While I have previously invited higher education professionals active in a number of different fields on to this blog and will do so again, I thought this time around readers might be interested in a firsthand account of English language teaching in India.

Over the last four weeks, I have had the great pleasure of being invited to conduct English language and theatre workshops at Union Chapel School in Calcutta. I was and am truly delighted to be able to do this, as it enables me to draw on not only my language teaching experience but also my background in theatre.

I teach two groups of students in the fifteen to sixteen year age group, all of whom have a first language background in either Hindi or Bengali (Hindi is the national language of India, and Bengali is the language of the state of West Bengal). When I asked my students how they related to English – and if they felt that they were dealing with a foreign language, I got some interesting answers. Most felt that in fact they were simply dealing with another “Indian” language, in the same way that they might try and deal with one of the many languages of the country, except that in the case of English they could see an immediate “use” for their knowledge.

As a teacher, I think getting this kind of reaction from a student is pure gold. Affinity is half the battle. The idea that when one starts thinking in another language one has come close to native-speaker/first language speaker status is compelling. But what about when one starts feeling in another language? It’s for this reason that using theatre exercises and the support of a Shakespearean play (“As You Like It”) in these workshops, I think is particularly useful. Functional English can never be discounted, but enabling students to tap into their imagination through the medium of a new language allows them to develop a full or active presence in it. Active language, I think, has to go beyond the somewhat limited idea we have of what constitutes a language “skill,” and become a language capacity. By capacity I mean the nuanced ability to maintain your speaking position in the face of changing circumstances (or, as some would call it outside the world of the assessment rubric – life).

The logistical pressures of moving countries and cities – from London to Calcutta – and a nasty bout of flu meant that it was sensible to stay offline for a while.

Over the next few blogs I will seek to provide an overview of the educational climate in India, and the extent to which international alliances are changing or are likely to change the university experience .

Why are British universities seeking to find a presence in India?

The Indian government has plans to increase the number of university goers from a current 12 per cent of the population to 30 per cent. In plain terms this works out to a present university student population of 12 million, and a projected increase to 30 million. This is clearly a very ambitious plan and opinions are mixed as to whether it can or should be achieved.

In this first piece though I want to present a side to the global impact of the ongoing changes in the Indian university system that is seldom seen in the media.

That is, what is the university experience in India from the point of view of the student and the lecturer?

I went to school in Calcutta and also did my first undergraduate degree in the city. When I went to the UK to do my second undergraduate degree it wasn’t the differences in the educational culture that I noticed but rather the continuities. This was probably because both the school and university I attended were established in the nineteenth century when Calcutta was the capital of British India, and at the heart of a close engagement between the cultures of India and of Britain.

What I experienced in India was a meticulousness of detail and depth of approach which I am truly grateful for. Somewhere along the way I also became firmly imbued with the idea that the big picture matters. So valuing the humanities was important because it helped one to link the puzzle pieces of the world together.

A common expectation and hope amongst the educational community in India is, I think, that alliances with British or other overseas universities will mean more flexibility for students and teaching staff. By which I mean exposure to the arts, sciences and perhaps even technical knowledges together. It seems rather harsh to expect an eighteen year old to choose a “stream” and stand by it life-long.

A simple scan-through of the weekly educational supplement to the Kolkata edition of The Times of India gives a thumbnail picture of the kinds of degrees and career pathways being offered to current undergraduates. Management and science degrees predominate but there’s a wide range of IT -related and engineering courses, along with intriguingly specialist courses in things like wine-making, chocolate making and magicianship (though not at Hogwarts).

What I wonder as a global citizen and a teacher is this – how are we going to help students join the dots? Will the view that learning has value in and of itself because it nurtures creative and critical thinking hold in the new university environment being fashioned?

This wider view of the meaning and value of education already has a space both in India and in the UK. But I have also experienced the piece meal view – in both countries – that being educated in order to find and keep a job is all that’s needed.

It’s an interesting time to be in education – and I hope in succeeding pieces to chronicle more of the changes taking place. The future – not just for the UK and India but for the world – looks an utterly different place than most would have imagined it a mere ten years ago.

As an Indian citizen who spends significant time living and working in the UK, I have been able to witness at first hand the changes taking place in the education sectors of both countries.

The Indian economy like the Chinese economy is expanding. India, like China, is investing heavily in education. New schools and universities are being founded at a steady rate.

British universities are looking to these two countries for expansion. The universities of Liverpool and Nottingham have already set up joint programmes and campuses in Xi’an Jiatong and Ningbo respectively.

I recently attended a meeting at which a reputed British university presented plans for a joint doctoral programme, to a group of senior faculty representing a number of established Indian universities. If the plan goes ahead, students will be able to show joint accreditation for their doctorates. Since a large part of the programme would be based in India, where both living expenses and tuition fees are significantly lower than in Britain, the overall cost of the doctorate would be reduced. A senior figure at the meeting remarked on the possibility that this could work not only in favour of Indian students seeking a UK degree – but also in favour of UK students wanting to cut down on university expenses.

I should mention of course that faculty at wellknown universities in India as with their counterparts in Britain, are highly distinguished. Students from both countries who are able to enroll  on such a programme should it go ahead, would also have that advantage on their side.

