BASIC ENGLISH FOR ADULT EDUCATION

PART II : BASIC AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE
(in Basic)

    It is not necessary here to go into details about why Basic is the most probable answer to the international language question, but the arguments in a word are : that English is for the most purposes the international language in fact now ; that it is the natural language of more persons than any other one language, and that in a great number of places where it is not natural, it is widely used as the second language, sometimes by government order, sometimes for business and trade reasons ; that no other language but English may be taken to bits and put together again in the same way to make a "Basic" which is simple, clear and elastic as Basic English is ; that a language based on English, with the sort of rules which Basic gives, is much nearer to the working of languages of the East than any other European tongue may be made to be. But the most important point s that Basic is able to do what is desired of an international language, and is an instrument ready at hand which may be used without more than a very small change in the language uses of a great number of men and women. To see it work covering a wide range of material from business letters to astronomy (sometimes at the expert level with the help of small lists of special words, sometimes without, it is only necessary to go through the pages of the seventy Basic books now printed. They give a more complete picture than is possible in any general account of the system.
    But at the same time some view of how it is used in different countries makes an interesting story. In China there is a branch of the Orthological Institute, which before the war was in Peiping and has now been moved, with the Universities, to Chagsha, with another branch for the time being in Yunnanfu.
    A great expansion of the work has taken place in the past two years with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Ministry of Education has made a request for a full account of what Basic is doing and may do for Chinese education. At the present time, boys and girls in Chinese middle schools have English for from six to eight hours a week for six years. It makes a division of their school work unequally weighted in the direction of English, but at the end they still have not the English which is needed for work in European science, or for business and trade, and far from enough to give them the key to the great English writers. So much of their school time has been used for English that nothing like enough has been put into all the other things badly needed for the building of a China which may take its place in the society of nations of today.
    Basic has two things to give to Chinese education. It is first a way of teaching English which gives more control of the language in much less time, so that the teaching may be pointed straight at the purposed for which it is desired. For a number of these purposes, Basic may be quite enough and the fruits of the first year's work may be put to use straight away. For others Basic may be only a first step, a planting of the seed of the rest of the language to come. If English is to be a door to European thought -- the sort of thought responsible for European science, to which there is no parallel in Chinese thought -- the teaching of it will have more effort if it is given not simply as a new language with strange sounds and different rules but as a language whose working is a guide to the different thought processes of the West. Possibly it is not clear how important this is without a more detailed discussion of the structure of the Chinese language and the history of Chinese thought than there is a place for here. But the structure of Basic is such that it does give, as no other first step so far put forward does, a working knowledge of European ways of thought as they are seen in the glass of language. As a first guide to later work with European science, it has a special value.

    It is for these reasons that the Ministry of Education and a number of groups of teachers in different parts of China have become interested in Basic to the point of working with the Orthological Institute in Peiping, some in Peiping, some from a difference. The working group at the Institute is formed of two teachers from the National Tsing Hua University, two from the National Normal University, one from Peking National University, and three teachers of Middle Schools, who are there as Research Fellows. Two of these are American and the rest Chinese, and they are now having the help of Dr. I. A. Richards of Cambridge University, who is out there for a year, and Mr. William Empson of Cambridge, who is Visiting Professor of English at the Peking National University. They have put out two first teaching books, which are being tested in middle schools for girls and boys, and a Basic wall map of all the Basic words with their Chinese parallels in two colors, measuring six feet by five. The Institute is giving special attention to the needs of learners who have had some training in English, such as those in second year middle school or in any year at the University. In this work it is joining forces with the Western Language Association of China, which has been working for needed changes in the present system.
    In July 1936, the Dean and President of the Normal University had Basic put in as part of the Summer School for Middle School teachers of North China. More than fifty teachers took the twenty-five hours of Basic work offered, and the request was made for more of it on a much greater scale at future summer schools. The 1937 school was stopped by the war in Peiping in July and August.
    At Tsing Hua University, Basic is now offered as part of a "Teachers' Training Course," and the Institute has undertaken the organization of school work at the National Normal University, its Practice Middle Schools and the First National Midwifery School. This made more than ninety hours of controlled teaching in schools in Peiping before the war, in which observations were made on which future teaching materials are to be based. There has been in addition a great body of experience in teaching Basic in other parts of China, but this has been harder to keep under control and observation, because of great distances, so the most important work has had to be in or near Peiping. Two radio stations, one in Peiping and one in Central China, had been putting Basic on the air in general talks and for teaching purposes, but the war has put an end to that. The war has naturally had its effects on all the work of the Institute, moving the schools and colleges, and, shaking the order of their days. But the need for English and the need for science only goes on getting stronger, and so the uses of Basic are, in fact, increased, though the regular working out of the best system of teaching it in China may have to be a slower process.
    There are Basic records made by Dr. Y. R. Chao of the Institute of History and Philology at Nanking and produced by the Chung Hua Book Co. of Shanghai, with a Chinese and. English Key to the words and talks in book form. The same company has put out a Chinese printing of the ABC of Basic English, the Basic Dictionary and the Basic Words. The Step by Step is now ready. These, with the four books printed by Evans Brothers, The Basic Way to English, and other reading materials now on the way, give the schools a good selection. Chinese Stories by Dr. T. K. Chtu and the first twelve of the group of science books specially needed in China are all in the hands of the printer. These have been done with the help and direction of the Chinese committee so that there may be the materials necessary to put English teaching in touch with the other teaching most valued in Chinese schools.

