Is the Outcome Base Education (OBE) system setting the standards in schools?
ENGLISH language is very important in communication and business.
We communicate to other people using various languages, but English is spoken all over the world.
To conduct business, Papua New Guineans must speak English to understand business and commerce.
For instance, tax is an English term and in business and trade it means a lot for all.
The first effort to really bridge the gap, is to teach good English at the elementary and primary school levels.
So using Standard Based Education (SBE) system is good.
The SBE considers English as the primary or the main medium of instruction in the early childhood learning and a working progress must be identified.
From a practical and critical perspective, most PNG English teachers and headmasters are not allowing children to always speak English in schools.
School’s must prevent children from speaking tok pisin or vernacular in the classrooms and school environment.
Those who break this rule must be punished.
Also, when children return to their homes, parents and benefactors should encourage their children to read books and as much as possible speak English to them if possible.
This may seem naïve for those not educated, but a roadmap must be shown if you are working parents and are educated.
More supervised reading and writing activities are not done by teachers and this could be caused by insufficient reading books and materials or that the teachers’ inability to deliver.
Books, articles, newspapers, comics, and other forms of literature give the universe to the children.
One of those common problems is those who enter teacher’s colleges are coming out of Grade 8, 10 or failed Grade 12s.
Even at the college level, there are no coherent bridging language and literature programs that could improve the first-year students’ ability to read and write.
The expectation of college lecturers is that those coming are seniors and so they expect to perform to certain expected measurements and objectives.
The English Teaching Syllabus, if it means, must be overhauled to accommodate relevant, day to day English or frankly, more standard English speaking and writing styles and rhymes spreading in the popular mainstream media, corporate sector, and social media or podcasts. As an academic myself, I read through essays and assignments submitted by students written in deplorable English.
Basic English rules that start with subjects, verbs and adverbs or adjectives are corrupted with a long vague structure of sentences and paragraphs.
Punctuations such as full stops, commas and apostrophes are the marks used in writing to separate sentences and elements of sentences and clarify meaning.
I also assign reading materials but more than 80 per cent of those students never find time to read.
Reading books, therefore, are slowly dying and it is great worry to education authorities.
What shall we do to improve English speaking and writing?
Recruit English teachers overseas. Although it may be expensive, we must find ways to recruit those who use English as their first language.
We could bring teachers from New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom, or United States.
Currently, our English-speaking attributes or utterances are more Australian based, and it would be better if we our children can also speak British, American or other forms of English.
Libraries must be supported and built inside schools.
Some schools have libraries but there are insufficient reading materials and other educational resources.
School principals and headmasters cannot just sit there waiting for TFF but could see their MPs, NGOs and other development partners for assistance. Libraries are the foundation for quality writing and reading skills.
Students must be slotted in their class hours to be spent in libraries doing readings and research or for this matter allowed to borrow books with strict rules.
Inter-school writing and reading contests must be encouraged.
Schools must have written and reading contests between schools in each locality.
This suggestion can be discussed at the Education Department so that there are school contests established in the district, provincial and national centres.
Those who do well can be awarded some form of scholarships for further studies in English literature at UPNG or overseas.
Conclusion
There are other common international languages like Mandrine (Chinese), Spanish and Japanese.
We could also introduce these languages in our school systems too.
The main objective is to enable our citizens to relate well with the international community so that business opportunities are created and market PNG to the outside world.
The serious business of recruiting English teachers from overseas are very critical at this stage considering the very poor writing structures and levels of English by our children.
We still have some good national English teachers but it needs some new levels of commitment and policy shift considering the ever growing high unemployment rate and polarization.