R.I.Chalmers Passionate About English

Why is it that academics are so keen to use obscure jargon in their written works and in any presentations that they give? Don’t they realise that jargon is an exclusive language that excludes rather than includes the reader or listener? Use an obscure word that your audience is unfamiliar with and you immediately stop them listening to your message while they struggle to understand what you have said.

The use of obscure jargon is particularly prevalent in the TEFL world. It’s one aspect of TEFL that I have really detested since becoming a teacher. I have sat through numerous presentations by well-known and lesser-known people who have attempted to pass on their information to their listeners. Many have failed miserably, leaving the listeners bored at best and at worst downright angry at having had their time wasted. So many times the speaker has used current or timeworn buzzwords that, though they have specific meaning for the sadly initiated, are confusing for the majority.

The other day I received an e-mail from Sandy Mac at The TEFL Tradesman and within this I found a short paragraph which I will partly quote: “organisations expect teachers to be highly conscientious, always open to self improvement, and prepared to read up on or attend the gut-wrenchingly dull methodology seminars/literature (often apparently created by people on the autistic spectrum), while most companies /schools for are just in it for cash”. My eye was particularly drawn to the words “the gut-wrenchingly dull methodology seminars/literature” which indicated to me that I was not alone in feeling as I do.

Considering that the majority of TEFL teachers are young people who are taking a year or so out between university and the real world and whose training in teaching, its methodology, and it’s jargon is limited to a four-week teacher training course designed not so much to maximise the teachers capabilities as to maximise the training school’s profit margins, they should not be expected to have been exposed to such jargon. Is it any wonder then that teacher training conferences provoke during the sessions so many blank faces and fidgety feet and afterwards so many negative post-conference private discussions?

Many young people just out of University trying their hand at teaching English in an exotic location have an appalling grasp of the English language. They struggle with the grammar, terrified that their students will discover their complete lack of understanding of basic grammatical terminology. I have witnessed many teachers making basic errors that their students, even the most elementary, would not themselves make simply because they have never been taught the rudiments of grammar. There is a common misapprehension that a native English speaker is by their very nature an expert on their own language.

So you’re asking these people who are struggling to grasp the basics of their own grammar to assimilate a whole new world of unnecessary jargon. They can’t; they won’t; they shouldn’t have to. Those who purport to be teacher trainers ought to train themselves in expressing themselves coherently, simply, and in plain, easy to understand English.

Let’s have no more “phatic” when “social language” would serve. Let’s have no more “ludic” when “playful, undirected language” would do. Let’s leave the jargon to the academic books that sit gathering dust on the shelves. Let’s use instead the language that you find in popular fiction; language that is easy to understand and digest, and is enjoyable to read and listen to.

I heartily recommend all academic types to join the Plain English Campaign.

Posted under Teaching, Writing