Treat­ing Stan­dard Eng­lish as a for­eign lan­guage in T&T may well be the next step by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. I guess the min­istry is humbly ad­mit­ting to de­feat.I would like to pro­pose two con­sid­er­a­tions: First­ly, what about en­cour­ag­ing prop­er Eng­lish to be spo­ken first in the home? In gen­er­al we learn to how to speak in the home. We learn to speak be­fore we learn to write. Part of the prob­lem with peo­ple who can­not read is that they do not speak well.

If you can­not speak well, then how can you recog­nise the words and sen­tence struc­ture con­tained in any giv­en text? That's part of the prob­lem that the Min­istry needs to fix. Sec­ond­ly, I once had a con­ver­sa­tion with an in­di­vid­ual about Stan­dard Eng­lish that typ­i­fies the prob­lem of Stan­dard Eng­lish in Trinidad.

He told me that there is no need to speak Stan­dard Eng­lish on his part be­cause every­one here speaks "Tri­ni" or at least un­der­stands it, and al­so that he has no plans to ever leave this coun­try to go to places where a grasp of Stan­dard Eng­lish.The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has to con­tend with this small-mind­ed men­tal­i­ty that sees lit­tle to no use for Stan­dard Eng­lish that is some­what preva­lent here.

Isidore Gabriel

via e-mail