Are we going to see British students no longer simply taking a gap year in India but living and studying there in significant numbers? What will this mean for teaching methods, curricula and  – that impossible-to-define, mythical beast – global consciousness?

Is your department or university considering a move East?  If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts and expectations with reference to that?

I’ve been pondering what to write for this post, as I haven’t been that successful with my work recently. At my last meeting my supervisor again expressed doubts about my main character’s voice — it’s not very believable.

Although I’m dismayed, I have to agree. Part of the problem is that I have shifted from third person to first person, so the original omniscient narrator’s voice is now too sophisticated for my surfer, tomboy, farm-raised, school-hating young girl.

I will admit to not having rewritten substantially — instead I went through and changed ‘she’ to ‘I’ and so forth, changing other bits that didn’t fit her voice as I went. Clearly, that didn’t work, didn’t go deep enough. Some of it does, but I’m not getting the strong characterisation and compelling identity for her that I want.

My rather lazy rewriting into the first person was picked up straight away by my supervisor months ago, but we have been concentrating on other problems — there are plenty of them (mostly structural) to keep me busy!

Having been a bit demoralised by all this, I haven’t written very much for the last two weeks, instead concentrating on some great books with strong voices. I’m currently on The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe, which I find headache-inducing due to the lack of commas, but it certainly works as a first person narrative.

Then I found the fiction masterclass on first person voices in the latest issue of Mslexia. Jane Rogers, Professor of Writing at Sheffield Hallam Uni, talks about the pros and cons, how language used is key (for me, using Welsh and surfing terminology), the possibility of introducing other material to counterpoint the narrator, and uses Jane Eyre, Adrian Mole and Peter Carey’s Ned Kelly to illustrate her points. A happy coincidence, and just what I needed!

The fact that my own first person narrative doesn’t ring true is strange in a way, as I’ve written a diary every day almost since I could write. I still have my first diary, one of those chinese-embroidered books, with back to front letters and awful spelling, in a box with 20 or 30 others. For the last ten years or so it’s all been on the computer — I dread to think how much drivel is stored on my hard drive (and Dropbox)!

In the process of ‘journalling’ as the Americans like to call it, I’ve lost my self-consciousness and learned to just write, write, write whatever I want however I want, as it’s not for anyone else’s eyes. Some of it is some of my best writing, because I’m not worried about anything external like other people’s opinions. I’d recommend the process to anyone.

So I am sure I can write like this, and to get me going I’m starting a whole new chapter, forgetting the first three which I am, by now, rather tired of seeing! I’m going to have fun with it and really discover my character, who is very different from me (a good thing, says Jane). Wish me luck!

I had a look at one or two commentaries in the library and was reassured to see that they aren’t too scary, more a chance to talk about wonderful stories and inspirational writers who have influenced a writer’s own work. But where to start?

I came to the PhD with a useful amount of background reading already done — loads of texts that I love and which definitely influence my writing, from non-fiction like The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron to surf fiction like Breath by Tim Winton and Welsh writing in English novels such as my favourites by Niall Griffiths (Grits, Sheepshagger and Runt).

It’s all really varied stuff, in terms of perceived literary merit, age, subject matter, audience, themes and so on. So how on earth am I going to synthesise all this material? I have some idea of how I want to analyse each text in terms of my research questions, but I also want to look at how I write, and for that I need to look at storytelling in general.

My supervisor recommended that I read The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler, almost a textbook for film students and Hollywood employees. It’s ‘a practical guide for designing and troubleshooting stories’ (xi) — in all forms, not just film. The author is at pains to point out that this is not a formula, but an exploration, via Joseph Campbell, of the simple idea that: ‘All stories consist of a few common structural elements found universally in myths, fairy tales, dreams, and movies.’ (1).

He might well have added ‘novels’ to that list. Straight away I was excited, because my story is all of the above (except, at this embryonic stage, a record-breaking Hollywood blockbuster…).

Vogler’s book is an attempt to map the stages that stories present, and the way that mirrors human life and experience. I was skeptical about putting all stories into a mould or formula, but Vogler stresses that ‘It should be used as a form, not a formula, a reference point and a source of inspiration, not a dictatorial mandate’ (xix).

The simple structure that he explains is amazing, an explanation in clear terms of something that readers — and in fact anyone who comes across stories in any medium and thinks about their creation — will instantly latch on to. It clarifies and helps with writing, and it’s fun to point out the different stages as seen in films or books — “Hey! That guy is definitely going to be a Mentor, and that pub is a Threshold for sure.”

It also, very helpfully, gives me and my supervisor a common vocabulary with which to discuss storytelling in general, and specifically my characters and the structure of my work.

For a theory, it is immensely accessible and well written, using clear and almost universally known film examples. If you write, you will begin to think in more detail about your own structure, and it may well help you to see where you are going wrong — where you should be challenging the heroine instead having another love scene or argument with a Guardian.

A recommendation worth its weight in gold for me, I hope it intrigues you enough to check it out of the library. I did, and instantly jumped on Amazon to get my own copy so I could cover it in sticky notes.

Vogler, C., 2007. Writerʼs Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Michael Wiese Production. Available at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Writers-Journey-Mythic-Structure/dp/193290736X