ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute OBJECTIVES You will understand: 1. How the structures of Indian subcontinent languages specifically assist or detract from the acquisition of English; 2. How the grammatical, vocabulary and sound systems of Indian subcontinent languages affect the acquisition of English; 3. Techniques for assisting learners in overcoming their L1 distracters. You will be able to: 1. Assist learners from an Indian subcontinent language background in overcoming their L1 distracters

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute INTRODUCTION In this module, we will look at how the characteristics of the languages of the Indian subcontinent tend to assist or detract from English acquisition, and consider techniques to address L1 interference. The languages in this group include several national languages Hindi (India), Urdu (Pakistan), Bengali (Bangladesh), Nepali (Nepal), Sinhala (Sri Lanka) and Divehi (the Maldives), as well as the regional languages of India and Pakistan: Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi and Punjabi.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute INTRODUCTION These languages belong to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo- European language family, and are descended from Sanskrit. Indo-Aryan languages are spoken by the majority in this region. Thus, this module will not consider those languages of southern India (Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telegu) which belong to the Dravidian language family, or the Mon-Khmer languages spoken by some in Eastern India and the Sino-Tibetan tongues spoken near the Northern Himalayas.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute INTRODUCTION Urdu and other Pakistani languages use variations of Arabic script, while most other South Asian languages use their own scripts. The British colonization of the subcontinent means that English has a long history there, and English schools are widespread. A distinct variety of “South Asian” English has developed, which has characteristics common to other Indo- Aryan languages. In Learner English, the authors point out that South Asian English “…in its educated form has achieved the status of a separate standard, on a par with American or Australian English.” (page 228) That said, however, South Asian speakers aiming for standard English will find differences in phonology, grammar and vocabulary.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute PRONUNCIATION South Asian languages tend to have fewer vowel sounds but more consonant phonemes than English. Intonation is also very different. The following are some specific difficulties for speakers of most South Asian languages: not all vowel sounds are distinguished because speakers of South Asian languages tend to use tenser articulation than English speakers /e/ as in “head” and /æ/ “had” are frequently confused unvoiced consonants /p/, /t/, /k/ and / ʧ / are aspirated when they occur at the beginning of English words but pronounced without aspiration (burst of air) by speakers of South Asian languages, making these consonants sound closer to their voiced counterparts i.e. /p/ in “pig” sounds closer to /b/ in “big” /ð/ is often replaced by /d/, so that “them” becomes “dem” learners cannot distinguish or produce the two separate phonemes for /w/ and /v/ because only one phoneme exists close to these sounds in South Asian languages / ʒ / doesn’t exist in many South Asian languages, and may be replaced by /z/, / ʃ /, / ʤ / or /j/, causing difficulty with words like “measure” some languages, including Gujarati and Bengali, have only one phoneme between /s/ and / ʃ /, so that words like “sell” and “shell” are difficult to distinguish

