San­dra Blood

With the aim to help im­prove at­ti­tude to­wards com­mu­ni­ca­tion and un­der­stand the pros and cons of lan­guage, April 19-26 marked an aus­pi­cious week in the lives of 25 Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Stud­ies stu­dents of the Sixth Form Gov­ern­ment School in St James. It was ed­u­ca­tion­al awak­en­ing in Lan­guage Art-ap­pro­pri­ate­ness, im­por­tance, re­spec­tive ori­gin, beau­ty, op­por­tu­ni­ties, con­se­quences and con­sid­er­a­tions-as it re­lates to the what, where, why, who, and how, with spe­cif­ic fo­cus on T&T's Eng­lish and Cre­ole. Through the British Coun­cil, Chem­istry teacher Joy Yee Mon and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Stud­ies teacher Ve­sha Khan were able to en­gage stu­dents in a Glob­al School Part­ner­ships (GSP) pro­gramme, in tan­dem with stu­dents of the Lu­ton Sixth Form Col­lege, Unit­ed King­dom, and their Eng­lish teacher Tam­syn Kramer.

In ad­di­tion to teacher-stu­dent in­ter­ac­tion in the class­room, lo­cal and British stu­dents al­so in­ter­act­ed through the Skype e-fo­rum, where di­verse views on the art of lan­guage-use and ex­pe­ri­ences they en­counter while us­ing par­tic­u­lar tongues, in com­par­i­son to for­mal lan­guage, were dis­cussed. T&T grap­ples with "the chick­en and the egg" sce­nario-Which comes first? Na­tive tongue or for­mal Eng­lish? Which should be con­sid­ered the ap­pro­pri­ate, ac­cept­ed, com­mon-place lan­guage? Which should take cen­tre stage? Kramer says there is a re­al­i­ty of what is be­ing spo­ken in the home as chil­dren are en­ter­ing the school sys­tem, from the Montes­sori lev­el, speak­ing the na­tive tongue and clue­less of for­mal Eng­lish, while hav­ing to align them­selves with for­mal Eng­lish pre­sent­ed in books or heard oth­er­wise. This con­se­quent­ly pos­es a read­ing and/or lit­er­a­cy chal­lenge, but she at­tempt­ed to al­lay fears. Stu­dents, she said, ad­mit­ted they were ac­tu­al­ly blown away af­ter learn­ing that, "world­wide, all coun­tries have their unique na­tive tongue" and "on­ly 30 per cent of British speak the 'Queen's' Eng­lish.'"

This, she said, made stu­dents feel more com­fort­able. They learned of pid­gin-the lan­guage that usu­al­ly de­vel­ops as a means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion among groups of peo­ple who do not have a lan­guage in com­mon. One stu­dent high­light­ed that her moth­er, "will have it no oth­er way ex­cept for­mal Eng­lish," but she vowed to help her par­ent come to terms with the use of Cre­ole. Kramer said stu­dents walked away know­ing the im­por­tance and how to use it. She ex­pressed thanks for the ex­pe­ri­ence and spoke of the warmth of "the peo­ple" and of the cul­tur­al ed­u­ca­tion she ben­e­fit­ed from her first-time vis­it to Trinidad. A na­tion­wide tour took her to To­co, Ch­aguara­mas, Ca­roni Swamp and Wa­ter­loo among oth­ers, and she ate dou­bles, pelau, roti, callaloo and Chi­nese food. Mar­celle Mapp, prin­ci­pal of the host school, said, "This ex­er­cise was long in the mak­ing with ini­tial plan­ning in May 2010. It has been a great achieve­ment for the stu­dents."