Basic and the Teaching of
    English in Burma
    by ADOLPH MYERS
    Basic Representative in India
    Honorary Adviser to the Council of National Education


    Published for
    The Orthological Institute, Cambridge
    The AMERICAN BAPTIST MISSION PRESS, RANGOON, 1938
    To The Hon'ble U MAUNG GYEE, President of the Senate

    FOREWORD by
    THE HON'BLE U MAUNG GYEE

       "The teaching of English plays a very important part in the curriculum of the Burmese school, and whatever political developments there may be in the future its importance is not likely to be diminished. Burma will always have need of a medium of communication, for business and scientific purposes, with the rest of the world ; and English will always be taught, for the same reasons s it is being taught in France and Germany, China and Japan and all the most important countries outside the British Empire.
        . . . (more) . . .

    U MAUNG GYEE    

    PREFACE

        This book is based on numerous lectures I have given to large concourses of teachers in various centres in India and Burma.
        By 'lectures' I mean not only my own formal expositions but the hundreds of questions which I have been asked and the prolonged informal discussions which they have invariably provoked. Indeed, my own original expositions has been continuously shaped and reshaped by the questions and discussions following all the lectures gone before, so that no two courses have ever been quite alike. It was only when I found that no new questions were being asked and no new points raised in discussion that I sat down to write.
        . . . (more) . . .

    A. M.
    Rangoon, October, 1938.

    CONTENTS
    PART ONE
    First Principles

    CHAPTERPAGE
    1 .THE IMPORTANCE OF WORD - SELECTION17
    The Burmese child cannot learn all the words the English child learns. How many can he learn? Which should they be ?
    2 . SELECTION BY COUNTING53
    The defects of the word-counting systems now in common use.
    3. SELECTION BY ELIMINATION73
    How Mr. Ogden made his selection of 850 words.
    4 . SELECTION -- GRAMMAR AND IDIOM109
    Why was the idea of word-selection extended to grammar and idiom ?
    5 .BUILDING UP127
    What do we mean by 'laying a sound foundation'?
    PART TWO
    TEACHING PROBLEMS -- THE BASIC APPROACH
    6 .ENGLISH -- TEACHING-MEDIUM OR SECOND LANGUAGE145
    The demand for vernacularization. Can the time devoted to English be reduced without lowering the standard?
    7 .AIM -- UNDERSTANDING OR EXPRESSION156
    Should Burmese children be taught only to read English or to Speak and write English as well?
    8 .METHOD -- DIRECT OR INDIRECT?162
    English through English or English through the Vernacular? Is translation necessary?
    9 .BALANCE -- SHAKESPEARE OR SHOP?189
    What sort of English do Burmese children need? Must culture be sacrificed to earning-capacity?
    10.PRONUNCIATION -- SOUND OR SENSE?195
    How the teaching of English is needlessly dominated by phonetic considerations.
    11.GRAMMAR -- CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS?201
    The place of grammar in the teaching of English cannot be decided without reference to word-selection.
    12.GRAMMAR -- FORMAL OR FUNCTIONAL?212
    A new way of giving the child an insight into the working of language -- 'for its own sake'!
    13.READING -- AMUSEMENT OR INSTRUCTIONS?219
    Is it possible for the child to establish a reading habit while he is at school?
    14.READING -- WORD-MAGIC OR WORD-CONTROL?230
    It has been said that 90 per cent of the reading public do not read intelligently. Is this true? How can we test understanding?.
    15.COMPOSITION -- LICENCE OR LIBERTY?244
    The relation between thought and language.
    16.POETRY -- APATHY OR AFFECTATION?250
    Why poetry is unpopular; Basic as a new method of interpretation.
    17.SCIENCE -- THOUGHT OR LANGUAGE ?258
    Science students with ten years of English behind them can barely follow university lectures. Can this be remedied?
    PART THREE
    CONCLUSION
    18 .BASIC AND THE NATIONS267
    How the use of Basic as an international language grows out of its advantages as a 'first step' to English.
    19.BASIC AND ITS CRITICS287
    A complete answer to West, Ballard, French and other critics of Basic, showing why the 'Critical Examination of Basic English' was withdrawn and destroyed.
    20. The Future of Basic333
    Will Basic be affected by the gradual changes to which all languages are subject?
    APPENDIX 341
    An account in Basic English, of all the Basic books already published and now being published.
    1 . School Books345
    2 . Books about Basic355
    3 . Books in Basic (General)361
    4 . More Basic Science.367
    5 . Books in other Languages.368
    6 . Learning of Other Languages370
        Basic Representatives, 1938370
    INDEX 373
    ILLUSTRATIONS
    FIGUREPAGE
    1 . The Word-Gap (i)18
    2 . The Word-Gap (ii)21
    3 . Covering-Words24
    . . .
    26.The Basic Scheme (outline)133
    27. Friends, Acquaintances and Strangers.137
    . . .
    33. The 'Three Voices'283
    34. The Basic Scheme (detail)289