    In Japan, public interest in Basic has been great for a number of years, as may be seen from the amount of attention the newspapers have given it. But serious steps to make use of it have been taken only within the last year or two. The first Basic representative in Japan was Professor Okakura, whose death last year put an end to his work on questions of the relation between Basic and Japanese which would have had much value. He was the head of the English teachers at Rikkyo (St. Paul's) University in Tokyo, had had long years of teaching English in middle schools, was respected by the great number of teachers who had been trained under him, and was one of the most noted authorities on the Japanese language. He did much to make the teaching, not only of English but of Japanese, simpler, and was the first in Japan to go in for teaching simple English on the radio. On. his journeys to Europe in 1932, when the last touches were being put to the Basic system, he went to the Orthological Institute in London for the purposes of learning Basic and. helping with points which might have given special trouble to Japanese learners. His book on The Basic words was one of the first of the books for Japanese learners. Among others are the Japanese ABC of Basic English and the Japanese Step by Step by T. Takata, Business Letters in Basic by Professor H. Okamoto of Kyoto, who has done the Japanese Basic for Business with normal English for comparison and notes in Japanese. With his help, the Kyoto Basic Group has been printing a "Basic English Monthly" in Basic. Mr. F. J. Daniels of the College of Commerce, Otaru, Hokkaido, and a group under him are doing a Japanese-Basic Dictionary, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation. It will be printed in a month or two, and will make it possible for a Japanese to get a good reading knowledge of English with its help and with the other Basic books now ready in Japan without so much work for the teacher. This work was an outgrowth of Mr. Daniels' earlier book That Night, the Basic for a noted Japanese play "Sono Yo" by Tumura. He gives it in two forms. The first is the sort of Basic which would be used by a Japanese learner writing with the help only of a Dictionary and the second is the normal Basic of one in complete control of the language. Some ten or twelve other books for Japanese readers have been printed in a Basic Library by Kenkyusha in Tokyo, and more are to come. A strong supporter of Basic is Professor Kochi Doi of Tohoko Imperial University at Sendai whose Basic Japanese is based on the Basic system and whose five Rokuseikwafl English Readers have the Basic word-list at the end. The Basic Century Readers are completely in Basic, two books forming a first step to Professor Ichikawa's Century Readers in normal English.
    There is no way of being certain of how much teaching of Basic there is in Japan. Letters and discussions in the newspapers, letters to Mr. Okakura, Mr. Okamoto, Mr. Takata, Mr. Daniels, and others, who are publicly marked as experts in Basic, make it clear that there is a strong tendency in the Basic direction in a number of colleges, universities and middle schools other than those in which these men are themselves teaching. From statements in the papers, business circles, in which Japan's great international trade makes the use of English necessary, have taken to the idea most quickly. Japanese schools give more time to English than to any other one thing, but judging from their power over the language at the end, it seems to be wasted time. As Mr. Okanioto said (in Basic) in a letter to the paper Syogyo Eigo in May 1934:

"A sad. feeling comes to me when I see Japanese boys and girls working hard at the English language. Almost all the young persons in Japan who go on with their education after the Lower School have a very, very hard. time with English for five years in a Middle School, and for another three or four years if they go on to a Higher School. Because English is the most widely used language today, and because our relations with the English-using nations are increasing year by year, I have nothing to say against the teaching of English in Japan. It is certainly right and natural to make the language part of the system of education in this country; but even though that is true, I have a feeling that under present conditions the trouble taken with the language is quite out of relation to its value.
    "I am in a position in which I am in touch with a great number of boys who have given much of their early years of education to English. From the tests given to them from time to time, I have come to the opinion that a great part of the work done by them on the language is little short of a waste of time. . . .
    "In the minds of a great number of teachers of English there seems to be the idea that some 10,000 to 15,000 words are necessary for Japanese boys and girls. This is seen in the English books in use in a great number of schools, and even more clearly in the test questions given every year to those desiring to be let into the different Higher Schools. For most of these tests, the learner has to have more than 15,000 words in his memory to be safe. But the fact is that, in our Middle Schools, English is given for 6 or 7 hours in a week; so that to get 15,500 words in the five years, a boy has to get 2,500 in a year, 60 or 70 in a week, or one new word every five minutes of teaching time . . . .
    "I am deeply conscious that the time has come for giving more serious thought to the teaching of English, with a view to putting right the present wrongs. For the purpose in view, I am ready to put forward Basic English, a selection from normal English with all the unnecessary details cut out. It has only 850 words and the rules are so simple that it seems probable that a serious-minded Japanese learner who came to Basic without knowledge of normal English would get to the stage of writing and. talking freely after four or five months' work on the right lines. And because Basic is a complete language in itself, the learner of normal English who makes use of Basic as a first step gets control of the most important part of English at an earlier stage than is possible by any other teaching system."


