LANGUAGE IN INDIA

TEACHING INDIAN LANGUAGES THROUGH CORRESPONDENCE

G. Sankaranarayanan, Ph.D.

1. CHANGING TRENDS IN INDIAN BILINGUALISM

Although Indian school system encourages learning more than one Indian language as part of the curriculum, most students seem to prefer English, or French, and Hindi, rather than prefer other Indian languages as part of their curriculum. Even the study of Sanskrit or Urdu that has been consistently pursued by a few classes of people for generations is slowly losing ground. The new trend in bilingualism in India is heavily weighted in favor of English and Hindi. Other Indian languages are not preferred.

2. THE NEED FOR CORRESPONDENCE COURSES IN INDIAN LANGUAGES

On the other hand, people have begun to move from one linguistic region to another in large numbers for jobs, since independence. Not all these jobs are available only in the big cities where one can still manage with English or Hindi. In certain regions, even in the big cities, the knowledge of the local language is highly needed and valued. Since students, while at school, do not know where they will indeed be pursuing their career after their education, and since the schools do not have provision to teach all the major Indian languages, most people in India can hope to learn another Indian language only after they join some company or government for their employment. Universities, colleges, and institutes all over India advertise language courses for classroom instruction. Some offer correspondence courses to teach Indian languages. Several popular books have been published that try to teach the Indian languages to this audience. However, in spite of best efforts, even the motivated adult students have always complained that such courses do not equip them well with the language. The university or institute courses often are held in the evenings and in places usually crowded and difficult to reach during peak hours of traffic. Soon the students lose their motivation because of the personal difficulties they face in pursuing a language course that is not absolutely needed for their career advancement.

3. GOOD METHODS AND MATERIALS

Good graded materials, good methods, aptitude and motivation help students learn a second or foreign language better. If the materials are presented to the students in an efficient way through correspondence, they can then pursue their studies at their own pace. Teaching an Indian language through correspondence is different from teaching it in face-to-face classroom situations. The students who learn a second language through correspondence are autonomous and non-captive, geographically separated from the teacher.

4. SOME SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF TEACHING LANGUGES THROUGH CORRESPONDENCE

When we produce materials for teaching Indian languages through correspondence we should consider the following:

1. What items should be taught through print medium, and what should be taught through the audiocassettes?
2. What items should be reserved for the contact program?
3. The correspondence course students should read what items as reference materials?

For example, the pronunciation skills may not be taught very well using only the print medium. These skills can be focused upon during the contact program, as well as through the use of the audiocassettes. On the other hand, while teaching some aspects of the grammar of the language or the cultural items representing the language, the students may simply be asked to refer a particular book or article for further information and clarification.

The material used in a correspondence course will be different from that of a classroom material in its design or method of presentation. That is, the correspondence course lessons will be learner-oriented with auto-instructional characteristics. The correspondence course material should play the role of classroom teacher.

5. PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION

There are several presentation formats to teach a language. The normal textbook is the most familiar format. However, the textbook that is a valuable general tool for learning has limited application within the self-study context. The method commonly called the Programmed Instruction is a very useful method that may be adopted for the teaching of Indian languages through correspondence.

Programmed Instruction refers to a process of systematically arranging sequences of instructional material to be learned in a series of very logically and psychologically related steps (frames) designed to lead a learner through self-instruction from what he knows to the unknown of new and more complex knowledge.

Programmed Instruction material is a systematically planned and carefully organized instructional material and is designed as much self-instructional as possible. Besides this, the learner is encouraged to respond actively. So, by moving from one frame to the other, the learner is learning the content by actually doing the lesson.

The content of learning is sequenced in small steps that facilitate the learner with proper comprehension, yielding maximum number of correct responses. Learning of the language takes place through the experience the learner has with the language. The process of learning is what happens to the learner, and not what the teacher does. "Learning experience" refers to the constant interaction between the learner and the external conditions (here the instructional material) to which he can react. The learner is made to respond immediately and continuously to the questions and to the frames being learned. Learning happens by doing. The learner is not allowed to proceed further unless he has responded to the task set before him in an appropriate manner. By responding constantly, the learner becomes attentive and active and acquires new knowledge. The correct response is indicated then and there so that the learner can immediately confirm the correctness of his responses. This confirmation serves as a reward, reinforcing learning and making the learner highly motivated.

