What kind of English should we teach in Asia?

The question often arises what kind of English should be taught in Asia. Most Asians want to sound like Asians when they speak, not like somebody from the UK or the US. Of course, some people who have been educated in an English-speaking country are proud of their native-like command of English, and they have every right to be proud of their achievement. But in general the consensus seems to be that Asians should learn to speak a kind of English that is recognizably Asian.

The result is that new kinds of English – the ‘new Englishes’- are developing all over Asia. Some of these new varieties have semi-humorous names, including Chinglish, Japlish, Manglish and Singlish. And from a scientific point of view, these new
Englishes are every bit as valid as the old Englishes of the UK and the US. There is no way that the vowels produced by a BBC newsreader are scientifically superior to those produced by speakers of Chinglish or Japlish.

Like anybody else, Asians have the right to speak English in any way they like. What Asians can’t do is to force anyone from another part of the world to understand what they are saying. And already the new Englishes are becoming mutually unintelligible. We know what happens, because it happened a long time ago in Europe, at the end of the Roman Empire. Latin, the language of the empire, broke up into French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian, and a number of other minor languages and dialects. That is what has been happening to English since the end of the British Empire.

Asian students learning English in the twenty first century have to be prepared for careers in which they can expect to use it to interact with people from other countries. So what they need is a kind of international English that can be used and understood everywhere. And the only way that can be achieved is by using a common model. More precisely we need two models, one British and one American.

If Asians use a British model, they are not going to end up speaking like someone from England. They will still sound like Asians, and they will have the great advantage that other people will understand them. That is the thinking behind Miquest’s Mikids software which I have already described.

Of course, not just any kind of UK English will do. We have to use models that are close to the historical source from which different varieties round the world derive. The children and adults used for the Mikids recordings were from the UK, and spoke the kind of English that in former times was used in different parts of the empire.

It is very important indeed for the teacher to use a good model in the classroom. The teacher shouldn’t be expected to provide the model herself, because unless her English is pretty good she is going to pass on misunderstandings of the meanings of words, grammatical mistakes, and of course faulty pronunciations. But if teacher and students all use the same professionally produced model, the students will acquire a higher standard of English. Not only that, but the teacher will be able to improve her English at the same time, and feel more confident when the same teaching material comes round again.

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