instant English through Instagram
Have you read the
‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie? If your answer is in the affirmative,
I salute you.
But
if you ask me the same question, I have to hang my head in shame.
Not
that I haven’t tried.
Tried
I did. Twice. But failed both the times.
When I was introduced
to Salman Rushdie, being a novice as far as English was concerned, I could not
grasp the meaning behind the expressions and the multiple allusions in his
esoteric writing. Hence, after crawling over the initial pages laboriously, I
had to give up.
It was not as if my
vocabulary bank was too shallow. For, despite hailing from a ‘vernacular
medium’ school, I had known quite a number of ‘bombastic’ words!
After completing my
class X examination in a regional medium school, my father intended to send me
to Shillong in Meghalaya for further studies. However, since the medium of
instruction would be English over there, I had to take a year off my scholastic
schedule and learn English so as to confront English medium students and
teachers on an equal footing. Thereupon, I was sent to a boarding school at
Nagercoil wherein a college professor taught us English, a Belgian priest
taught French and Greek (just the basics of the latter), and, a local teacher,
Hindi. Thus, my de facto initiation into English began only after I had
crossed fifteen years of age.
All the teachers were
exceptionally good, but I was on my back foot with regard to Hindi due to some
inherent disaffection toward the language. The English professor ensured that
we learnt more than 60 new words every day for six days a week. We were given
texts to read and look up meanings of difficult words, write them down in a
notebook and be prepared for a dictation test on the following morning. Thus by
the time we completed the year-long course, we our vocabulary level had risen
to great heights. On the other hand, despite daily speaking and writing
practice, our spoken English skill did not improve much thanks to the
interference of mother tongue.
That was way back in
1978-79.
But having faced
ostracism and insult as a ‘vernacular’ medium student, I always knew the
struggles of the students whom I have taught during the past 36 years. Most of
the students whom I had schooled in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh
were first-generation learners, without the luxury of learning in their mother
tongues. Even in Mumbai, the number of students hailing from regional medium
schools is quite high. I am aware of the posers posed by this alien language to
such students.
Coming to lockdown 2020,
I had guided a few
students to take the IELTS exam in the latter half of 2019. Since then I had
been contemplating doing something for the upgradation of the linguistic
competencies of bona fide learners of English as a Second or Third
language, and those preparing for IELTS, GRE and such other examinations.
Toward this end, taking time by the forelock, I started an Instagram page named
@learnenglis_h during the lockdown in April 2020. Initially, as I was still
a greenhorn as far as Instagram was concerned, my daughters helped me in
designing the page, daily updates and scheduling the post. I have long since shed
my dependence on them.
Every post consists of
a word, its meaning, pronunciation (if needed), sample sentence(s), synonyms
and another form of the word such as noun, adjective or verb. Readers have the
liberty to interact with me and clarify their doubts. The rising number of
daily likers and new followers from across the globe is a testament to its enormous
popularity. Instagrammers from around the world often comment on the posts and
clarify their doubts either through personal message or on the ‘learnenglis_h’
page. There have been many instances where the comments were in Spanish,
Italian, Portuguese, Indonesian and even Urdu, among others. I have to
Google-translate them before responding to them!
In less than three
months of its launch, the number of followers exceeded the monumental 10k mark,
and now it is inching towards the 16k mark. As on current date, it has reached nearly 20k
accounts as per the statistics available with Instagram.
‘Panacea’ was the launching
word chosen by me and ‘Centennial’ the 100th word. Interestingly, ‘Impish’ was
the 52nd word. As of today (Nov 11, 2020), 138 posts have been published which
include vocabulary, idioms, correct usage, quizzes and accurate pronunciation, inter
alia. This was my way of serving the student community.
You too may check out
my pages @learnenglis_h and @thedonquotes,
the latter, a motivational page. Every post is also published in my Facebook
page ‘Learn English’ and ‘The Don Quotes’.
And
yes, if you ask me whether I will ever read ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman
Rushdie, my answer is a resounding ‘YES’. It is still among my must-read books.
I hope the followers of learnenglis_h too will follow suit one day: the learnenglis_h
page will certainly facilitate an easy understanding of the language and
diction of Salman Rushdie.
