To Teach and Learn

I love English, I always loved English even as a child and through English I define myself as a teacher. It has only been four years as an English language teacher but I want to see myself growing old with this subject. With every lesson I teach in the class there are new words to learn, new phrases to understand and new excitements to enjoy every time I read lines that come with powerful spontaneous over flow of the writers’ emotions. I envy theses writers for having so many words and so much skill at their disposal to express themselves and their surrounding with so much clarity and coherence. Every word mingles with other words to create pictures in the readers’ mind, images that are rich and provoke one’s imagination to wander and reach for new horizons. I love English and by expressing my love for this subject I want my students to also love this rich subject of literature and language. Today in our country the quality of education is questioned and with this the standard of ...

If you ask a tourist how easy is it to get directions in Bhutan, he or she will tell you they never got  lost in Bhutan, not because our towns and cities are small but because most people living in the urban area understand or speak English. However, the situation in the classroom is different and belongs to a completely different context. Though we learn English right from our elementary classes and though English is the medium through which other subjects are taught still only three or four students in a class of thirty five are good in English in most classes in most schools. Now when I say good in English you may wonder the scale with which I am measuring my students and qualifying them as good. My standards are shamefully humble and I have to do this not because I want to but because I have to. If a student is in class nine and doesn’t know the difference between ‘there’ and ‘their’ or if a student is in class eleven and doesn’t know ...