SOMEBODY who speaks English should look at textbooks being given to children in government schools. Written in the worst form of English by people who have obviously never known English, the books are a disaster.
In my opinion, the Radiant Way Readers that the older generation learnt English from were and still are excellent for this purpose.
Why did anybody feel the need to produce texts when perfectly good ones already existed, except that someone obviously decided to make some money?
I hope the authorities concerned will revert to old books for teaching English in the otherwise excellent government schools and get the National Book Foundation to avoid producing children’s texts for our schools. They lack the competence to do so.
If anyone needs to check out the books, he should look at an English textbook of Classes I to V. An extract is hereby quoted: “Quality of standards, pedagogical outcomes, taxonomy access and actualisation of style is our motto. With these elaborations, this series of new development was presented for use. After educational feedback, research, survey report 2016 and revision, it is now published again”
You can well imagine the quality of English of someone so oblivious to the tense and other nuances of grammar of the English language.
Azra Sultan
Islamabad.
Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2018
