The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Education Correspondent
WHY are these two languages continuing to be problematic to our learners? Is talking about it going to help?
Is collecting statistics and making music about how our children continue to do badly going to help?
Let me attempt to suggest what causes this downward trend and the probable solution.
Attitude is one of them. Whose attitude?
Both the teacher’s and the learner’s is the answer. English language teachers generally recoil in their knowledge and ‘‘brilliance’’ seeking no meaningful help from experienced sources. They keep in their shell telling everyone even their pupils that they know everything and anyone else who shouts from outside his or her classroom is a noise-maker.
One does not need to hear them say so. It is not every truth that needs V11 evidence of proof. Do you need to see someone’s birth certificate to believe on some day this person was born? Some things we know because we are intelligent human beings and others because we have been there.
Teachers think because they are degree holders, have been to school, college and university, they have nothing more to learn. Let me tell you. The English language is not easy to teach . . . and so is Shona. Why? Mainly because you are struggling with a second language which is truthfully speaking as foreign as any other . . . and therefore most of us know only basics about it and not enough to make us impregnably competent enough to make our job easy and enjoyable. If your teaching best is an uphill task . . . if you are struggling, what more for the learners?
Let us use a few examples to illustrate this.
How many teachers are aware that there are two ways of using ‘‘every day’’ in a sentence? First, there is one word written ‘‘everyday’’ and then another written as two words as follows: ‘‘every day?’’ One word (everyday) is always and only used as an adjective describing a noun.
Like this:
Sadza is an everyday dish for most of us Zimbabweans.
We eat sadza every day in Zimbabwe.
The first everyday describes a dish (type of food) — everyday dish . . . so it is and adjective. The second one (every day) simply answers ‘‘how often?’’
If teachers do not know this, say are not aware of this syntactical or lexicographic technique and difference, how will learners ever know?
And there are executive academic never-do-wells who use authority and position to continue to say what they know to be the worst mistake of Zimbabwean English teaching: “Do not teach grammar!” For Heaven’s sake! How much longer are we going to realise this was a blatant error? Anyway, another story for another day!
There are two correct past tenses of ‘‘hang’’. These are ‘‘hanged’’ and ‘‘hung’’. But do we use them interchangeably? Certainly not! “Hanged’’ refers to ‘‘killing someone by hanging’’. ‘‘Hung’’ refers to objects on the line . . . for example, and often clothes are hung (not hanged) on the line to dry.
There are two simple words commonly used wrongly in writing and speaking: ‘‘complains’’ and ‘‘complaints’’. Those who do not listen accurately and fluently cannot distinguish the difference. ‘‘Complains’’ is a verb referring to something done every day (not everyday). He complains every day and makes a big fool of himself.
‘‘Complaint’’ is a noun. It is not a doing or action word. It refers to what you make when you complain . . . a complaint. ‘‘Complaints’’ therefore becomes the plural (many complaints.)
You do not buy grocery, even if you are a teacher. You buy groceries. That refers to what we eat over this Christmas . . . IT IS NOT GROCERY! Then we go fishing (not for fishing) . . . we go hunting (not for hunting) . . . swimming (not for swimming) and last but not least, we go shopping (not for shopping).
These are enough examples to make my point . . . which point is, “do not think you know everything.” Continue to learn as a teacher and enjoy it.
Don’t sulk and become apprehensive when you learn you have been writing or speaking incorrectly. Don’t lose temper. Don’t lose composure . . . dignity. What kind of genuine learning makes you lose these! Wise ones celebrate when they learn they have been teaching people’s children wrongly for years.
Shona! What about it? Associated with backwardness! It is not on . . . it is not cool! But true, the teachers don’t like it. The learners hate it. What do you expect? Above all this, the textbooks, including the story books (novels) are poorly selected. They are boring to read and do not teach writing or communication skills that leave learners in the comfort zone.
The teachers unwittingly attach value to Shona only when they are emphasising cultural values and dignity. Who wants these among our modern children today? Are there no other takeaways from studying Shona? For example, the depth and breadth of the philosophy of negritude, the bottomless wisdom embedded in the Shona idiom and proverb, the superiority of our cultural values, traditions and customs in keeping family and marriages intact . . . even curbing gender or domestic violence; not as seen by outsiders who don’t understand us but from within us and by us for us . . . our right to enjoy our own cultural rights.
Westernisation did not bring peace in families and marriages in spite of all the other advantages. All these! These are ‘‘selling’’ points.
And of course the teacher’s effort and enthusiasm to make Shona make sense every day in every lesson. How can children follow a teacher who is evidently uninspired, bored and boring . . . has nothing special to say about Shona except a list of burdensome demands.
Whatever we say, dream or argue, when at the end even the PED acknowledges at this lower level of learning (Grade 7), that “English and Shona are problematic areas,” we need to open our intellectual umbrella and make it work.
The mind only functions when, like an umbrella, it is open! The new curriculum cries for 21st century teachers who continue to learn in order to bring about the desired changes in the development and direction of our education; not arrogant ‘‘intellectuals’’ who think they are the best even when examination results show beyond any V11s that they are not.
Thumbs up to all the those teachers who realise that they are better together with others, especially with teaching ‘war’ veterans, than alone in the confines of their classroom!
