(A PAPER PRESENTED IN THE SEMINAR CONDUCTED BY ENGLISH TEACHERS FORM AT NAGARJUNASAGAR ON 7-11-2009 and 8-11-2009)
Teaching English involves four basic skills; Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing. Every English Teacher is aware of this fact. Yet most of the teachers ignore this and teach English like a science teacher. English is taught as a set of formulas and lists of vocabulary. Students are encouraged to memorize them though they are not understood by them. We know certainly that their memorization would not hemp them to acquire linguistic skills. Yet we do that. Why do we do that? Why is it done like that? Where is the problem? Can we change our strategies in teaching English? These are the questions that always been surrounding me.
I am trying to consolidate what has been there in my mind for all these years and present them before you so that I would get suggestions and solutions to my problems. I always felt that the theories that have been evolved for all these years on teaching English have ignored one thing that whether they would be feasible in the class room situation that are prevalent in rural areas in Telengana. The social background, the attitude towards learning, the economical background has not been dealt with in developing strategies and designing teaching material for these students. So far the experts in material production have an ideal class room in their mind while designing text book. So only I feel when it comes to the class room that we are dealing has failed to receive the text book with warmth and interest. It has always been received with a kind of aversion. The students go for made easies and test papers. I try to expose the problems I face in teaching English to my students.
I believe that the success of teaching English depends on three factors. They are 1) Teacher, 2) Student and 3) Examination. I don’t mean to say that there are only these three factors. There are in fact many factors that influence and sometimes affect the teaching of English. But I feel that these are the three factors which need our concern so as to improve the linguistic skills for our students.
TEACHER:
Teacher has major role in teaching language. As teachers of English we should never forget that we are teachers of language. Like any other language, English has to be taught. It can’t be taught through lecture method. Because acquiring language is a skill and we all agree with that. As any acquisition of skill requires practice, acquisition of English also requires practice. The English teacher ought to help the student practice the language. So there should be a dialogue between the student and the teacher. There can’t be one way dialogue so we can rule out the possibility of teaching English through lecture method. But unfortunately we still use the lecture method to teach language. Most of us not trained to teach English. We are being trained in our Post Graduation to appreciate literature. As students of literature we enjoy reading literature and also teaching literature. We teach our students how great and beautiful the poem is, how nice is the plot of the story, and how great is the characterization and what are the themes and motifs in the prescribed story. We have been doing that with great love of literature. Students also feel elated being able to understand the poem, story and the novel. In order to make our students understand better we teach all this in their mother tongue. We feel elated at the end of our teaching that we have done a great job. But that is not expected from us. We forget as soon as we read the poem of some great writer that we are language teachers. We become literature students. We go on explaining the beauty of the poem. There we are failing as an English Teacher. Our aim is to teach language, help the student to use English in his day to day life to communicate his ideas. We should enter the class with an aim to teach something that helps him to learn language and come out of the class with satisfaction that he has helped students to learn language. The poems, essays and stories should help generate situations to use language. So I request all the Lecturers in English to become teachers and also teachers of language.
STUDENT:
The students that we are teaching English have not been new to English. They have been learning English right from their III standard. They have been passing classes one after another taking a full academic year for each standard and at last came to us. But their standard in English still remained in the III standard. Who has to be blamed for this? Can we blame the student? No, certainly not. Can we blame the teacher who taught him all these years? No, certainly not. There has never been English teacher at primary or high school level until recent times. Very recently, the government has created a post called School Assistant in English. Earlier it was taught by a teacher who has learnt English as a second language in his graduation. His knowledge of English was limited to whatever that he has learnt in graduation as an II language. How can any one expect the best from him? So he taught out of compulsion and so the student passed all the classes and came to us without required input skills in language. The student in intermediate is required to read and understand poetry, prose and comprehend the passages. He is supposed to learn grammar, write letters and compositions. He came to us with not being able to read with not being able to write his name and with not being able to understand a simple and common sentence in English, with not being able to utter a simple word. We are here to teach him every thing in two years. Had we a magic wand, we could have probably taught every expected thing to him. Had he a super brain, probably he should have learnt every thing in these two years. Neither we have magic wands nor did he have super brain. So what is the student doing in these two years? What does he expect in the class room? How does he plan to learn English?
For a student learning English is to pass the exam. He never thinks that he is in the English class to learn language. He thinks that he is in the class room so that teacher gives him notes and he has to take it down and learn it by heart so that he would pass the exam. Of course not all the students think this way. If they think this way we would not have any problem. All of them would have passed and our business would have been easier. Only very few students those we grade them best would think this way. The others, they have no idea why they are in the class. They know only one thing they have passed 10th class and came to intermediate and they should pass inter as they have passed 10th class.
Those few students who we think are the best would expect their teacher to teach short-cut methods to answer the grammar questions. He expects the teacher to give him made easy material. He never bothers to understand the material. He steals our heart and becomes the best of our students by memorizing the material as it is. The teaching and learning language has been reduced to intellectual exercise with no practical application. Students are content with rote memorization of material that they don’t understand. Students are reduced to data banks without having a program to process the data. They are not learning a language. They are only memorizing words and idioms that they don’t know how to use.