    PART ONE
    First Principle
    CHAPTER I
    The importance of Word-Selection

        It is the first day of the new school year. We are standing before a class of some thirty to forty Burmese children. They are anything between seven and ten years of age. They do not, as yet, know a word of English. What, as teachers of English, are we setting out to do with them, or rather for them ? What exactly do we mean when we say, "We are going to teach them English"?
      Link to : Chapter 1
      . . .
        So let us now go on to inquire how and why it is possible to do so much with only 850 words. Hitherto, for the sake of simplicity, I have passed over those other features which make Basic more than a mere list of words, which make it a complete language system in itself, the simplest the world has ever known. To appreciate the genius of Basic to the full we must compare it with the word-lists which is so often though mistakenly confused.

    CHAPTER 2
    SELECTION BY COUNTING


        I have said that any improvement there may have been in the teaching of English in Burma in recent years is due mainly to this idea of word-selection. Because our children begin late and have little time for English we cannot hope to teach them all the words the English child knows and will learn as he grows up. Fortunately, however, as we have seen, not all the words the English child uses to express himself are necessary ; and by choosing those which are necessary, and by teaching those first, we can make our work much simpler.
      Link to : Chapter 1
      . . .
       The defects of word-counting will be still clearer when we go on, in the next chapter, to study the Basic method of word-elimination.

    CHAPTER 3
    SELECTION BY ELIMINATION


        Before we discuss the Basic method of word-selection by elimination let us return once more to the purposes of word-selection.
      Link to : Chapter 1
      . . .
        . . .We have still further strengthened the foundation which is so essential to the foreign learner if he is going on to expand swiftly and safely. But this question of foundation deserves a chapter to itself.

    CHAPTER 4
    SELECTION -- GRAMMAR AND IDIOM


       So far, for the sake of simplicity, we have been looking at English mainly as a collection of unrelated words. We have narrowed down the teaching problem to a word problem, and we have seen that only a process of elimination can the fundamental idea of word-selection be carried to its logical conclusion.
      Link to : Chapter 4
      . . .

    CHAPTER 5
    BUILDING UP


        "Yes," says the educationist, "our first task is to lay a sound foundation." Probably no expression is more constantly on the lips of the training college lecturer ; no precept is dinned more persistently into the ears of the trainee. And in most subjects, no doubt, practice has followed precept. Most successful, perhaps, of all the application of this principle is the concentric method of teaching history and geography. We saw in Chapter 1 how it works out : in history -- first the broad sweep of man's story, then the filling in of detail ; in geography -- first the general outline of coast-line and climate, then the filling up of the blank spaces.
      Link to : Chapter 5
      . . .
        He can teach it without having read this book, but I think he will teach it with greater zest and enthusiasm if he has read this book.

    PART TWO
    Teaching Problems -- The BASIC Approach
    CHAPTER 6
    English -- Teaching Medium or Second-Language ?

