English Language Proficiency And Academic Achievement: A Study On Class V Students

Abstract

'It is language, more obviously than anything else that distinguishes man from the rest of the animal world. At one time, it was common to define man as a thinking animal, but we call hardly imagine thought without words. More recently, man has often been described as a tool-making animal; but language itself is the most remarkable tool that man has invented and it is the one, that makes all others possible.'.(Charles Barber, 1965) According to Edward Sapir (1970), 'language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.' In the 1964 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, language has been defined as 'an arbitrary system of vocal symbols by means of which human beings, a members of a social group and participants in a culture, interact and communicate.' (Max Black, 1968) Bloomfield (1980) says that' the totality of the utterances that can be made in a speech community is the language of that speech community.' In Aristotle's view, language or speech is actually the representation of the experience of the mind. Further, Carlos Fuentes (1988) has said that 'language is a shared and sharing part of culture that cares little about formal classifications and much about vitality and connection, for culture itself perishes in purity or isolation.