“Cross the T’s and dot the I’s” the constant reprimand by the quintessential English school teacher, one with spectacles resting on her nose, who enacted every piece of prose as if she were one of the characters – is but a distant memory. But her lesson strikes time and again. Even in b-schools. The waning paradigm of good written English among b-school students has got directors and faculty all concerned. In fact, it is also one of the prime reasons that the six new Indian Institutes of Admission (IIMs) are introducing written essays in the selection process from the next academic year.

Rough estimates put out by b-school directors state that 80 to 90 per cent of MBA students need to earnestly improve their written English. These written essay by the six IIMs will not have a significant weight age to eliminate all those with poor written English but at least the worst will be eliminated. We have to get students to a better level than they are now, says MJ Xavier, director of IIM Ranchi.

Indian School of Business ( ISB) and Nirma University (Institute of Management) are some of the other b-schools that recently introduced an additional written excercises as part of the admission process to ensure that at least some basic standard of written English is maintained.

We kept aside just 5 per cent this time for the written essay but hopefully we will increase the percentage next year. It’s very important that students have a good grasp over written English. Its needed to do well in corporate life later, says G Ramachandran Nair, deputy Registrar of Nirma University (Institute of Management)

Why happened to English?

B-school officials have a zillion reasons to cite for the decline of good ol English. ISBs Director of Admissions, VK Menon says classic English is not as major as it used to be in schools in the days gone by. At my time Shakespeare and Wordsworth were part of our literature. We were pushed to read classics and the love for the language was inculcated early. Today, unless you specialise in English, you are hardly given an opportunity to be part of great literature.

And with no push, students in general, be it b-school or others, lack the desire to read. Earlier, a novel used to not be kept down till it was over but today libraries are sporting fewer numbers.

Whats worse is that those who want to learn English and for lack of other avenues, go to quick-fix shops to pick up the language. These shops create more harm than good. So many such institutes have sprung up. There is no check on quality, or the people running it. Students who opt for this kind of learning end up learning nothing, Director of Institute of Management Technology (IMT), Hyderabad, Prof V. Panduranga Rao

Internet/SMS not new enemies

The Internet or rather the easy and fun way to download assignments is the biggest kill-joy of all, though not an unknown fact. Faculty across the board admit that students end up downloading material when writing reports instead of taking efforts to write down themselves. For many students, even this much of writing is a chore. How then are they expected to write the language well? one such asks.

The Internet is a one-stop shop for just about everything. Be it research or just leisure. And if information is available at the click of a mouse, why even reach out to a book to get the same gen. Media baron Rupert Murdochs The SUN newspaper based in London, till a couple of years ago followed a unique philosophy in its newsroom. Whenever there was debate or question on any issue, staff were encouraged to discuss and read and find solutions but not go to the Internet for the info. According to a senior staff in the SUN, this was a way to keep people thinking all the time and learning the right way instead of the easiest route out. While it does take a while to learn the same info, it keeps people close to books and periodicals.

Closely connected to the Internet ambush, is also the SMS outbreak thats taken over the world. One website states that close to 5 billion SMS are sent everyday in the world. With SMS being the easiest and fastest way of phone communication, can correct English even compete? Can you ever imagine any person using full and correct sentences to write an SMS? Prof Xavier considers this a corruption of sorts and asserts that SMS, Twitter, Orkut and other such may have made networking easy but are helping to kill language slowly.

Today the need to be well-informed and to inform has taken over the need to be well-versed in reading and writing the language. With so much time spent on the Internet on networking sites, where’s the time to buy or rent a book, leave alone reading it.

In fact, these days, even some of the resumes that come to the PaGaLGuy office also come in SMS lingo with small i’s, should spelt shd, and regards spelt as reg.

Poets cry

Arundhati Subramaniam, one of Mumbai’s famous poets and a web editor herself, is in turmoil, witnessing the degeneration of the English language. She says that society has created a terrible cultural divide between utility and aesthetics and our education reflects this. For example, we’re taught to ‘paraphrase’ poems in school as if the crux of the poem lies in its content alone. Additionally, the increasingly vocational thrust in education has brought in a purely functional approach to language, which makes literature marginal.

