LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 6 June 2011
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.

HOME PAGE

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIAL

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Contributors from South Asia may e-mail their articles to
    B. Mallikarjun,
    Central Institute of Indian Languages,
    Manasagangotri,
    Mysore 570006, India     mallikarjun@ciil.stpmy.soft.net.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2010
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

A Study on the Influence of Speaking Strategies in
Developing the Oral Skills of OBC Undergraduate Students

V. Chanthiramathi., M.A., M.Ed., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Need for this Study

Many regard English as a means of getting academic advancement and social elevation. To maintain or to promote social status and family prestige, parents persevere to admit their children in English medium schools. Notwithstanding the pronouncement of politicians that no more English medium school will be permitted, the demand continues unabated. Higher fees are no deterrent; parents are willing to make enormous sacrifices to ensure upward mobility for their children. Success in the job market or even marriage market has come to be equated with fluency in English (Prabhala, The Hindu, 1994).

Speaking can be viewed as a muscular activity also. People use speech organs to produce sounds. In learning to speak our own language, we learn certain specific muscle habits. Where sounds of a second language are different from those of our mother tongue we have to learn new muscle habits (Fribsy, 1957, p.43).

Learners have to be exposed to English through clearer pronunciation, slower pace, simpler structures and common vocabulary. Many writers believe that it is interaction with other people, which plays the most crucial role in enabling acquisition to take place. Natural learning depends on the learner’s active engagement with the language.

The purpose of this study is to find out the influence of speaking strategies that can promote the skill of speaking in the target language, that is English. The population selected for this study is the consists of students from Other Backward Classes (OBC) at the under graduate level in the arts and science colleges affiliated to Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli.

Spoken English skill is influenced by a variety of factors and they are environmental, sociological, potential and an intrinsic motivation or interest. In Indian educational system no importance is given to speaking in English. English is not spoken even inside English classroom. Most of the OBC students are from the lower middle class family and students of these stratum lack proficiency in spoken English. This may be traceable to their social or economic backwardness or to the fact they happen to be first generation learners or lack of exposure to the opportunities wherein the language competence is operative. Various recruitment researchers have recorded their findings based on their campus-interview experience that there is a marked difference between students from Northern and Southern Districts of Tamil Nadu in terms of performance with regard to linguistic competence-spoken English. Therefore it is important to improve the spoken English skill of OBC students studying in the Arts and Science Colleges.


This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

V. Chanthiramathi., M.A., M.Ed., M.Phil., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in English
Department of English
VOC College of Arts and Science
Tuticorin – 628 008
TamilNadu
India
chanthiramathi63@yahoo.com

Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you either cited or used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian scholarship.