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute PRONUNCIATION South Asian writing systems are usually phonetic, so that spelling and pronunciation closely correspond. This creates problems in English, where learners tend to pronounce words exactly as they are written. Learners often pronounce the past tense –ed ending as it is written in all cases, and plural –s as /s/ even in words where it should be pronounced as /z/, such as “trees”. Initial and final consonant clusters occur less frequently in South Asian languages than in English. An unstressed vowel sound / ə / is often inserted in consonant clusters, so that “tree” becomes “taree” or “kiln” becomes “kilan”. With final consonant clusters, the last sound may also be left out, so that “roast” becomes “roas”.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute PRONUNCIATION South Asian languages are syllable-timed, with a predictable pattern of word stress, which is dependent on the regular rhythm of long and short syllables. Consequently, the stress- time nature of English is problematic for learners. In particular, learners have difficulty pronouncing similar words with different stress patterns, such as “PHOtograph” and “phoTOgrapher” or nouns (“REcord”) and verbs (“reCORD”) that are spelled identically but contain different stress patterns. Also, South Asian speakers tend to stress all vowels, rather than using the weak, unstressed / ə / used in many English words. Contrastive stress used in English for emphasis is challenging for speakers of South Asian languages, as is the production of reduced consonants.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute PRONUNCIATION Most South Asian languages use higher pitch for emphasis, which results in a “sing-song” quality when transferred to English (Swan, p. 232). Most South Asian languages employ a rise-fall intonation for yes/no questions, which can lead to misunderstanding. This intonation pattern can also make polite requests like “Could you please open the window?” sound like demands.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPELLING, GRAMMAR AND LEXIS South Asian languages do not use capitals, so there is sometimes confusion about when to employ capitalization in English. Although similar punctuation exists in South Asian languages, usage is not as regular as in English, so knowing when to use punctuation is challenging.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPELLING, GRAMMAR AND LEXIS English and Hindi generally have the same parts of speech, but Hindi is a much more inflected language than English. In Hindi and Gujarati, auxiliary verbs are not used to form questions. These languages use either an interrogative word, or simply different intonation, to indicate a question. This can lead to errors in English like “When you called him?” or “He has a car?” Hindi forms negatives by putting a negative marker before the verb, and Gujarati uses a marker before or after the verb which changes with the tense. This negative marker corresponds to both “no” and “not”. No auxiliaries are used, so that a typical mistake is “We no(t) want coffee.” One general question tag is used with all subjects and verbs, so a learner might use “isn’t it” as a catch-all question tag. There is no verb in Hindi equivalent to “have” so learners tend to avoid its use in English, leading to awkward constructions like “My key is with him” for “He has my key”.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPELLING, GRAMMAR AND LEXIS The South Asian languages generally contain the simple past, past progressive and past perfect, but usage sometimes differs from English. Hindi forms the past habitual in the same way as English forms the past progressive, which means that learners can confuse the two. Learners use English stative verbs (verbs that are not used in the progressive) incorrectly, as in “I was wanting to see that movie.” Where English uses the present perfect for recently completed actions, as in “I have just finished my work”, Hindi uses the simple past as in “I finished my work just now”.

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPELLING, GRAMMAR AND LEXIS Hindi has simple present, present progressive and present perfect tenses, although they are used and formed differently. In Hindi, the simple present is formed with an auxiliary and a present participle. Consequently, one of the characteristic errors made by speakers of South Asian languages in English is the use of stative verbs in progressive forms, such as “I am not knowing where to go”. Hindi uses the present progressive to describe how long a current situation has been going on, where English would use the present perfect or present perfect continuous. Thus, a Hindi speaker might say “How long are you living in Canada?” or “I am living here since 2002.” In conditional clauses, Hindi speakers tend to use a future tense instead of a simple tense. Typical errors include “If I will have time, I’ll go to Jim’s party.” or “If I would have money, I would lend some to you.”

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPELLING, GRAMMAR AND LEXIS Although Hindi has corresponding words or expressions for most English modals, usage errors still occur. For instance, Hindi speakers tend to use “could” where “can” is correct, and “would” where “will” is correct, as in “Let’s hurry so we could catch the bus” or “I hope that you would come to my party”. This is because “could” and “would” are perceived to be more polite. Learners may sound abrupt or curt when incorrectly using “may” in requests such as “You may bring this back tomorrow” when the intended meaning is “Will you please bring this back tomorrow?” Expressing wants is also problematic and learners tend to say “He wants that I should help him” or “The teacher wanted that we should study.”

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute SPELLING, GRAMMAR AND LEXIS As with learners of many other languages, speakers of South Asian languages have difficulty choosing between gerunds and infinitives and make errors like “I went to the store for buying some milk.” and “Mark is very interested to study”. Word order differs in that verbs come at the end of the sentence in most South Asian languages, and postpositions are more common than prepositions. Time words can be placed anywhere in the sentence in Gujarati and other South Asian languages. Despite these differences, word order does not present major difficulties to learners, except in question formation. The definite article doesn’t exist in most South Asian tongues, and Hindi uses “one”

ACE TESOL Diploma Program – London Language Institute Complete Question 1 in the Task Journal. Task Journals can be submitted via to (preferred) or printed and handed in.