Indian and non Anglo-Indian students preferred to recite or
read a page from an English book.
The English poems were by Tennyson, Scott and Tagore, with
extracts read from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet",
Kipling's "Kim" and Forster's "A Passage to India." Only
non Anglo-Indian students read from Indian language books.
The Indian languages were Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Hindi,
Khasi and Bengali.
When Anglo-Indian students had to read, recite or sing in
an Indian language they always chose to sing. The song was
usually a "hit" song from an Indian movie. In a residential
school in Tamil Nadu, the group decided to sing their
school song in English, followed by a popular Tamil film
song. (23)
Students were asked to show any work∕exercise books they
had with them. Children in the primary school usually
showed a drawing book. One school insisted that each
drawing had to be described using English and an Indian
language. In the secondary school a popular choice was a
book which was devoted to a topic. The topics were usually
free choices, and the topic was always written in English.
2.4.1. Summary of language skills among Anglo-Indians.
(1) All Anglo-Indian students could speak English.
42% could not read English fluently.
60% wrote sentences with spelling errors.
22% of Anglo-Indian students stated that English was
not their favourite subject.
(2) All Anglo-Indian students could write their names in
an Indian language.
(3) 85% of Anglo-Indian students could not write simple
sentences in an Indian language, without asking
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