A student will not learn as best as he could if the pace of the class is too fast or too slow for him. So, the learning material should be presented according to the learning speed of each student. In programmed instructional materials, the lessons are presented in auto-instructional sequences. The students will proceed with these lessons in their own speed. The student learns each step slowly or quickly according to this convenience. In essence, the lesson becomes an individualized instructional material.

6. SCRIPT TEACHING

Generally speaking, an introductory second language course material may be divided into two major parts: script teaching material, and structure teaching material.

The target language script may be presented in two ways.

1. In the traditional way in which the vowels are presented first, and then the consonants.
2. On the basis of shape similarity of the letters.

The superiority of the one over the other has not been established yet. In fact, the second category is not fully applied in the teaching of Indian languages in a large scale. This method is becoming popular in some of the textbooks recently published by state textbook corporations of some states. The CIIL started applying this method to the teaching of various Indian scripts such as the Devanagari, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam. A full-fledged application of this method is found in Pattanayak and Thirumalai (1980). The first and second language teaching textbooks published by the CIIL in various Indian languages have extended this method in recent years with great success.

The letters of the script of an Indian language will be grouped under several groups based on the similarity of shape and the hand movements involved in writing them. Each letter from a group is first given in dotted lines with serially numbered arrows to indicate the direction in which each component of the letter is to be written. The student is to follow the arrows and join the dotted lines. After joining the dotted lines, he will have the whole letter before him to serve as a model for further practice. The primary letter in a group is the simplest of all the letters in that group. It involves least number of strokes and hand movements in writing it. It should be possible to derive the other letters of the group one by one in a graded manner from this primary letter. Each letter is given the basic pronunciation value and is used along with the letters of the same group in familiar words. In this way, students are taught not only the hand movements to write the letters, but also the pronunciation value for the letter. In addition, the students do not learn the letters in isolation. From the beginning they begin to use the letters in real words with real pronunciation. Copying and pronunciation drills go hand in hand. As the students begin to master more letter and more groups of letters, they graduate from using individual words to the use of phrases and simple sentences. In this method, thus, learning the script is learning the language. There is no real distinction maintained between the script and learning the structure of the language. Often, the pronunciation values are given in Devanagari or Roman with some phonetic transcription as to how the sound can be produced. In most cases, the audience may not really need elaborate descriptions. But in certain cases such as the lateral sounds peculiar to Malayalam and Tamil or the aspirated sounds not easily recognized by the speakers of Tamil, we may have to give some elaborate description with examples.

As explained above, in order to establish and reinforce the association between the symbol and the sound it is necessary to give oral explanation or demonstration (with regard to pronunciation of certain sounds). But in a self-study program, where a direct contact between instructor and the student is not a regular feature, the student may not get the oral practice or sounds and their correct pronunciation as it is attained in a regular classroom situation.

There is also some other tricky thing that we need to take care of, in some Indian languages. Assuming that we wish to teach the Mizo/Lushai language through correspondence, we need to emphasize that this language does not have a retroflex stop. Instead, the language has only an alveolar stop. The Hmar language has "aspirated" nasals, and we need to give some description to achieve a tolerably good pronunciation of this sound. In some languages we find aspirated laterals (for instance, in Thaadou). Then the question of teaching the tones in Panjabi arises. How are we going to teach these seemingly impossible sounds in our correspondence courses? And those "difficult" sounds in Urdu that make Urdu quite distinct from Hindi and Hindustani?

Another peculiar problem is faced in Tamil. The Tamil letters representing stops have more than one function. For instance, the letter 'ka' represents the voiceless, voiced, and fricative sounds as well in different contexts! Very often, while teaching the pronunciation, more importance is given to the pronunciation of individual sounds. But here the one and the same letter has three sound values depending upon the context around the letter or the context in which it is written. Distribution of the letters and the consequent concretization of sound values/pronunciation need to be focused upon. Reading pronunciation is largely dependent upon such information.

Without understanding and mastering the distributional characteristics of the letters in a language, we will not be able to teach the proper reading pronunciation in that language. Reading pronunciation should be focused during the contact program, but exercises to acquire it should be presented in the lessons sent to the students. Also the correspondence should plan to provide the students with audiocassettes containing the articulatory descriptions of the sounds of the language, minimal pairs, discrimination of nearly similar sounds in the form of phonetic drills. The draft for the drills provided should contain two parts:

1. Instructions or explanations.
2. Matter for oral drills and exercises.

Writing is a productive skill. In order to teach this skill, the materials go from reproduction to production, and from copying to free expression. This progression is achieved through guided work including activities such as copying, taking dictation, and other kinds of writing exercises.

