PREPARE FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE BANK & ALL EXAMS:
English is a menace for many and a means to reach the goal for many others. So far the Bank Clerical exams are concerned it is a stumbling block indeed. Vast vocabulary and complex grammatical rules are enough to dust your lust for a clerical birth.
As you know, your performance in this paper is not counted at the time of preparing final list of qualified can¬didates. But this does not mean that it has no importance at all or prepara¬tion is easier than any other subject. Rather it is more difficult than any other subject. Some of you may be exceptionals. Some of you may be eonfident enough to devote less at-tention or spend less time and labour for the preparation of this subject. But you are only exceptions. What our experience dictates us to believe is that the general candidates find this sub¬ject a complex one" and to improve someone's perception in this subject is much more difficult than any other subject. Empirical evidences prove that a substantial number of candi¬dates cann't qualify despite scoring good marks in other papers. The rea¬son is-they cann't score the mini¬mum qualifying marks in English. Dif¬ficulties in this paper may have differ¬ent sources. Some difficulties are due to nature of the subject itself. On the contrary some other candidates may find it difficult for reasons which are purely their personal ones. To sum up, general causes are of the following nature:
1. Foreign Language : In India, few people have English as their mother tongue. Besides that, general candidates are not exposed to this language. Environment is not conge-nial for the development of a good command over this language. Though English medium institutions are pro¬liferating, but it may take a long time for the common Indians to switch over to English as a link language or al¬ternative to the mother tongue. The percentage of English educated people in India is merely two per cent. Efficiency of these two per cent is also not beyond doubt.
2. Lack of Spontaneous Affin¬ity: General character of human be¬ings or students is that they are averse to a subject which seems to be complex or which does not generate ready and perceptible result. So, we find an overwhelming popularity of Mathematics among the stud",;1ts. Quite contrary to that, they only com-plain against English as if it were not a scoring subject and pay little atten¬tion to it. Their performance in English is poorer than Mathematics. But the nature of the subject cannot be made the sale factor. The fact lies elsewhere. If you calculate the total time devoted to Mathematics and compare it with the total time engaged in English, you will find the answer. So, English can¬not be blamed for your poor perfor¬mance in English. Rather, it is your lack of interest or well-planned effort which is to be blamed.
3. Lack of Persistent Efforts :
For general students, English re-mains confined to school and college exams, S'lPplication form fill up, etc. and hardly drawn into day-to-day life. After graduation one may hardly read a story or a novel or a' poem in En-glish. Remember we are talking of general students.
4. Deficiency in Comprehension Capacity : Students often complain that a particular story or passage is beyond their comprehensive capacity. It is full of bombastic words. It is very complex, very monotonous, so on and so forth ... lt is very likely that some be¬ginner finds a passage or poem diffi¬cult. There are teachers in schools and dictionaries on your table to help you decipher bombastic words and com¬plex stories. During school and col¬lege days these are general prob¬lems. Solutions are also ready at hands. But there is no guarantee that one will not find a piece of literature beyond his comprehension after hav¬ing his university degree. In this case you have no other alternative than to refer a dictionary. But dictionary does not come to rescue in all the cases. This is because a word bears a num¬ber of different meanings. It may be difficult to select which of the given meanings is relevant in the context of . the passage/story to which the particu¬lar word belongs. Searching for a word in a thick dictionary is a time consurhing and disturbing affair. This does add to the problem.
Clue : Most of you have a basic concept on the language. At least you need not search for the meaning of every word. Some of the words in a piece of literature may appear to be all greek to you. But for these words also, you need not consult dictionary at the first instance. First of all, you try to understand the sense of the word in the context of the passage, make an assumption and try to clarify it from the preceding and succeeding sen¬tences as well as the sense of the sentence in which it belongs.
Here is an example-
"The woman's voice came down. She was quickly hustled into the car. The car went out, leaving only the flickering yellow light of the oil lamp beside Hukum Chand's bed. He rose, picked up the lamp and the table, and put them in the cornar by the door. The moth circled the glass chimney, hitting the wall on either side. The geckos crawled down from the ceil-ing to the wall near the lamp. As the moth alighted on the wall, one of the geckos crept up stealthily behino. it, pounced, and caught it fluttering in~ts jaws. Hukum Chand watched the whole thing with •bland indiffer-ence:'-Page 90, Train to Pakistan by Kushwant Singh
In this paragraph some words and phrases like hustled into, flick-ering, geckos, steathily, pounced, etc. may create problem. Take for ex-ample-hustled into-"She was quickly hustled into the car". If you stop here and brood over on the prob¬able meaning of the particular phrase hustled into, you may not come across any. So, you should carryon. In the next sente.nce, we find "The car went out... .. " Now think again and try to connect the happenings described in the succeeding sentence with that of the sentence which contains hustled into. You can make a clear assumptiuon. It seems that hustled into means got into. As in the next sentence, we find the car went out, so got into fits for hustled into. From that we can conclude that, not only the meanings of words used in a sen¬tence/paragraph condition or make the meaning of the sentence/para¬graph clear but the meanings of words are also conditioned by the context in which they are used. This shows that, we can have an idea of the meanings of various complex words used in a passage from the sense of the passage itself. A regular reader may not know the meanings,of various words. But he or she can guess the idea disseminated through a passage. This is more convenient. More convenient in the sense that, English vocabulary is a vast one with innumerable words. One word bears different meanings : different words bear same meaning. How dare you read English newspaper or books ? So, the only way out is to give em¬phasis on the sense of overall mean¬ing of the sentence or paragraph as a whole, than to search for the mean¬ings of various particular words. Now, one naturally may ask a very relevant question-what about the words which conditions the meanings of the sentence or paragraph?
Of course, there may be some words regarding which a reader can not make any presumption or no guess can be made regarding the otmeaning. In such a case there is no alternative but to .consult a dictionary.
In this way a serious reader can en¬rich his/her vocabulary.
What do we learn from this discussion ?
One should not discard reading something when one comes across bombastic or uncommon words. He should try to make a guess about the meanings of these words and try to comprehend the content of the sentence or paragraph as a whole. And for the remaining words, the mean-ings of which are not at all clear and which are key to the understanding of the passage, one should consult dic-tionary. That type of exercise makes a candidate rich in comprehending ca-pacity as well as word stock. A regular reader will find that gradually his need for the elephantine book goes on diminishing.