The poet adds that people have generally forgotten that to speak or write, one has to be a reader too. And we learn by reading the literature of any language — its fiction, its drama, its poetry. We don’t learn by merely reading newspapers and tweets and text messages.

For Arundhati, the language is as much about form as it is about function. If we marginalise the role of the imagination, if we chop off literature from our lives as ‘difficult’ or ‘irrelevant’, we lose not just all that makes life rich and enjoyable and beautiful. We also lose language.

Closely connected to Arundhatis thoughts is the rise of slang in our everyday lingo and no better place to hear it than college campuses. Just like the SMS, slang has got into much of the written word. Students have begun to write the way they talk. Worse is that students these days do not know where to draw the boundary line between slang and acceptable English,” said another faculty member.

Students agree there is a bridge to cross

Thankfully, students too accept the gradual decline of the English language in their midst. Analyses Pawan Kumar, a PGP11, student from IIM Indore: Multiple factors contribute to this problem. Taking advantage of their strong quantitative abilities, engineers form large proportion of MBA admissions in all premier b-schools every year. And this community loves talking in terms of equations and theorems, instead of vowels and consonants. Thus, primary reason for poor written English skills for many MBA graduates comes from their educational background which never focused on their verbal abilities.

Post admission, Pawan admits, that the rigorous schedule at the B-schools seldom allows people with deficient verbal skills to improve their language abilities. Not to mention poor reading habits, lack of time to self-improve, less focus of MBA curricula on written English skills and no tangible incentive to improve themselves leaves many graduates with poor language abilities.

Anupam Kumar, from IIM Calcutta, is the brain behind a small start-up that aims at giving English lessons to students from lower strata of society. We need to know good English to gain confidence in what we do well in life and many students do not get an opportunity to learn, like myself, he says. Anupam adds that the fault lies in the present education system. In many states, English is only a qualifying subject in the state board examination. It is not included in the final score. Hence the teachers as well as students neglect it. When I was studying, English came into the syllabus in class 6 and alphabets were taught for the first time then, the IIMC student adds.

Its never too late

The additional written essays during admissions by some b-schools shows that efforts are being taken to preserve ‘written English’ skills among their students. Besides, schools like IIM Ranchi runs a course in Business Communication where students are trained in written case analysis.

To make matters better, IIM Ranchi also follows a policy of running every written assignment through a plagiarism check. Any student whos paper has more than 30 per cent content lifted from other sources is asked to re-write. Submissions that lift material without giving credit to the source are awarded zero marks, confirms Prof Xavier.

The poet Arundhati, says that the way out is bringing in at least a course in literature in management schools. This should include reading and discussing poetry and fiction. One could even add a creative writing component to it. At the end the student may not be able to measure or quantify his or her progress but at least he or she will be enriched for life.

Pawan Kumar has more practical ideas. B-school libraries should make available of non-business literature and magazines, novels. This should prompt students to improve their language. If needed, some optional electives can also be floated that focus on language capabilities of the students, he said.

But do MBAs and good English need to go together?

Yes, say students, when asked randomly. Written language abilities are a necessary tool for any manager to effectively communicate with all stakeholders of the business. These skills do not provide any competitive edge, but are a necessity of any professional to perform his duties. Ideas change the world when they are translated from the mind to the paper, and on paper they are as good as the words describing them, confirms Anupam from IIMC.

He confesses that good English writing is not the inheritance of MBA students. Rather, it depends on the efforts made by a person on a continuous basis.

Directors say that if students dream of working for huge multinationals, a good knowledge of the written and spoken language is a huge leap. Quite often CEOs and senior executives do not meet junior executives face to face but know them through the notings made by the juniors. Clarity in such notings is a way for the senior staff to know how efficient the juniors are. And which company does not want their manager to have top-notch language skills, the ability to express ones ideas in a crisp manner is a key skill for success in any walk of life, promises Prof Xavier.