LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Custom Search

English Language Teaching in Rural India - Issues and Suggestions

Simon G. Bernabas, Ph.D.

Mixed Ability Class - A Regular and Normal Feature in Rural Areas

In a multilingual and multicultural country like India, classes of mixed ability groups are a feature of every small town and village. ELT experts have suggested ways for teachers to teach English meaningfully to such classes, normally comprising very able, able, less able and unable students.

Grouping of students of different ability levels is one of the most frequently suggested ways. There are different ways of grouping. As Peter Hubbard and others say, "the teacher's first task is to organise groups that are either representative of different ability levels, or mixed so that each is a small cross-section of the class as a whole" (Peter Hubbard, et al.1983).

However, these experts, like many others, admit that doing justice to a mixed ability class involves cost, both in terms of money and time. They say: "Teacher-produced material is very demanding on time and energy and it will not be possible to cater in this way for each lesson. It is necessary to have a wide choice of books and visuals, especially graded readers and it is very necessary for the teacher in this situation to be given adequate time for preparation and good facilities for duplication" (Peter Hubbard, et al.1983: 311-12).

Contrasting Indian Classrooms with Those in Western Nations

Hubbard and others might be talking about a classroom of the west, where the strength of a typical class could be much smaller than that of an Indian classroom. In our country we come across classrooms overflowing with students, especially in schools and colleges which have a name.

Good teachers of English might try group work, pair work, etc., with the limited resources and time available to them. However, a large number of college teachers do not do so because of their apprehension that they won't be able to complete the syllabus on time.

I wonder if we can blame teachers for this because they are answerable to the society and institutional authorities and hence their aim is to teach in such a way that a good number of students pass examinations. Thus, testing and evaluation designed by boards of education and universities have a negative washback effect on her teaching in the classroom.

My Experience and the Lessons I learned

I teach in a college located in a small city and the student population there differs considerably in their abilities. In a compulsory English class there are not less than 150 students and they come from different socio-cultural, linguistic and economic backgrounds. Even in an English special class, generally comprising 30 to 50 students, this diversity is visible.

With the minimum knowledge I have about dealing with mixed ability classes I try to do what I can. However, over the years, I have failed to understand the specific reason why I witness such diversity of competence in English classrooms. Of late, I even tend to think that this unmanageable difference in the students' competence in the language is our own creation.

It often surprises me when I hear that many of the less able and unable students have scored first class marks in their qualifying examinations, although spellings of simple words are like a puzzle for them.

For obvious reasons, let us not discuss their failure in constructing simple sentences. Such weak knowledge of English underscores the fact that there is something awfully wrong in the way the typical Indian student is 'brought up' to do his graduation in colleges where all efforts of teachers to reform their English language skills prove futile.

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

Balbir Madhopuri's Changiya Rukh - A Critique of Dalit Identity and Politics | Multiple Nested Triglossic Situation in Pakistan | Problems Encountered by Arab EFL Learners | Language and Nomenclature Imbroglio among the Kukis | Indigenous Language Abandonment in the Religious Domain in Murree - A Family Report Analysis | A Comparative Study of New Woman through the Female Protagonists of Kamala Markandaya and Shashi Deshpande | A Look into the Causes of Language Choice among Female Students in Academic Setting in Pakistan | Census and the Aspects of Growth and Development of Bangla vs. Bangla-Hindi Bilingualism -With Special Focus on West Bengal | Joshi's The Foreigner - Within and Without | To Investigate the Sense of Teacher Efficacy between Male and Female Teachers of Secondary Schools of Wah Cantt. | Comparative Study of Cost Effectiveness of Formal and Non-Formal System of Primary Teacher Certificate Programme in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (Pakistan) | Sudha Murty's Short Stories as a Motif of Values | Standard English as a 'Fiat Code' and the Dwindling Faith behind It | Effect of the Use of Motivational Techniques on the Academic Achievement of the Teachers at the Higher Education Level in Pakistan | A Critical Analysis of the Function of Mass Media Language as a Tool of Social Oppression | The Use of Films in the Teaching of English in India | A Comparative Study of Effectiveness of Concept Attainment Model and Advance Organizer Model in Teaching of English in Teacher Education Course | The Effect of Cooperative Learning on Academic Achievement of Low Achievers in English | Imagining a Borderless World: A Comparative Study of Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda | Teaching English in Schools: Problems and Solutions - A Case Study from Rajasthan, India | Socio-cultural Patterns of the Tamil Brahmin Community in the Novels of R. K. Narayan | Effects of Multimedia Glosses on Aiding Vocabulary Acquisition in EFL Environment | English Language Teaching in Rural India - Issues and Suggestions | Teaching Paragraph Writing - "Bilingual" Newspapers as Tools | A Study of Teachers' Academic Qualification, Morale and Their Teaching Behaviour | Syllable Onset Clusters and Phonotactics in Pahari | Literary Criticism as a Shared Set of Measurement | Ted Hughes's Poetry - The Problem of the Evil of Self-Consciousness | Travelogue as a Literary Genre | Bim's Unfailing Strength in Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day | Impact of Education on Development of Self-Concept in Adults | An Analysis of the Lack of Primary English Language Skills among the Technical Students of Hindi Speaking States | Emergent Literacy Experiences in the Classroom - A Sample Survey in Mysore City | ICT Enabled Language Learning Using Handphones - An Experimental Study | Creative Writing in Language Classes | Business Communication: Techniques and Methods by Om P. Juneja and Aarti Mujumdar (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2010) | Word Formation in Surjapuri | Beatrice Culleton and Her April Rain Tree - Identity Crisis of the People of Mixed Races of Colonization | A PRINT VERSION OF ALL THE PAPERS OF MARCH, 2011 ISSUE IN BOOK FORMAT. This document is better viewed if you open it online and then save it in your computer. After saving it in your computer, you can easily read all the pages from the saved document.

Custom Search