Educating Gita
how can agatha Christie be used to teach foreigners our language?
Mon dieu, Hastings! Here is a case to test the little grey cells. I read in my newspaper that a boat-load of foreign nationals has docked at Dover. Half of them are white-haired spinsters with handbags, the other half are middle-aged men with waxed moustaches. They are addressing custom officials as ‘old chap’ and have asked to be directed to the nearest tea shop. Etonnant!”
NO, this is not a literary spoof, but a preview of forthcoming attractions, if the latest news from the lunatic fringe of the education world is to be believed. It seems that foreigners keen to improve their English are going to be invited to hone their skills on the works of Agatha Christie.
Twenty of her most famous novels, including The Mysterious Affair At Styles and The Murder At The Vicarage, are being rewritten in simplified versions so that they can be used in the classroom to teach non-native English speakers how to read and speak the language. The new editions, to be published by Harper Collins, will be accompanied by scholarly notes placing the stories in their historical and cultural context.
After that, presumably, students will be examined on what they have learnt. Let’s see what might appear in the first examination paper: “Where in an English village can one buy arsenic over the counter? Is afternoon tea served in the library or conservatory? Are murderers more commonly vicars, butlers or actresses called Myrtle?”
If it wasn’t so funny, it would be rather sad: a great country, with a rich history, using the patron saint of Little England to promote itself to the world. I don’t mean to decry Agatha Christie. Her mastery of the whodunnit justifies her sobriquet, the Queen of Crime. But her prose is as insipid as her plots are sinuous.
Two-dimensional characters address each other in language so wooden and leeched of emotion that they could be robots. The English they speak may be correct, but it is the kind of correctness that chills. It has no place in the classroom – unless it is a classroom presided over by a pedant.
Can’t we do better than this? By “we”, I mean those of us lucky enough to be raised speaking the language of Shakespeare and Dickens, who are rightly proud of it and who like nothing more than a foreigner who takes the trouble to master its intricacies.
There are any number of masters of English prose who would offer a better introduction to the language than Agatha Christie: Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, C.P. Snow, Ian Fleming, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene, A.S. Byatt, Alan Hollinghurst. The list could go on and on. They each have a distinctive style but, for anyone wanting to graduate beyond phrase-book English, display a colloquial vividness that you will not find in Christie.
Even J.K. Rowling, no Oscar Wilde, would be a more reliable guide to English as it is spoken in the 21st century. Her unvarnished prose has delighted millions. People identify with Harry Potter in a way they will never identify with those creaky museum pieces, Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
A lot of foreigners think – not unjustifiably – that this is a country more attached to its past than its future. Why give critics further ammunition by inducting students from Prague, Mumbai and Singapore into an England of wisteria and lace curtains, sherry and toasted crumpets, a land where people dress for dinner, retire to the smoking-room, then hit each other over the head with blunt instruments? – © The Daily Telegraph UK 2012