Teaching English at Intermediate (+2) Level : Perspectives
Teaching English to the Intermediate (+2 level) students for the last nine years, I have found it ever challenging, especially in view of the heterogeneous character of the class with the varied social and educational background of the learners. After all, the first and foremost aim of teaching English as a subject is to equip the student with the necessary skills to communicate effectively in the language that is not his / her native tongue (for those who have English as the second language). There is no specific method that can successfully be adopted in teaching such a class but a combination of methods has to be drawn in to suit the purpose.
The teacher should prove himself to be innovative, experimenting, at the same time not to be compromising on standards of teaching. For instance, lecturing, going eloquent on the selected topic may turn out to be one way communication as the students would then be passive listeners. Translation method, on the other hand, does not in any way improve their language skill and is best be avoided.
What I would do in such a class is to ask simple questions to elicit answers that would gradually lead them to the topic to be studied on the day. Even one-word answers are a welcome since this practice is intended at enhancing their listening comprehension. A well-informing introduction follows that helps them initiate easily into the topic or lesson on hand. Isn’t it said that ‘well begun is half done’? ! The concerted effort of a teacher would be to help expel from the minds of the students the fear of the English language.
This can positively be achieved by the use of simple, straight forward sentences in place of the syntactically complicated, roundabout expressions usually employed by the authors in the text. A separate class to improve their conversational skills (spoken English) once or twice a week is advisable for these students as they are rarely exposed in real life that makes them conversant in English.
A language lab attached to the college is greatly helpful to the teacher of English to teach them proper articulation of the language as also to improve their conversational skills. It is with this end in view the Board of Intermediate Education has provided the government colleges with the TV sets, to connect them with the Mana TV channel telecasts, a production of ERTW, a wing of the BIE. The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) has provided the colleges with the CDs containing the syllabication, use of word stress, and conversations for various occasions with modules.
The Kothari Commission in its wise stand had recommended the 3 language formula and intended English to be the library language. The student should be able to read and understand the language, as English is the language of science and technology and also a host of literature is produced in the language, including the translations of great literature of the world countries. But in the present day context of globalization they are expected to have a minimum of speaking and listening skills.
The practice in vogue in many of the colleges is to provide the students with standardized notes containing answers descriptive in nature to the questions in the text.
This helps them use standard phrases and idioms, no doubt, but it would do well to explain these answers to them from the prepared notes and encourage them to attempt the answers on their own, instead of making them mug up the answers and reproducing verbatim in the exams. This is another confidence invoking step to improve their writing skills.
The present Inter first year text covers the basic grammar rules with exercises basing on the exam model. In addition, phonetics is introduced to provide students the key to pronunciation. Dialogue writing is incorporated to improve their conversational abilities. The second year syllabus, more pragmatic in nature; is concerned with skills useful in one’s life and career— such as, the style of writing curriculum vitae (bio-data), and form-filling (bank withdrawal forms etc).
It also includes report writing (reporting an occurrence or an episode) and describing a process (explaining the process involved in preparing tea or making a kite etc.), the aspects tested outside the text.
The curriculum, syllabus and the text should all be backed by the spirit of classroom teaching. The teacher is the kingpin in the entire process to make it student centered learning and he should have a say in the framing of the syllabus.
It is the terminal course for the student to seek a living and a bridge course to higher studies. It should be so formulated as to level upward to what he had learned in his previous standard. In second year Inter, for instance, a lesson is introduced namely - Principles of Good Writing, where the technicalities of writing a standard article in English are discussed.
Certainly, this does not conform to the standard of an average Intermediate student and a teacher faces an embarrassing situation dealing with such lessons. The basic principle to follow here is to see that the lessons should interest the student for then learning becomes a happy experience for him. But in the present scenario, the policy makers are politicians and professor who either have no knowledge of the needs of student for which is intended or that they just don’t bother. The teacher is singled out for blaming for the failures in the process.
It may be added, however, that for a skilled teacher text is only a pretext and he can go at length diagnosing what exactly the student wants and where he is lacking and moulding his teaching accordingly, given the freedom to implement his own skills.