Address poor use of English

ENGLISH is both a core subject and the language of instruction in Papua New Guinea schools and this has been a huge challenge for students over many years.
With the growing trend in the widespread use of the language all over the globe, we have simply to get used to using English for business, in education and everyday communication.
In the past decade or two, there has been a growing concern that English language proficiency, especially in schools, has declined quite dramatically.
Even we in the media have our own challenges in the use of the language both in the written form and in broadcasting.
There is an amazing degree of carelessness mostly in written English which passes as “normal”.
Nowhere is this more evident than on social media.
Simple mistakes by even college and university graduates appear in everyday social media posts.
Ask lecturers at our universities and some will agree that the standard of English language has fallen over time.
Students otherwise very knowledgeable and possessing above-average aptitude to learn their chosen subjects, be it in the arts of sciences, are still not confident enough to express themselves well in English.
Some of the written essays are riddled with simple errors that one would not normally expect from university students.
Apparently, this is not only happening in classrooms but will follow this cohort of graduates into the workplace when they get absorbed into the economy.
Language experts refer to a model created by Indian linguist Braj Kachru in 1992 which shows the use of English in terms of three concentric circles: The inner circle, the outer circle, and the expanding circle.
The inner circle refers to English as it originally took shape and was spread across the world in the first diaspora. In the inner circle are countries where English is the home language of most people.
These include countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia.
The outermost or expanding circle is formed of countries that use their own or another colonial language for education and government, and where almost no one uses English as a home language.
These countries include most European countries, most Latin American countries, and Asian countries such as Indonesia and Japan.
For people in these countries, English is a language to be learned for international communication, but not for everyday use.
PNG is part of the outer and ever-expanding circle.
We may be at liberty to coin or incorporate new local words and phrases into the expanding English language much as other foreign words have been made part of the language today but there has to be some consistency with the rules of the language. Otherwise we might end up using a language that is anything but English.
The fall in the standard of English language here has been blamed on the education reforms happening over time and especially with the use of tokples or Tok Pisin as modes of instruction at the elementary level. We need to correct these problems now.
The re-introduction of English in the elementary, early childhood learning and primary education in the new education structure is seen by some as the way to go.
Over time better trained teachers and even engaging native English language speakers as teachers would help, although that may be quite expensive.