        If you agreed with most of what I have said so far you will probably be wondering ; Why, in all the hundred years that English has been taught in Burma, has no one thought of teaching it this way before ? Why have we had to wait so long for a system like Basic English? It seems such an obvious. Our children have to learn not only to read English, which is a fairly easy mater, but also how to speak and write it correctly, which is much more difficult. They can learn to speak only by speaking, to write only by writing. To speak and write, they much have practice. The smaller the number of essential speaking words they learn, the more practice they will have with each. The English language is so constructed that it is possible to do a great deal with a very small number of words. These, then, will be our practice vocabulary ; these will be the foundation of all our teaching. Once again, it all seems so obvious. Why has no one thought of it before?
       . . .
      Link to Chapter 6.

    CHAPTER 7
    AIM -- Understanding or Expression ?

        When a man suddenly finds his income halved, as many have done in these days of depression, his first thought is to examine his expenditures : which are the items whose elimination will cause least hardship ?
        In the same way when the English teacher found that half, or more than half, his periods taken away from him (including those devoted to other subjects taught in English), his first thought was to examine his time-table : which were the items which could be eliminated with least loss ? There are, of course, four items in language teaching :
      Link to Chapter 7.
      . . .

    CHAPTER 8
    METHOD -- DIRECT or INDIRECT ?

        If Dr. West's contentions had been correct we might have expected that children brought up on the New Method system would at least be fluent and enthusiastic readers. They might have the feeling that something was lacking, that they had deprived of an opportunity to compete on equal terms with other children in the matter of examinations and careers. But they should at least have cause to thank him for their ability to read and for the joy they experience in reading. But do they ?
        The New Method system may still be in use in a large number of schools, but any Inspector will testify that it has failed to achieve any marked success ; progress is not so very much more rapid than it was before : the results are not so very much more permanent. Why ?
        Because in the first place, . . .
      Link to Chapter 8.
      . . .

    CHAPTER 9
    BALANCE -- SHAKESPEARE or SHOP ?

        The aim laid down by Dr. West for the teaching of English had two distinct aspects.
      1 . That the general policy, for any one school or for any one class taken as a whole should be to emphasize reading ability rather than ability to speak and write.
      2 . That in any one school or in any one class whatever speaking and writing is permitted should be reserved for the more gifted pupils.
    This new orientation was justified by three contentions :
      Link to Chapter 9.
      . . .

    CHAPTER 10.
    PRONUNCIATION -- Sound or Sense ?

        If, I have said, expression is to be directly related to experience (the fundamental principle of the direct method) the experience itself must be vivid and natural. Looked at from this point of view some of the primers, ' first steps ' and introductory courses now in common use seem to be more like crossword-puzzle clues than ordinary common-sense English.
      The judge knew all the knaves.
      I poured the juice into the urn.
      The quill of the quail falls and the queen gets it.
        These sentences are taken at random from a little primer of 75 pages which, we are told, is "intended for use in the Third Standards of Anglo-Vernacular Schools in Burma". Teachers are asked "to make every use of the pictures, which will help considerably both in reading and conversational lessons". Now there may be social circles where quills and quails, knaves and urns, are common subjects of conversation, but I have yet to come across them. Here again, before the child has learned to make the simplest statements or ask the simplest questions about the things around him, he is asked to learn (through translation) and make use of (in conversation) words which the Englishman himself uses perhaps on the average of once a year.
        . . .
      Link to Chapter 10.

    CHAPTER 11.
    GRAMMAR -- Conscious or Unconscious ?

        As with meaning and pronunciation so with grammar. In no field of English teaching is there more confusion, more uncertainty, more blindness to the real factors involved. Should we, or should we not, teach English grammar ? This is the question that writers of text-books set out to answer. The fact that usually they answer is (sometimes 'yes', sometimes 'no') entirely without reference to word-selection, or to what we might call 'method in its broader aspects, shows how little they understand the real problem. The problem is essentially a simple one.
        Grammar has two aspects -- 'formal' and 'functional'. Formal grammar is concerned with the naming and classification of the parts of speech (parsing) and of phrases, clauses and sentences (analysis). Functional grammar is concerned with the correct use of the parts of speech (accidence) and the construction of phrases, clauses and sentences (syntax).
        Now a knowledge of functional grammar may be acquired 'consciously' or 'unconsciously'. Look at these two sentences "
        He came yesterday.
        He has already come
    In the first we have the 'past simple' tense, used with an adverb of past time ; in the second the 'present perfect ' is used, with an adverb of present time. The English child of five has never heard of 'past simple' or 'present perfect' (formal grammar). No one has ever explained to him the distinction between them, the rules that govern their use (functional grammar). Yet he uses them correctly. Why does he use them correctly ? Through sheer force of example. He has heard them used correctly so often that they come naturally to his lips. He knows them without knowing that there is 'unconscious ' knowledge of grammatical usage. If, later, he learns grammar at all, whether formal or functional, he learns it as a special subject -- the science of language. For the English child, clearly, practice precedes theory.
       
