PIJIN OR ENGLISH?

Most students will probably say that teaching should be in Pijin but notes in English.

Pijin is the language you all know best and feel comfortable with, and RTC students do not need English for further studies or going overseas. So most people prefer teaching in Pijin.

However, English is preferred for notes, as most people have not learnt to read and write well in Pijin. But this creates the strange situation where you teach in one language and write in another, so students may understand what you teach but not what they write!

You could make an effort to learn to write in Pijin and use it for notes or handouts. But you may have to teach students how to read and write in Pijin first!

What about words which do not exist in Pijin? If they are technical words like spark plug, or carbohydrates, you can use the English words. That is how all languages, including English itself, gain new words. If they are not technical words, there will usually be a way of expressing them in Pijin, or again you can use the English word. Conservation can be changed to kipem evriting semsem.

Pijin is a language based on a Melanesian grammar or rules, with an English vocabulary. Adding more English words will simply extend the process by which Pijin has already developed. But to use, in Pijin, words like conservation, which the student may not understand, defeats the whole idea of using Pijin.

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