The Bangladeshi English Essay Book - Robin Upton

[Pages:29]The Bangladeshi English Essay Book

An Analysis by Robin Upton,

January 22nd 2006

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Contents

Purpose........................................................................................................... 1 Introduction to Essay Books .......................................................................... 1 Impact of Essay Books ................................................................................... 2 Inaccuracy ...................................................................................................... 4 Grandiloquence/bombast (long words) .......................................................... 5 Exaggeration .................................................................................................. 6 Repetition ....................................................................................................... 7 Oversimplification /Over-Generalisation....................................................... 8 Obscurity/Obsolescence ................................................................................ 9 Waffle........................................................................................................... 10 Pointlessness ................................................................................................ 12 Tackling `Essay Book Style'........................................................................ 14 Introductions ................................................................................................ 15 Reasoning..................................................................................................... 16 Conclusions .................................................................................................. 17 Overcoming Bad Essay Writing Habits ....................................................... 18 Epilogue: In Praise of Banglish Essays........................................................ 19 Bibliography................................................................................................. 21 Appendix: Some Essays ............................................................................... 22

Purpose

This paper is intended primarily for English teachers in Bangladesh who wish to improve their students' essay writing. After introducing Bangladeshi essay books, it describes their main flaws, places them in context and suggests methods for helping students whose English has been affected.

Introduction to Essay Books

Books of model rochona (essays) have been a staple tool of English teaching in Bangladesh for decades. These essays are formulaic compositions of about 250 words on a fairly narrow range of stock topics. The majority of these are perennial favourites with wide applicability, such as My School, A Tea Stall, My Daily life, Blessings of Modern Science, The autobiography of a river1, The Necessity of The Value of Time. Bangladesh specific topics are also popular, such as Rural Development of Bangladesh, Arsenic Pollution, The International Mother Language Day, Care taker Government, The War Liberation of Bangladesh. Some variety is brought to the mix by a range of more modern topics: The world cup football ? 98, Internet, Women's Contribution to our Country, Dish-Anteena. These essays have a flavour all of their own, so if you are not yet familiar with Bangladeshi Essay books, try reading a few from the appendix of this paper.

1 Due to the high volume of errors in Bangladeshi Essays, this paper will not follow use `(sic.)' to alert the reader to deliberately quoted mistakes, since their prevalence would prove disturbing to the reader. Efforts have been made to quote the Bangladesh essays faithfully, errors and all.

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Impact of Essay Books

Mass producing fixed length essays on a narrow set of topics may seem logical to the command hierarchy of business, but such an activity undermines the essay as a means of self-expression by the individual. The low quality, mass produced nature of most Bangladeshi Essay books does at least warn the reader of the devalued and deadened the material they contain. Nevertheless, parents, teachers and publishers alike encourage students to learn these essays by rote, especially for examinations. Bangladeshi English exams typically ask for an essay of at least 200 words on one of the standard essay book titles.

For students with a natural aversion to rote learning, books have a variety of other strategies to encourage the use of essays as models. One such is to present questions and answers one below the other, a common feature of Bangladeshi school textbooks:

"Write a paragraph about your idea of a good teacher. Think of a particular teacher you have known. In your paragraph include the following points. ? Kescribe some of his qualities, ? specially his behaviour with the students, ? his general nature, and ? how he helps the students with their lessons

My Idea of a Good Teacher

A good teacher is the person who is committed to work for building a nation. I know a good teacher named Mr. N. Haq. His is B.A. B-Ed. He is fond of his young children. An ideal or a good teacher is fond of his young learners and helpful to them in making their lesson interesting and preparing their house work. He always keeps them busy in the class and helps them enjoying playful games too. He or she advises them to follow the foot prints of the great mean. Teaching is a noble and honourable profession and he lives ideal lives.

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Note how the subject shifts from a particular teacher (supposedly chosen by the student) to the general case of `an ideal teacher'. The real and the imaginary are blurred, a recurring phenomenon of `personal accounts'.

Another section of this book is entitled `Writing paragraph Using Key Words':

Write a paragraph about "your best friend in the class."

