English Majors’ Attitude toward Fluency in English and Ways to Develop

Abstract

English Majors, who are trained thoroughly in the interpretation of literatures in English are tomorrow’s English language teachers in India. By and large they are unaware of principles, strategies and techniques of English language teaching, which is a branch of applied linguistics. The sense of correctness in interpretation of literary texts influences them to be accuracy-conscious when they become ESL teachers. The study aims at unearthing their attitude toward fluency vs. accuracy controversy in the acquisitional process of English through a questionnaire prepared on a two-point Likert scale and administered to 181 English Majors in a leading 137-year-old autonomous college in Madurai, South India. The study is based on the theory that fluency takes care of accuracy in learning to communicate in L2. It validates the hypothesis that English language learners are more interested in improving their fluency than achieving accuracy. Some strategies to enhance fluency are discussed at the end of the article.