Biliteracy and Globalization: English Language Education in India (Bilingual Education & Bilingualism, 67)

ReviewThis book is recommended reading for language researchers and teachers. -- Janaina Minelli de Oliveira, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain ― Discourse and Society 20(4)Product DescriptionThis book analyzes how the urban disadvantaged in the city of New Delhi learn English. Using qualitative methods the author discusses the pedagogy, texts and contexts in which biliteracy occurs and links English language teaching and learning in India with the broader social and economic processes of globalization in a developing country. The study is situated in a government school, a site where classrooms have rarely been qualitatively described, and where the Three Language Formula (TLF) is being fundamentally transformed due to increasing demand from the community for earlier access to the linguistic capital of English. Through research conducted in a call centre the author also shows what the requirements of new workplaces are and how government schools are trying to meet this demand.About the AuthorViniti Vaish is Assistant Professor at Singapore’s Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice (CRPP), National Institute of Education. She has worked in different capacities in India, the USA and Singapore. Her research interests include bilingual and comparative education, pedagogy and language policy. Currently she is Co-Principal Investigator of ‘The Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore, 2006’, a large scale language survey linked to smaller scale follow up studies, which is one of the projects undertaken by CRPP. She has published in Language Policy , the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism and the International Journal of Multilingualism.Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.Biliteracy and GlobalizationEnglish Language Education in IndiaBy Viniti Vaish Multilingual MattersCopyright © 2008 Viniti VaishAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-84769-033-3ContentsPreface, vii,Introduction, 1,1 English as a Language of Decolonization, 8,2 Biliteracy and Globalization, 29,3 In What Languages is English Taught?, 44,4 What is Taught?, 60,5 In What Contexts is English Taught?, 76,6 How Much is Learned?, 91,7 Conclusions, 104,Appendix 1: Non-scheduled Languages, 108,Appendix 2: 15-day Training Schedule for a Call Center, 112,Appendix 3: Photos, 117,Bibliography, 119,CHAPTER 1English as a Language of DecolonizationAdministratively decolonization refers to the dismantling of colonial machinery and the departure of the colonizer in a grand or gory manner. For instance the spectacle of the British leaving Hong Kong and handing the territory over to China at midnight on 1 July 1997 was performed on the world stage with the pomp of a great Empire leaving in a dignified fashion. The exit from India of the British Empire in 1947, on the other hand, was bloody. The 'divide and rule' policy of the British was successful in dismembering South Asia into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The birth of these nations left millions dead in rioting between Hindus and Muslims, a past that these three countries have re-enacted since 1947 in smaller wars and daily border skirmishes. The foundation of the divorce between these countries was linguistic: Urdu in the Arabic script for Muslims in Pakistan versus Hindi in Devanagari for Hindus in India.Decolonization as a psychological process for a nation is more complex. In the case of Africa decolonization has substituted neocolonialism in place of Empire. Young (2001) defines Nkrumah's idea of neocolonialism as colonization through institutions like the World Bank, the IMF and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which try to Christianize indigenous populations and make them indebted through financial aid. 'Neocolonialism is ... the worst form of imperialism. For those who practice it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress' (Kwame Nkrumah, in Young, 2001: xi). T