll this out for all languages. Surely, wisdom indicates that the importance of English to Malta is not at par to, say, Italian.
Even in the UK, poor standards of grammar and spelling are often reported by education authorities
Good knowledge of English opens up substantial opportunities which would be denied if the standard of English in Malta were to deteriorate to one of a foreign language.
Maltese is retained as a national language based on nationalism. English is retained for practical reasons. English is spoken across the world, even if to a varying extent. It has become a global language for communication. It is the language spoken throughout the European Union and in the English speaking world (the UK, the US, Australia, New Zealand, most of Canada and several other nations with political relations to these).
Maltese is spoken nowhere else, only in Malta. Moreover strong opportunities for business and work - the economy – lie in the English-speaking world. Technical advancement, emerging technologies, technology transfer, import of quality products, all of which underpin the standard of living in our society, are accessed from Europe and the US.
Maltese students go to English-speaking countries to obtain higher degrees in subjects that are not available in Malta and for industrial training. Indeed, a native speaker level of proficiency in English is a determining factor in job competitiveness outside Malta.
Regardless of the proficiency in one’s field of specialisation, skills in English as native speaker often determine success in acquiring a job. Throughout the EU, including German-speaking nations and the European Commission, when a job is advertised requiring knowledge of English, proficiency in English as native speaker is the required level, and if not formally stated, proficiency as native speaker is given more weight than English as a foreign language.
This ousts Maltese candidates in favour of British candidates. Indeed, in the European Commission, Brits are very efficient in using their competitive advantage of being native speakers of the English language. There is no country that requires Maltese as a native language. Proficiency in English as a native language has a far-reaching impact on job competitiveness for Maltese nationals.
In the 1950s there were good quality government schools which turned out highly competent students in the sciences, maths and languages taught through English. In the 1960s the government built several secondary schools which brought a high standard of education in the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology), languages (English, German, French) and home economics.
This gave rise to a Renaissance in secondary education and spearheaded the growth of the economy, underpinning the strong economy of Malta today.
Low achievement in English language is due to a number of factors as in other subjects. A lack of skills in building arguments may not be due to a lack of skills in English language (Therese Comodini Cachia, June 7), but a lack of skills in critical thinking and rational arguments, which have not been encouraged in Malta.
This became amply clear following newspaper comments/blogs. Blogs are a useful way of imparting skills of critical thinking to the public at large but require that the editor of such blogs is skilled in critical thinking or at least accepts such comments.
When studying at UK universities it was often clearly obvious that many students could not spell. I assisted with spelling and with explaining technical articles written in British journals. Indeed, even in the UK, poor standards of grammar and spelling are often reported by education authorities in the media.
Poor standards of achievement in the native language are reported in German-speaking countries every year. It appears that falling standards of native languages are a universal problem.
The suggestion of degrading English to a foreign language seems to have arisen from a choice of model for assessment. The solution is to set up an appropriate model rather than destroy the opportunity to acquire good competency in a language which is the backbone of communication with the outside world.
One option could be that students sitting for English at O level would also be given opportunities of listening and speaking. The gradual removal of English in Malta, commencing by denying a legacy, is not based on wisdom, nor common sense. It would be a strong step in the estrangement of Malta from Europe.
Joan Ribi has 30 years’ experience in teaching, research and consultancy, including teaching English as a
foreign language