The first step in the development of writing skill is to develop the learners' ability in the formation of the letters. They should know the different letter representations possible for each sound in their target language.

While some are against presenting minimally contrastive letters together as a single group, others are in favor of presenting the letters that share similarity in shape. There are also different methods for the teaching of the script of the target language: alphabet method, the sound-letter association method, letter-object association, and shape similarity method.

7. STRUCTURE TEACHING

Three alternative strategies may be adopted:

1. Presentation of graded or disconnected sentences. For example, the Tourist Guide Books.
2. Presentation of Graded Structure.
3. Presentation of materials arranged on the basis of situation.

A comprehensive second or foreign language teaching/learning involves all the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It also involves the choice of the appropriate variety of the language to be taught. In several Indian languages there is a wide gulf between the spoken and written varieties. Should we first teach the spoken variety and then transition our students to the written variety? Or should we first start with the written variety and then transition our students to the spoken variety? Until very recently, most of us thought that we should first teach the spoken variety and then transition our students to the written variety. This is still a sound approach. But do we have adequate materials for this transitioning process in languages like Tamil? The bridge between the spoken and written varieties may be established with certain conscious and deliberate steps.

8. A PROGRAMMED STRUCTURE TEACHING COURSE

I have written a book titled A Programmed Course in Tamil to teach the written variety. Some of the assumptions and methods I've adopted in this book may be of interest to those who plan to write second language books to teach Indian languages, especially those who wish to teach the written variety in a systematic manner.

This book of mine, A Programmed Course in Tamil, aims at teaching reading and writing abilities in modern written Tamil. The course is organized to teach reading and writing abilities in modern written Tamil.

The course is organized in 798 sequentially arranged frames distributed in 24 units. Each unit consists of teaching and testing frames, and deals with a set of related linguistic items. Every teaching frame introduces a piece of new structural information followed by immediate testing with prompts. The prompts serve as stimuli, and the learner is made to respond continuously on the basis of analogy. On the left hand side of each succeeding frame, the correct response is provided in order to facilitate the learner with immediate confirmation as a re-enforcement.

The frames given above are teaching and testing frames. The former introduces a new structure and the latter is testing the structure introduced earlier.

9. WHEN IS LEARNING COMPLETE?

Learning a language in the early stages meant learning a skill that has to be acquired by practice. The structures are thus practiced. It does not stop there. Learning is complete only when it is used intuitively to express ideas. Thus the learner's activity is divided into two parts: Mechanical and Creative. In my course, the first one is accomplished by the programmed part. To fulfill the second one, the programmed part is supplemented with a set of context-oriented review lessons. Reading passages and exercises are given after each review lesson to develop the writing skill.

The listening skill should not be ignored when we try to develop the other skills. Listening skill is developed by the audiocassettes in which the lessons are presented. Using these audiocassettes and the exercises that are to be done after listening to the audiocassettes the students simultaneously develop their listening skill.

10. TESTING AND EVALUATION

The assignment that the students do in a correspondence course is not merely a testing device. It is more a teaching device. It is important, therefore, that the exercises are framed very carefully. Objective questions may be preferred. If a student sends in a wrong response to an open-ended question, the teacher generally marks it wrong and does not give an explanation why it is wrong. Nor does he give the correct answer. On the other hand, the marking of multiple-choice questions, automatically, takes care of these problems. But correcting objective questions becomes more time consuming if the instructor begins to tell the student why a certain possibility is not correct. Simple and direct questions may sound traditional but they are best to judge a student's comprehension. It is important for us to have a balanced blend between the multiple-choice questions and short answer-questions.

In classroom instruction, lectures are supplemented by tutorials, where a student has an opportunity to clear his doubts on the spot. The entire class benefits by this process. The correspondence course needs to devise some strategies that would benefit the entire class. Computer aided instruction will help in this area. If the universities and institutes establish computer-browsing centers in various regions of the country in collaboration with one another, classroom experience can be easily replicated for the students who learn languages through correspondence.

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REFERENCES

Pattanayak, D. P. and Thirumalai, M. S. 1980. An Introduction to Tamil Script: Reading and Writing. Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. 1980.

Sankaranarayanan, G. 1994. A Programmed Course in Tamil. Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. 1994.

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