      Link to Chapter 11.

    CHAPTER 12.
    GRAMMAR -- Formal or Functional ?

        "But our pupils must not only know their foreign languages unconsciously and mechanically ; they must not only learn how to express themselves, but they must also know why."
        It is some such though as this, I think, which is behind the demand for 'grammar for grammar's sake.' Grammar is, after all, the science of language, and not all science is applied (functional). If children are taught 'pure mathematics', a subject which is of very little practical use to them in after-life, why should they not be taught 'pure (formal grammar', even if the functional applications are already being unconsciously observed ?
        No if the aim of pure grammar, or formal grammar, is to give the pupil an insight into the workings of language, no one will dispute its value. The objection to its teaching comes from those who realize that the subject is usually so mechanically taught that this aim is never achieved. As Dr. Jespersen says, "the object in most cases is merely to classify the sentences or words under certain given rubrics and to give their names and the respective rules which have been committed to memory, something which can in large part be done with very little grammatical understanding of the language in question."
        . . .
      Link to Chapter 12.

    CHAPTER 13.
    READING -- Amusement or Instruction ?

        Having dealt with the various aspects of method in the introductory stage we come now to the question of material. We know now what sort of word-material ought to be used, but words can be read only in books. What sort of reading material is most suitable for the Burmese child ?
        . . .
      Link to Chapter 13.

    CHAPTER 14.
    READING -- Word-Magic or Word-Control ?

        We come now to the problem of reading in the higher stages. In Chapter 3 I tried to show that one of the chief merits of Basic English as a foundation is that the words it employs re 'fundamental'. One quality of such 'fundamental' words is that, in the development of the language, they always retain their original meanings. They may be used in new senses, new combinations, and these new senses and combinations may, in the course of time, become part of the language, but the words themselves always retain their original sense. 'Take', for example, is always 'take', though it may find itself new companions -- 'take cover', 'Keep is always 'keep' ; 'clean' is always 'clean' ; 'green' is always 'green'. Such words are like the roots of a tree. Many things may happen to the tree : the leaves come and go, branches die and fall off, others take their place ; but the roots always remain firmly planted in the ground.
       . . .
      Link to Chapter 14.

    CHAPTER 15.
    COMPOSITION -- Licence or Liberty ?

        Composition may be regarded as the ' other-side ' of reading. If a student has not learned to detect the fallacies, absurdities, falsities, ambiguities, illogicalities, and extravagances in the writing of others he will certainly not be able to keep them out of his own. I have shown how the one-level practice period can ensure fluency and grammatical accuracy in writing as well as in speaking, in the introductory stage. I now have to show how a periodic return to Basic in the upper forms can ensure that language does not outrun thought in the higher stages.
        The problem of developing a terse, logical, well-knit style, like the problem of teaching pure grammar, is not confined to schools in foreign countries. It is just as much a problem to the English teacher in England and America, and to emphasize this I want to return for a moment to the teacher who was describing his experiences with Basic in the grammar lesson. Turning to the value of translation into Basic he says :
        . . .
      Link to Chapter 15.

    CHAPTER 16.
    POETRY -- Apathy or Appreciation ?

