This is a personal story of mine which might very well be immensely boring for the reader. Please exercise caution!
Recently I went on to an outing organized by my workplace to Club Hotel Dolphine, Waikkal. The trip was quite fun, no specialities, other than the fact that I met my Grade 6 English teacher at Royal College. Probably in her sixties now, she recognized my face but couldn't recall exactly how I knew her. I was proud about myself due to the fact that even after 15 years, I was able to instantly recognize her as my English teacher in class 6-C. She had come to the hotel to celebrate her birthday, and as any teacher would, she was happy to hear about my present. We had a little chat and she dealt us her birthday cake and that was pretty much it. But what compelled me to write down this note was a memory which took me back 15 years. The flashback had me reflect upon where I was then, and where I am now.
It was 1996, just after I got into Royal College which would be my alma matar for the next 8 years. I had passed the year 5 scholarship and got a placement to Royal College from my first school, Dharmapala Vidyalaya Pannipitiya, where I still cherish the time spent there. As I recall, this day was the first English period I faced after moving to Royal College. The people were new, surroundings were new and with each new encounter, understandably, I was a bit nervous along with other newcomers on how things would turn out to be.
So our first exercise from this English teacher was to write an essay on "My School". Pretty simple stuff, you'd say (Now that I reflect upon it, I think she might have given it to assess the newcomers, for the English proficiency level among us was usually not up to standard). Anyway, trivial or not, we had to show her what we had written as we completed it. I finished the essay and proceeded to show my 'masterpeice' to her. I didn't have anything on my mind, I wasn't expecting anything specific out of this; only that she gave me an exercise and I completed it. So I was surprised to discover that she was quite impressed with what I had written. She read the whole thing and after marking corrections (it really was a generic essay with some errors on it), she proceeded to ask me about the previous school I was from, and where have I learnt my English from. Apparently I had written a pretty good essay than most of others (specially among the new commers) so she felt curious about the way I learnt English before coming to RC. I answered 'yes' (I wasn't much of a talker), when she asked whether I learnt English from my previous school. I went back to my seat after giving short answers to few more questions she had, but happy from the fact that I got a good word from a teacher.
I didn't reflect upon it then, but now I think the impression I got, from recognition of my work, led me to have a positive image about my new school itself. Apart from few friends it was an alien place, but an alien place which was not reluctant to recognize good work done by anybody, even a 'nobody' like me. This realization might have encouraged me to open up to the new environment freely, letting my nervousness aside. I'm glad that it turned out that way but that is not all what I wanted to say in this note.
Earlier, when my teacher asked whether I had learnt English from my previous school, I had answered 'yes'. But this was not entirely true. I'm not exactly sure why I gave that answer but I think I did it because it was the easiest answer that I could come up with, and I didn't feel the need to look into myself and search for the accurate answer. Also, we had pretty good English teachers in my first school so I had no complaints against them. But still, after so many years, I felt this guilt of not having come up with the most suitable answer I could have given, which was, my mom.
Although I didn't recognize it at the time, my mom was my first true English teacher who I think, began teaching me when I was really small, like in Grade 2 or 3. She was not a school teacher nor was involved in any sort of academia, but was a profound user of English as a stenographer in the banking sector. She had done a lot of self-learning, and through her carrier path, had become a fluent professional in English writing who was well versed than others at her level; a rare commodity in non-English speaking families like us. None of us spoke in English at home and I'm not saying we should've. It just wasn't the way of our family. But still, my mom would use the skill she had gained over the years and try to teach me the correct English usage, complete with grammar and spelling. She would push me towards a solid foundation in simple English grammar and spelling.
I didn't like it then nor did I feel the importance of it, until I began discovering I was actually better at writing correct English than most (definitely not all) students at my age. It might be partly due to the fact that most Sinhalese students did not pay much attention to getting basic rules of English language correct. Therefore they ended up with getting used to writing English sentences in a Sinhalese language pattern, which is not grammatically correct, which in turn would make it difficult for others to understand what they have written. I'm not boasting, and I didn't achieve anything special out of it. I also could not speak fluently in English, but I was humbly happy of being able to express my ideas in clear English. I still am, given the academic and career path I've passionately chosen, IT.
This is the same for any language, be it Sinhala or English. Grammar and spelling are integral parts of a language, defining how letters and words could be arranged in order to articulate your ideas. When people fail to realize that, they end up making others decode what they have written, and try to infer the meaning out of it. When the rules are followed, you inadvertently adhere to the human standard of conveying your ideas in a written form, so other humans would grasp what you have meant without any ambiguities getting in their way. I'm humbly proud that I've understood these concepts fairly well in Sinhala, due to the awesome pre-year 5 scholarship educational program I faced, and English, due to the solid foundation I got from my mom around the same time period.
So thank you mom, for understanding and teaching me the purpose of grammar and spelling, which is to make the language understandable and to eliminate ambiguities, when most others would ignore it declaring that language rules are just a sugar coating for word-play.
PS. It goes the same with my father, who was one of my first mathematics teachers, pushing us beyond what the school curriculum made us learn, which wasn't stimulating enough for the brain at the time. But I'm not going to elaborate on that since this is a note revolving around the early English education I had.