    In Malaya, there is a School for Training Teachers of Basic in Singapore, which was started by Dr. V.W.W.S. Purcell who was at the time Chief Education Officer in Singapore. The papers gave full page accounts of the school and the system, with hopes, as the Malaya Tribune said, that "if the school is a success, and we are confident that it will be, a knowledge of Basic English will in due course spread. over Malay to the great benefit of people to whom English is an obvious and necessary 'lingua franca'." The school has been taken over by an English teacher, now that Mr. Purcell has gone to Perak, and last winter about fifty teachers were sent out able to go on with Basic. Middle school groups in Chinese and Malay schools have been formed under the direction of the Inspector of Schools. All are going well, and it is only a question now of waiting for the authorities to make their decision before Basic is in wide use all through Malaya.

    In the Soviet Union, the work in Basic has been under the direction of Madame Litvinoff. Strangely enough, Basic first came to the attention of the greater part of the American public when Litvinoff was in Washington and had. a talk over the telephone with Madame Litvinoff in Moscow. Basic came into the talk, a newspaper man got the story and a day later it was all over American papers. The New . . .
    In Denmark . . .
    In Czechoslovakia . . .

    This is far from being the full story of Basic in different countries, but is simply an outline map of some of the points of interest. Internationally, there is more/ A number of meetings of men of science in Europe have made use of Basic for papers, or for giving a short account of papers which had been given in other European languages. The annals Guebhard-Severine in Switzerland has used Basic for its short accounts of long discussions in French. The Institute of Pacific Relations, an international organization whose work is on the relations of countries in the Pacific, has had a strong interest in Basic for some years, using it for a number of papers and a number of talks in international meetings. the natural step now is for international radio to take to Basic. There are signs that it may in the near future. China was on the point of it. There have been a number of Basic programs on the air in England and America, and the forward-looking short-wave station in Boston, W1XAL, has put on talks (sic) Foundation, of Walter S. Lemmon, President of the Worldwide Broadcasting Foundation, and of Professor Carleton A. Wheeler of Tufts College, has been responsible for these programs.
    The first of these tasks, one a week for three months, were done by Professor Wheeler with Miss Guyton and Miss Kelley, and were chiefly about Basic-- how it came to be and what its uses were. At the end there were a number of examples of its teaching to men and women in the night schools of Cambridge and Peabody. In 1936-37 the talks given every week were parallel to whatever the day's program of W1XAL was about, and so over a wide range of questions. Then a program for and about young persons "World Youth Speaks" was started in which the first half was given in some other language, and the second half was the same thing given again in Basic. This program is on again, at present without Basic, but Basic will become a part of it in the near future and in the opinion of Professor Wheeler will give it greater value. In addition, it is possible that the news will be in Basic, the news from W1XAL being from the Christian Science Monitor, which has for a long time given interest support to the idea.
    Ending on a note looking well into the future, here is what H. G. Wells (in "The Shape of Things to Come") sees ahead of us :

    "One unlooked-for development of the hundred years between 2000 and 2100 was the way in which Basic English became in that short time the common language for use between nations, and the expansion at an even greater rate-- as the outcome of this, and after it had been changed in a number of ways-- of English itself. The English used by most of us today in talking and writing is a very different tongue from the English of Shakespeare, Addison, Buyan, or Shaw. It has got away from the last signs of such old and complex forms as a 'subjunctive mood' ; the form of a word on paper has become truly representative of its sound ;everyone gives the same sound to the same word ; a number of words and word-groups have been taken over from other languages. . . . In its natural form it was better for the purpose in a number of ways than the chief language in competition with it, Spanish, French, Russian, German, and Italian. It was simpler, more delicate, more elastic, and even at that time more widely used, but it was certainly the development of Basic English which gave it the position it now has.
    "Basic English was the invention of a man whose quick and fertile mind was trained at Cambridge in England. . . . It was taken up in most surprising way after the First Conference at Basra. It was made the language for all public and government purposes in a very country by the Air and Sea Control, and by 2020 almost everyone was able to make use of Basic for talking and writing. . . ."

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