In your paragraph you must include the following key words:

Kamal

Neglect

Sit

listen

Polite

helpful

understand Try

turn

Model

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Inclusion of the proper name `Kamal' gives a clue as to the amount of personal input expected from students. The `Accordance with the given model' section demonstrates to students how to produce an essay on a supposedly personal topic without making any semantic modification of one of the prepared essays:

2 p.7 (Paragraph 13, My Idea Of A Good Teacher), Mannan 3 p.69 (Paragraph 20, Your best friend in Class), Mannan

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Read the following paragraph about "Kamal's Hobby" and follow it to write a paragraph about "Your Hobby"

MODEL: Kamal's Hobby Kamal is a student. He has a hobby of his own. It is gardening. It is his favourite hobby. He spends his leisure time is his garden. Every early in the morning he goes to his garden. He looses the soil with a spade and weeds out the grasses and then waters the little plants. He also puts fence around his garden so that children and cattle can do no harm to the garden. Every morning his minds fills in joy to see the garden full of various kinds of flowers. Besides, the work, which he does in his garden, helps to make his body strong and active.

My Hobby

I have a hobby my own. It is gardening. It is my favourite hobby. I spend my leisure time in my

garden. Every early in the morning I go to my garden. I loose the soil with a spade and weed out the

grasses and then I water the little plants. I also put fence around my garden so that children and

cattle can do no harm to the garden. Every morning my mind fills in joy to see the garden full of

various kinds of flowers. Besides, the work, which I do in my garden, helps to make my body

strong and active.

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Repeated from an early age, such base exercises undermine students' perception of essays, removing the essential value from writing, degrading it to a purely technical exercise. Many students have a similarly subverted perception of what it means to learn English ? as an activity which requires no creativity and offers no scope for self-expression. Although most essay books have a nominal indication of the level, precious little difference is obvious aside from progression in vocabulary. Unlike those from Kolkata5 or further afield, the language and spelling of Bangladeshi essay books of all levels is very variable, but even the most accurate are rife with minor errors such as misspelled words, missing articles or capitals letters, incorrect pronouns etc. Such errors are normally referred to as `careless mistakes', although in this case they may stem from lack not only of care but also of exposure to conventional English.

In the absence of access to material produced by native speakers6, `essay book style' is an almost universal feature of Bangladeshi students' written English. It has a host of interrelated aspects, of which we shall look in depth at the following:

? Inaccuracy ? Grandiloquence (big words) ? Exaggeration ? Repetition ? Oversimplification/Overgeneralization ? Obscurity/Obsolescence ? Waffle ? Pointlessness

4 p.87 (Accordance with Given Model 7 , From Kamal's Hobby to my Hobby), Mannan 5 Whilst their style is reminiscent of Bangladeshi essay books, the grammar of those from Kolkata are far superior. Many

of them are often almost completely free of grammatical mistakes. 6 Internet usage rates in Bangladesh are very low but rapidly increasing. It will be interesting to see whether this will

significantly affect students' English.

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Inaccuracy

The language and material of the essays suggests that some were originally written prior to the 20th century. If re-copied every few years since then, this would amount to dozens of copyings, not necessarily even by English speakers. Mistaken transcription and correction are a pair of processes that, unchecked, gradually devolve essays to a lowest common denominator, explaining the prevalence of errors, particularly spelling mistakes and the omission of small words etc.

The practice of writing a thing is a good way of knowing a subject and a language. Because writing makes a man perfect.7

Perhaps the commonest errors in Bengali English are omitted articles or prepositions and incorrect sentence formation (e.g. sentences starting with `And', `But' or `Because'). See the essay on `Value of Time' for a more spectacular demonstration of the same process.

There was a terrible flood occurred in our locality in September-October, 3000.8

Proofreading appears to be almost unknown. The complexity of grammar employed makes the transcription process error prone:

All the greatmen of all ages earned name and fame by dint of perseverance. They might have come out successful again and again, but they did not lose heart.9

Inaccurate transcription mutates words, as spelling errors are `corrected' incorrectly. Sometimes it is possible to guess the original text; `Boring' was probably `boredom' in the below, a very common mistake in Bangladeshi English.