        I want now to turn to one form of word-magic which is stylistically legitimate and morally irreproachable -- Poetry.
        Hitherto we have regarded suggestion-words as concealed and insidious enemies seeking to drug our logical faculties, to exploit our feelings and emotions, to sway us towards some belief or course of action which the speaker or writer would have us adopt or pursue. But the use and exploitation of suggestion-words is not always inimical to our intellectual integrity. When Shakespeare writes :
        the multitudinous Seas incarnadine,
        Making the Greene one Red
    he uses words ('multitudinous', 'incarnadine') as fully charged with feeling, emotion, suggestiveness, as 'liquor traffic ' and 'dictator ' are on the lips of the propagandist. And it is perhaps as much for his skill in word-magic as for his skill in the portrayal of character that he is worshipped and revered.
        The difference, it is clear, is wholly one of intention and of effect. Shakespeare, we know, had no axe to grind. He was a poet, an artist. The law of his being compelled him to write, and he wrote, in his plays, about the axes that men do grind, and why and how and with what results they grind them. Macbeth's 'axe ' was his ambition to be King, and it was solely to describe in all their intensity his horror and remorse after the dreadful act which had made him King that Shakespeare employs those two suggestion words. Nothing, he suggests, can wipe the bloodstain from Macbeth's hands ; if he plunged them into the multitudinous seas the seas too would turn red with blood, and still his hands would be bloody.
       . . .
      Link to Chapter 16.

    CHAPTER 17.
    SCIENCE -- Though or Language ?

        English for the science student raises a special problem in itself. Not one but scores of university lecturers in foreign countries have told me that when students come to them for training in science they still do not know enough English, after eight or ten years of study, to be able even to follow their lectures. Lecturers have to waste half their time explaining scientific terminology as such. Students have to waste half their time in further studies in non-scientific English, in order to be able to read fluently and explain themselves clearly. They have to give so much time to the language that they have little time left for thought.
       . . .
      Link to Chapter 17.

    PART THREE
    Conclusion
    CHAPTER 18
    BASIC and The Nations

        'What,' asks the British Esperanto Association, 'is the real aim of Basic ? For its advocates speak with two voices on this point. Is it intended to be a stepping-stone to English ? If so, it may be helpful to that end. . . . If, on the other hand, Basic is advocated as itself a solution of the international language problem, it is clear that this claim is completely illusory. . . .'
        Having spoken at some length with one of my 'two voices' I now propose to speak with the other. And the first thing I want to say with it is this :
        The 'real' aim of Basic is to meet every sort of need for a simplified English that history and circumstances have created.
        Two such needs I have already described : first, the need of the foreign learner for a short cut to English ; second, the need of both the Englishman and the foreign student for an instrument of analysis, a control, a check, a guide, a discipline, a return to first principles, a means to a closer adjustment between thought and language.
      Link to Chapter 18.
      . . .

    CHAPTER 19
    BASIC and Its Critics

        [summary of preceding chapter and plea for planning]
        In the same way I might show that all the most alert and most intellectually sensitive teachers have long been thinking along Basic lines. The very warmth with which the word-counting systems, imperfect as they are, were welcomed in itself shows how great was the desire for 'planning'.
        From these systems, as we have seen, Basic differs not so much in kind as in degree. The idea of simplification is the same old idea. The difference lies in the method of simplification and the scope of simplification. What is new about Basic, arising form this difference of scope and method, is its completeness, its self-sufficiency and its utter simplicity not only of vocabulary but of grammar and idiom as well.
      Link to Chapter 19.
      . . .

    CHAPTER 20
    The Future of BASIC

        One criticism of Basic I have reserved till the last, because the answer to it takes us into the misty realms of speculation with which, as practical teachers, we are not really concerned.
        We are back again with Dr. Ballard. He has been talking about the natural simplification of English 'that has been going on slowly and steadily throughout the ages '. He has no doubt, he says, that the process can be speeded up, ' but not by ignoring the forces of nature. To formulate a fixed system is like nailing up a weather-cock to keep the wind in the west'.
      Link to Chapter 20.
      . . .
        With such speculations, as I have said, we are not immediately concerned. What does concern us is that our children, today, here and now, should be taught English on the right lines. And which are the right lines ? They are the lines which exploit those tendencies to simplification in the English language which have made Basic English possible. Because English is what it is its teaching, as has been proved, can be immeasurably simpler and more successful than, say the teaching of French in England.
        If every teacher can be made to realize that, then Basic will come into its own much sooner even than Mr. Well anticipates.
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