INHIBITION IN SPEAKING ENGLISH AMONG STUDENTS IN INDIA: THE FEAR OF THE COLONIZED INHERITED DOWN THE LINE?
Many major interventions have been happening in the field of English Language Teaching to help the learners enhance their Speaking skill, especially for those to whom English is a foreign language. But meager is the attempt to find out the underlying reason for most of the students lacking the proficiency in speaking English, even after 10 + 2 years of formal schooling. Textbooks are being revised, innovative teaching-learning materials are introduced in classrooms, and novel activities are brought out for students; all, to provide the students with maximum exposure in the target language. Even though this is the scenario, students who do not have the support of their families, especially when the parents do not have English education, are back in square one. Failure in executing the module designed by educationalists and language experts to improve Speaking skill, at the grass root level due to the overcrowded classrooms, faulty assessment methods, lack of interest of the students and to an extent, lack of proficient teachers result in producing a generation of students who are very much competent in written exams but who stutter in an interview, group discussion or while presenting a project or a paper. Apart from these reasons, there could be many other underlying psychological reasons that could have created a monstrous fear around English, which have to be addressed.
Lingua Franca, Global Community, Overcrowded Classrooms, Acquisition, Global Society, Pedagogy