In our boring television is our most favourite friend.10

Mutation of words is not the only factor that creates contradictions. Crass oversimplification of is another. The second sentence, below, probably once began with the word `avoiding':

Unemployment is a great social evil. It is imperative for the peace and prosperity of social life.11

Spellcheckers have sped up of the process of `correction' of errors, and allowed it to be carried adding another sort of error to the mix:

Measures should be taken against draught and heavy rainfalls. River beds should be depend against floods."12

Automated `correction' forms an unholy alliance with unusual grammar and grandiloquent expression to degenerate the original authors' sentiment into a bizarre and tragic linguistic wreck.

7 p.36 (Essay 14, How To Learn English Well), Ullah 8 p.302 (Composition 26, The Flood Affected People of My Locality), Shahidul Islam 9 p.119 (Essay 113, Perseverance), Bhattacharyya & Hoque

10 p.192 (Essay 11, Television), Mannan 11 p.284 (Essay 91, Unemployment Problem in Bangladesh), Mannan 12 p.148 (Essay 139, Grow More Food), Bhattacharyya & Hoque

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"Seize the day", cried Horace about two thousand years ago. But time and tide wait for none. Time passes and passes. Nobody can stop time's ever-busty frigate for even a second. It passes away throwing everything into the dark mysterious cavern of the past. Yet, it can be made full use of.13

Language learnt from essay books is used by subsequent generations of essay writers who have either looked up the denotation or grasped it intuitively, but who have no sense of its connotations.

[Science] has given man various death-weapons like missiles, atomb bombs, various types of fire-arms, modern fighter-planes and what not.14

The discussion on pointlessness mentions the topic of personal or commercial interests. Most essayists, however, have an agenda which extends little further than the absolute necessity of school and essay books, subservience to authority and discipline in general. This seems to affect a lot of they write, even on apparently unrelated topics.

Physical exercise means the movement of the limbs with the help of rules.15

Facile topics in which the essayist is not really conveying any information promote sloppiness in thinking, while an overemphasis on grammar and vocabulary inevitably mean that less attention is paid to the exact meaning of what is written:

Atom and hydrogen bombs are invented with the use of nuclear energy.16

Grandiloquence/bombast (long words)

Since vocabulary is the only significant linguistic progression evidenced by essay books, Bangladeshi learners of English are naturally keen to demonstrate proficiency in English by employing long words. These words are important if the illusion of progression is to be maintained, ensuring that class VI students feel that they have moved on from class V when in fact there is generally little difference in other aspects of the essays, apart perhaps from volume of output.

We are living in a fast changing environment. Everything old is being removed by the mighty gust of remorceless change. If we, for relevant reasons, want to survive and advance, we must keep up with the gorgeous procession of change toward ameleoration and development.17

In one sense, of course, longer words do represent real progress ? essay book users often have surprising abilities at comprehension. However, this striving for an appearance of competence is a cause of real problems. The long words in Bangladeshi Essay Books are often incorrectly spelled, of inappropriately high register, or have other problems such as unwanted connotations. Such swollen vocabularies often increase students' comprehension at the expense of their ability to make themselves understood in speech (or sometimes, even in writing). Such verbiage is of little use to

13 p.? (Value of Time?), Chowdhury & Hossain? 14 p.131 (Essay 29, Is Science A Blessing or Curse?), Zakir 15 p.32 (Paragraph 25, Physical Exercise), Shahidul Islam 16 p.568 ( The Wonders of Modern Science, The Blessings of Modern Science or Science in Everyday Life), Chowdhury & Hossain 17 p. 245 (Essay 65, Mass Media), Zakir

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those who flout conventions of grammar, collocation etc. At least as far as native English speakers are concerned, those raised on grandiloquent essay books sometimes lack the ability to make themselves understood not in spite of but because of their clumsily increased vocabularies.

[The teacher] dispels the darkness of ignorance from the minds of his students and enkindles the light of education in them.18

What is merely bizarre or quaint in written form can be unintelligible in speech, where foreign accents also hamper comprehension19. Whilst its effect on learners is mixed, grandiloquence is worse for the essays themselves, where it is frequently used to conceal other problems such as the shallowness or partisan nature of arguments.

The path of success and victory is not only steep but also difficult and thorny. It is the crushed flower that gives forth the richests, sweetest, and rarest fragrance. pangs, sufferings, misfortunes and adversities sublimate our soul and ripen our judgement.20

Some of the essayists are so poetic that to try to look too hard for logic may be to fundamentally misunderstand them, just as certain plot devices require a suspension of disbelief. Many essays are bombastic throughout, but especially so in the prescriptive rhetoric of conclusions.

