Governor of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Narasimhan on Friday stressed that the learning of English by Indian students shall not be at the cost of their mother tongue addressing the International English Language Teacher Educator Conference, the Governor said English helps to get connect with different nations.
The conference was being organized jointly by EFLU (English and Foreign Languages University) and British Council. This year, the three-day conference, held at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), has the theme of ‘Ensuring Quality in English Language Teacher Education’.
The Governor said: English has become a pre-requisite for every person and it is being spoken not only in offices, but also at homes. But one should not ignore the importance of mother tongue”. According to Narasimhan, if one learned his mother tongue well, learning other languages would become easy.
He warned people to guard against falling into the trap of elitism in the name of learning English. The Governor suggested that the “English divide” can be overcome by making English education accessible to poor children. This can be achieved by introducing English education in Government-run schools, and referred to such an initiative by the Telangana government.