English Education In Gujarat

Abstract

The present paper aims to explore the emerging issues of English education in Gujarat and the important role played by the State Government and H M Patel Institute of English Training & Research in the development of English Education in the state.

The present work is concerned with presenting an over view of the scenario of English Education in Gujarat. It also attempts to shed some light on the issues in the implementation of English Education such as Increasing Dropout Rate, Heterogeneous Groups of Learners, Dearth of competent Teachers, Large Classes. The study also includes the attempts made by the Gujarat Government in yielding new projects in order to increase the level of Higher Education. The Government of the state initiated

English medium school established and in 1857 the universities of Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras came into existence. In spite of the Anglicist-Orientalist debate, English gradually became the language of government and education. It was toward the early 20th century, many movements began to advocate for the growth of vernaculars as the medium of education, like Swadeshi Movement in Bengal in 1905: the Calcutta University Commission advocating for stronger education in native language (Shah, 2012)…. there is something unsound in a system of education which leaves a young man, at the conclusion of his course unable to speak or write his own mother tongue fluently and correctly. It is thus beyond controversy that a systematic effort must be henceforth be made to promoted the serious study of the vernaculars in secondary school, intermediate colleges and the university(as cited in Pattanayak, 1990). The history of India is tied up with Gujarat as far as Britishers and English Language is concerned because the first arrival of the Britishers and English education was on sea shore of Gujarat (Chauhan, 2012).

Earlier the Government was in favor of introducing English from the class 1st as a compulsory subject. Later on due to political compulsions it decided to start from class 3rd. Another significant change was making English compulsory at the Secondary Board examination from year 2007. There

No one can deny the importance of English language from national to international level. Today in the age of globalization English is playing the role of “Universal Tongue”. It bridges the gap among the people of different nationality, culture and languages. From the very beginning education of English has been experiencing many problems due to constant changes at state and central government policies. The present paper has thrown light on issues of Teaching and Learning of English in Gujarat and has tried to summarize the role of state agencies. The information provided in the paper helps the teachers of English but also students of