Everyone should keep himself aloof from inhuman, unsocial, irreligious works. Unlawful activities should be discouraged from all walks of life. The lady killer or lady hunter should be severely punished and fined at any cost. Everybody's target should be to build up a fine heritage of lofty idealisms.21

Exaggeration

Exaggeration sometimes occurs almost accidentally from the casual use of language:

We can not live even for a single second without air.22

It is often mixed with over-generalisation in a desperate effort to add interest to the bland essays on uninspiring topics.

If we use [radio] properly, it can bring infinite good for us.23

Whilst obvious out of context, wild exaggeration is a natural property of the oversimplification and bombast that is such a common feature of Bangladeshi essays. It is common at the end of paragraphs, as if the writer uses the preceding sentences to work himself up into a fervour, and especially common in concluding statements of an essay.

18 p.? (?), Chowdhury & Hossain? 19 The commonest sound in English, the schawa, is unknown to most Bangladeshis, in whose language it does not feature. 20 p.329 (Essay 163, Sweet are the uses of Aversity), Rohel 21 p.235 (Essay 115, Violence Syndrom in the World), Rohel 22 p.252 (Essay 17, Air Pollution), Bhattacharyya & Hoque 23 p.43 (Essay 24, The Use of Radio in our Day to Day Life), Ullah

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With the help of computer we can solve any complex problem within a minute or two. In our modern life we canno't think of a day without it. It is not a fashion but a necessity.24

It is at its most pronounced when advancing the interests behind the essay books, such as the necessity of obedience to the social order in general, and the importance of school in particular.

Patriotism is pure love. It is more than human love for other individual human beings. 25

Repetition

Of all the stylistic weaknesses of essay book style, repetition is the most obvious for Bangladeshis to spot and the easiest for them to correct. The more repetitive an essay is, the easier it is to learn off by heart, so the more popular with students and teachers alike. Like waffle, repetition stems mainly from the artificial construct of having to write a minimum number of grammatically correct words, of never being corrected on style, and of having nothing of moment to say in the first place.

Tutul, you want to start a poultry farm. So you have to do something to start a poultry farm. At first you should take a training on poultry farm. There are many training centre under the "Juba Unnayan Sangstha". You may visit one of those. Then you have to manage some money for attending the training. Next you will need some more money to start a poultry farm and then you may contact with the Agricultural bank for a loan. After that you can start a poultry farm with the money given by the Agricultural bank. Finally, after establishing you poultry farm up to a good position you have to pay the loan.26

Repetition is rarely as blatant as the above. In fact, grandiloquent paraphrasing is often used to hide it from the uncritical reader. Occasionally however, entire sentences are repeated verbatim in the course of an essay. Such cases of provide a useful chance to check the accuracy of the copying; note below how careless transcription has changed `lost time' at the first mention into `loss time' in the second, and a comma has mutated into a full stop:

We can make up the loss of money by industry, the loss of health by medicine, but the loss of time is never found again. Everybody ought to make proper use of time. Because lost time is never found again. We can make up the loss of money by industry, the loss of health by medicine. But loss time is never found again. An active man is conscious of the proper use of time. It is sure that he who makes proper use of time is sure to prosper in life. We should not misuse time. Because the misuse of time would be a great loss for life. We must, therefore, make the right use of time. Success in life depends on the right use of time. An industrious man, who does not loss time, is sure to reach of the goal of life.27

Repeated words or syllables, such as shonge shonge, khaowar daowar or fushpush are a regular and welcome part of the melody of Bengali, so the native speaker may well not realise that such repetitions usually create a negative impression in English. The desire to pack sentences with long words naturally leads to complicated and repetitive expression of simple ideas:

Bangladesh can never develop with her rural areas undeveloped or underdeveloped.28

24 p.21 (Essay 47, Learning Computer Education), Shahidul Islam 25 p.74 (Essay 12, Patriotism), Zakir 26 p.96 (Methodological Paragraph 13, Training on a Poultry Farm), Mannan 27 p.196 (Value of Time), Mannan 28 p.? (Development of Bangladesh?), Zakir Hasan?

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