● <B>After more than three years spent at the head of the British Council in Mauritius, how would you “measure” the level of English here?</B>

There is a general consensus that the standard of English in Mauritius has declined over the past few years. You see this particularly if you compare someone in their forties who probably studied in the UK and who speaks very good English and a child who doesn’t speak to the same standard. In fact, there is a shift from competence in English to competence in French. I must insist that I see absolutely no rivalry between English and French; that would of course be stupid. But Mauritius is not only a multiethnic society but also a multilingual one and you should be proud of it. In addition to the Indian languages, Creole, Chinese and French, I suppose English is an important tool in today’s world. It is not only an international language but it is also the language of the Internet, communication and tourism. I mean, we are not linguistic imperialists but people are usually very keen to learn English.

● <B>English is supposed to be our official language… How do you explain that we’ve let it decline in this way? </B>

First, I believe that Creole is French-based so it is easier for all Mauritians to learn French than English. The French government has also invested a lot of money in language in Mauritius and it has proved successful. But this is not the only reason. The way teachers teach English to the pupils may also be one of the reasons for this decline. They concentrate more on reading and writing and not on listening and speaking. This creates an unusual effect; as young people read and write well, they think they speak well. And because they speak with their friends who have the same standard of English as they have, they think they speak well. They do not see any problems as they can make themselves understood. There may be a feeling that their English is good enough. Our teaching centre has identified spoken language as the main weakness of students in Mauritius. Teaching is however not the only reason; there are almost no English movies at the cinema. Even Harry Potter is dubbed into French and some people think it is a French movie. There is also little English output on the MBC. But we hope this will soon change. We had a meeting with the new director and he appeared really proactive in wanting to improve the level of English.

● <B>What has the British Council done to try and remedy the situation?</B>

The British Council is about creating opportunities for people worldwide. We help develop relations between Britain and overseas countries in educational and cultural spheres. 4,000 Mauritian students are studying in UK, which is a huge number. The British Council can help them get to know about the opportunities they have in the UK. Our organisation can offer tools to improve the language such as courses. Three courses will be starting this week and students can still enrol today from 12 to 15 for “presentation skills”, “report writing” and “International English Language Testing System (IELTS) preparation”. The next enrolment will be on 9th January. We are very much related to improving levels of oral English. We’ve invested massively into a knowledge and learning centre, which will provide more hands-on IT facilities with DVDs, web resources like video conferencing, satellite TV, interactive whiteboards and so on. This new library, which will be opening within a few weeks, will also be a pleasant and relaxing place to be.

● <B>Don’t you believe that collaboration between all players could help achieve a better level of English?</B>

We have actually been collaborating with the ministry of Education for many years now. Just to give you an example; our teaching centre will soon carry out a profiling of student skills in English in Mauritius from primary to tertiary level. We will measure their skills against the common European framework – that is internationally recognised criteria for defining language competence.

● <B>Do you have any suggestions about how to help develop English?</B>

People must have access to the English language with cinema, television, etc… But I’d like to add that learning English is fun. The most successful end comes when you do what you want to do. There is no better way to kill a language than to force someone to speak it. Each one has to find ways, which he/she thinks enjoyable – talking to friends overseas, watching DVDs, etc… I must say we have a group of artistic teachers here who use art, design and music to mention only a few tools to teach English… This could also be a solution.

● <B>When you arrived in Mauritius, I suppose you had some challenges and goals in mind… Do you feel you have achieved all of them?</B>

Well, one of my main goals was to do everything I could with the British Council team to help develop English – particularly through the teaching centre and the transformation of the library. I suppose it is for other people to judge if we’ve achieved these aims. But what I can say is that we have been concentrating our efforts in these areas and it has been an exciting time working in Mauritius, which I believe is a country in transition…