THE EXAMINATION:
The examination was conducted to check whether the student has reached the expected level. But now a day the exam is not for the students. It has become an exam to the teacher. It has become a yard stick to test our sincerity. If the student fails, he would be given a chance to pass the exam in supplementary exam. But if we are unable to get the expected results we would immediately be suspended and if you are a contract lecturer you would be fired. Whatever the kind of student we are entrusted to us, we are supposed to get him pass. We are of course not expected to teach language, we are expected to succeed in the exam. May be for this reason the English question paper is designed in such a way that the student pass the exam.
I hope there would be no contradiction in accepting the fact that the English text book designed by English and Foreign Language University aims at improving the four basic skills of the language. The exam should be conducted to check whether the expected aims are achieved or not. But I don’t think we are doing that. Let me examine the question paper. The question paper is divided into three sections. The first section includes the paragraph questions, annotations and essay type questions. It consists of 40% of question paper. Here we are merely testing the memory of the student. The questions are asked repetitively. No question is asked to test the writing skills of the student. During valuation the examiners are asked to award marks for the content. Language and expression are least bothered about. Just if the student is able to write the answer in his own butter English, we are expected to award 40 to 50% of the marks. For annotations mere writer name and lesson name would fetch him 50% of marks. We are least bothered about the language. That is my point.
Then we have Section ‘B’. Here we have comprehension passages. They are supposed to test the reading skills of the student. The student ought to read the passage and understand it and then answer the questions. The answer itself should not be important. But the answer should convince the examiner that the student has understood the passage. We can tolerate grammatical mistakes here. Because here we are not testing his writing skills we are testing his reading skills. But usually we never find any grammatical mistake in the answers. Because the student just copies the answer from the passage just by searching the key word in the question. Only thing we do is read the answer and locate the correct phrase of the answer and underline it and award marks. The comprehension passages have become a source for the examiner to be more humane towards failing students.
The last section includes grammar and communication skills for the 1st year and Writing skills and communication skills for the 2nd year. Grammar in the first year has been reduced to mathematical formulas. The same type of questions is asked repeatedly. The question paper doesn’t test application level grammar. The student who scores full marks in grammar would have done blunder grammatical mistakes in answering the questions in section ‘A’. The student fails to synchronize grammar with his linguistic skills. The grammar is taught as if it is a separate discipline. The student doesn’t know what is the purpose of active and passive voice, reported speech, question tags, degrees of comparison and simple compound and complex sentences. The same questions could be asked in different way so that the student needs to apply his knowledge of English. Recent DSC question paper could be best example. It was a very difficult question paper for the DSC aspirants because they are not direct questions. But most of the questions are based on the intermediate grammar. If the questions are challenging at least some of the students would learn the language.
Then we have letter writing, process writing, note-making and report writing. These questions would perfectly test the writing skills of the students. But are the examiners really testing the writing skills. Least is cared about these questions. The fastest valuation is done for these questions. We would not even care to read the full sentence. Here again we peruse the content and safely give away 50% of marks and turn the pages of the answer script in haste.
Then we have communication skills. I have many doubts in the questions. How are silent letters, missing letters, syllables and stress marking test the communication skills. Silent letters may test the reading skills I mean just reading out. Missing letters may test the spelling skills. Syllables, phonetic transcription and stress marking are supposed to be tested at higher level to the students who have already have mastered linguistic skills. But these questions seem to be included in the question paper only with a view to get better results in English.
Common Errors used to have 8% share in the question paper. It was reduced to 4%. There used to be parsing of the sentence. Long back we have removed it. Ultimately the question paper has assured the student that he doesn’t need to be more careful in learning English.
Through the revised question paper we have achieved great results. The passing percentage of the students has risen unbelievably. But remember it has diluted the standards of English. When this batch of students become primary teachers or school assistants how further it would dilute the standards of English, no one knows.
CONCLUSION:
You may feel that even I feel that my paper is very harsh. But remember truth is always harsh. I don’t say that I have been teaching differently from others. Even I am doing the same. My question is that can’t we change it. I strongly feel that no. Not that we are incapable. Our higher authorities are least bothered about the standards. We are pressurized for results. We are teaching to achieve results. The students are pressurized to pass the subject. We are encouraging them to memorize the material so that they would pass and bring no problems to us. The question paper is designed in such a way that the ultimate aim of getting results would become easier.
Here I remember Tagore’s poem “Where the mind is without fear”. He offers prayer to God to let his country awake in the place where the mind is free and where the head is held high and so on. But we teachers have no freedom in our mind; our head is held down before higher authorities. Under these conditions we have no strategies of our own to improve the linguistic skills of the students but blindly like slaves following the orders of those who have no experience in teaching profession. So I feel we would continue with what we have been doing for many more years probably to the last day of our retirement.
C. G. LAKSHMI PRASAD,
J.L.in English,
Government Junior College,
Maldakal, Mahaboobnagar Dist.
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