'Transengliteration' - Perspective of an English Language Teacher

English enjoys an elite status in Pakistan. It is the spoken and written language of the elite, and a vast majority does know how to write, read and speak English. Speaking skills in English can be given a pass. In most households the language of communication remains Urdu, the national language of Pakistan and one or more regional languages - that is if the family is familiar with them. Spoken English remains restricted to some professional and academic circles. But writing skills in English? These days as soon as a child is capable of holding a pencil, he is taught to write the letter 'A', the first of English alphabets. The child does become acquainted with the physical appearance of 'Alif', the first of Urdu alphabets, but Urdu alphabets come in second to English alphabets. Considering the fact that a child starts doodling his As and Bs at the age of two, he should be an English scholar by the age of 15. Or so I thought! The experience of teaching at a local school has been enlightening so far and I have learned the true meaning of the maxim "Teaching/Learning is a two way process between student and teacher". For example, before these two months I was not aware of the existence of the preposition "as because". Yes, it is a perfectly valid preposition - or so my students insist. I also had to get rid of the notion of 'tenses'. My students have taught me there is no rule regarding the usage of  present or past tense while writing a passage. As long as a sentence is being written, it is valid and correct. If there is an 's' in does, then an 's' has to be added to the verb. Thus, "She does knows how to write English". And of course we will use the past form of verb with 'did' and 'did not'. It does not make any sense to use the first form of the verb with them. Dictionaries are supposed to be bought, ticked off the book list and placed on the shelves. One cannot be expected to drag those heavy "Concise" dictionaries from the shelves and use them! The rules of spellings are the simplest - I have spelled the word and thus it is correct! Those heavy, bounded things called dictionaries can lie. A sentence is perfectly valid as long as it has words and a full-stop at the end. Coherence, cohesion, diction are just fancy words taken out of the dictionary. I refuse accept the above described language as English. Perhaps it is a new language in its infancy. If it is, I am glad to be amidst its architects. I am an intruder for those architects  trying to bring style and structure in their building. If these architects succeed in fending off this intruder, I promise the world will have the most diverse and free-style language ever. I choose to name it Transengliteration*!

* Transengliteration - Trans - eng- literation. Transliteration:converting a text from one writing text nto another in a systematic way.