Now you can view this blog on your mobile phones! Give a try.
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts

Thursday, January 10, 2008

On pedagogy and knowing - Responses to BA II sem Additional English students

I found the discussion that was perhaps fuelled by my remarks about combinations interesting and useful. I must thank all those who contributed to it.

In order not to take the classroom time for clarification from my side and also since we have limited number of hours, I wish to engage with the discussion and questions here.

For me, the debate has thrown up a lot of curious questions on the purpose of English, the purpose of Additional English, pedagogic practices, nature of learning and classroom dynamics.

Let me take up one by one.

What is the objective or purpose of Additional English as a subject? At one level it replaces the so called ‘second’ language – for those who cannot or do not want to take up Kannada, Hindi, French or Tamil. In such a case, the paper fulfils merely the structural requirement. If we accept that as given, then the next question is what is the objective of additional English? The only source for the ‘official’ version is the Book of Syllabus. The objectives as laid down in that book are:
1. To introduce the students to contemporary literature
2. To inculcate literary sensibility/taste among students across curriculum
3. To improve language skills both verbal and written
4. To make students read the text critically (Page 34)

The objectives of the II Semester are “To read the text critically; To be aware of the socio-political and cultural aspects of the text; To enable the students to compare and contrast the different cultures.” (Page 36)

I see that the objectives of the course and the paper clearly indicate that the texts are only contextual to discuss other things and to build the language skills of the students. To that extent my three-hour lectures on notions of text and texualities, growth and development of theatre, student presentation and discussion on travelling, on tense, articles, and alphabet, pronunciation are very much in line with the course and paper expectations.

I use a text to bring out the subtexts in the given text by locating it in contexts. From there I try to introduce and challenge the literary, linguistic and critical abilities of the students. It is important for me that I do not prepare you for exams but take you beyond them. The exam needs are taken care of in the process.

I ask questions, problematise the given answers, delay my own answers so that I can inculcate a sense of questioning in them. It is also an attempt to help students to take charge of their learning rather than looking up to teacher as the repository of all knowledge and learning. Towards this end, I use numerous and subtle techniques. Most importantly, I constantly experiment.

There is always a scope to ask questions. I have tried various ways to make you ask questions, and respond, mostly in vain. But I am not disappointed. Since one is trying these things in a system/structure that has different covert demands, it is an uphill task, and one has to do it because one believes in it, and not because one wants to change the world, or one is hopeful of seeing any significant changes or one is going to be recognised or appreciated for it.

With these clarifications let me assure you that should there be any clarification required you are free to seek it any point of time in the class.

However, I have some expectations from the students’ side. Since you know the syllabus and have all the prescribed texts with you, do come to class having read them. In this semester I have not seen it happening. But do it at least in the rest of the semester. When you read please take the help of a dictionary to find out the meanings of words. Despite that if the meanings are not clear do ask me in the class. However, although I welcome questions, if the student does not do the basic required coursework then it does not speak well of that student.

As far as possible raise your questions in the classroom so that they benefit all your classmates.

If you have any suggestions to me or expectations from my side please email them to me or post them in my blog. I will be quite open to look at them.

This apart, the discussion was interesting because it made me look at more closely the questions like what is learning? What is knowing? What is to understand? How does one know that he/she has understood or learnt or knows something? How are learning, knowing constructed for us? Do we have one construction of it or we keep participating in multiple constructions?

Such moments, as the one I encountered in the last class, make me reflect on my own pedagogic and academic practices. I am grateful to you for that as well.

I wish to see your responses to what I have said above and to the discussion we had in the classroom. So email on … or comment on ....

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Teaching, learning Engslish

I attended a seminar on General English teaching at Loyola College on 15 and 16 March.

I wish to present some of the points that came up in the seminar. Here they are. Of course, I have left out all those boring, clichéd ideas which I do not approve of myself.

  • Different colleges need to come together to create Collaborative content creation on the net which could be used depending on their needs. A common pool of resources.
  • One size does not fit all. A common curriculum may not meet the needs and learning abilities of all the students
  • Need to localizing institutional curriculum (One person passingly mentioned it but no one seemed to understand either. Looked as if everyone thought there was one great way of teaching English and developing curriculum that will fit all the institutions across the country.
  • Analyzing perceived and real needs of students and society
  • The term Language lab is changed to ‘Multimedia Resource Centre’ or ‘Language Resource Centre’ in some colleges. I think the shift is important p
  • Peer learning needs to be stressed as it can be far more effective in classroom pedagogy.
  • Is there a possibility to fall back upon pre British ways of teaching? Example Persian, Prakrit were taught before the British brought English education. (This was sth new to me. Although I am not sure if there were such systems in India, because universal education was never there in India before the British came. However, I strongly feel we need to make inquiries into it. I met the person who made the comment. But he did not give me any reference to pursue this point. I have email to him. But doubt if will reply. The comment was made by one Prof Elango
  • Why has India not evolved any new theory after 60 years of teaching English in Independent India?
  • We need to shift from native speakers framework of teaching English to globally intelligible English
  • Can Language teaching be shifted to subject teachers. Because, the students get far more exposure and their profession specific language exposure from their subject teachers than us. Can we co opt other subject teachers to teach English? (I know it sounds like a death knell to us language teachers. But I feel it’s worth engaging.)
  • Most UK-originating classroom methodologies fail as they evolve from a particular classroom situation. E.g. Pair work does not work in India. It evolved in British lower classes where only two students sit on row. (My own experiments in my previous college have shown it is possible. But need to make major modifications. But I agree, direct implementation as well modified implementation are difficult.
  • Why should we depend completely on teacher and material. Can’t we make students learn on their own and from their peers.
  • Even the Cambridge Business English Certificate programmes do not meet industry needs. This was told by a person who is one of the three organizers of this exam for Cambridge University in India. Shocking. The English corporate world uses and what the Cambridge BEC certificate demands have huge gap between them
  • In its language text books Oriental Longman keeps 80% of the old curriculum and methodology and adds 20% new.
  • From the Corporate interaction session I came to know that they also expect skill like thinking differently, contextual thinking etc. And not just communicative skills.

My thoughts

  • In assessment we need to ensure as much transparency as possible if not objectivity. As it is not possible to be completely objective.
  • We need to look at new themes for perspectives.
  • Need to integrate some more objectives into our curriculum design like- building self confidence, community outlook, critical thinking, creativity, communication, decision making, team work, negotiation, collaborative learning.
  • Tamilnadu needs or experience at best can be applied only to Tamilnadu as long it caters to Tamilians and cannot be generalized.
  • I find we need to engage with Vellore Institute of Technology experiments.
  • Corporate needs and social needs are not different.
  • Autonomy has brought up need for continuous updating and emphasis on research. How do we balance between clerical needs of the subject with our and subject related intellectual needs?
  • Arent’ the needs we thought while framing the syllabus assumed needs? What is the basis of such needs? Shouldn’t we need to do structured research?
  • Where should our dept go from where we are now?
  • I think we now need to prepare ourselves to developing e and digital content. The shift also needs to made to customized learning.
  • I realized that our dept is far ahead of all prominent instutions in Tamilnadu namely Loyola, WCC, MCC, St Joseph’s Trichy, Lady Vaishav, etc in conceptual framework, classroom pedagogy, use of ICT. One of the major problems for these intuitions is their own past baggage which does not allow to see or think beyond and pushes them into binary debates which does not take them anywhere.