The Editor, Sir:

As an educator who has studied linguistics, I would like to respond to Mr Derryck Penso's letter to The Gleaner of Thursday, August 14. In his own vivid and forceful style, Mr Penso has repeated concerns that several others have been ex-pressing over and over again. He writes: "... the mad men at Mona want us to scrap this foreign ... tongue (i.e. English) and 'chat fi wi owna ting' and thus isolate ourselves from the rest of the world."

He makes three basic assumptions as grounds for his concern. They are 1) that some of our most highly qualified educators want to prevent our people from becoming fluent in English; 2) that when we recognise and encourage the child's mother tongue (for example patois), we are in effect discouraging him from learning a second language (such as English); 3) that all we need to do to improve the standard of spoken and written English is to continue using the teaching methods of 50 or more years ago, just so long as we make sure that the teachers are competent.

All three assumptions are baseless. They are misconceptions. Let me assure Mr Penso that our educators are as keen on our children learning English as he is.

Poor results

Unlike him however, many of us realise that something is wrong with the way we have been dealing with our language situation, hence, the continuing poor results. We need to change our teaching approach so as to ensure that the patois-speaking child becomes as fluent in English as he is in patois.

Patois is not 'bad English' as many mistakenly suppose. It is an emerging, separate language. When we recognise this fact we can then begin to teach English as a second language, as Mr. Penso himself suggests. Teaching English as a second language is a job for professionals. I suggest that we dialogue with them in order to gain a better understanding of the principles on which their teaching approach is based. If linguistic principles are consistently applied throughout our education system, there will be no need for the kind of anxiety Mr Penso and others have expressed concerning the future of English in Jamaica.

I am, etc.,

Dr FAITH LINTON

Cranbrookflowerforest

@gmail.com

PO Box 47, St Ann's Bay PO