As some people here know, this (above) has been a recurring theme in my rantings over the last few years. I blew the whistle on this problem before it became as huge as it is now.
Naturally all newspaper articles written about this subject attract my immediate attention.
Two weeks ago, there was one such article which had pointed an accusing finger at newspapers (The Ethnic Rag). The author pointed at the
fallen standards in Kenyan newspapers in general, stating that he no longer could recommend to students the reading of Kenyan newspapers for the purpose of improving their English Language skills.
To drive home his point, he identified several serious grammatical and factual errors in the previous day's newspaper. I do recall one - "
Re-mark" versus
"remark". On that day, The Ethnic Rag could correctly report on the brouhaha arising from the various demands to "
re-mark" exams without using "
remark".
The following day's newspaper however had a story about "remarking KCSE exams". Things were back to normal. I swallowed quietly.
So today when I saw another article about the subject of English in Kenyan Schools in The Ethnic Rag, I naturally rushed to find out who the author was. Well, a University lecturer - An Okoth-Oluoch, PhD. Wonderful!, I said to myself.
So I started reading it.
I glossed over poorly constructed sentences with multiple redundancies, saying "grammatically correct though wasteful". Then I came to an abrupt stop. Doctor Okoth-Oluoch had just dropped what looked like an acronym whose meaning I could not recall reading in the preceding paragraphs - "KICD", what is that?. I had to retrace my steps and see if I had somehow missed it. I found no explanation. There are some acronyms we have learned to take for granted, such a CORD, NASA, UoN, etc.. Acronyms are regional, national or international. Perhaps this is a new National acronym known to most Kenyans. Nevertheless there rules for the use of unfamiliar acronyms. I am sure her PhD supervisor did point that out when she wrote her thesis. I read on...
At some point she talks of "strands" only for them to become "areas" in the next sentence.
The she writes this:
"
As KICD embarks on curriculum review, issues of implementation need to be better taken care of to ensure that the enacted is the curriculum in practice"
If I ever wrote something closely similar, I would not insist on my image and academic qualifications / titles being attached.
Doctor Okoth-Oluoch is among the Linguistic Soldiers to lead the charge for the improvement of our deplorable language skills.
Topic: The Trouble With English Teaching in Kenya (Read 1377 times)