Over the last weekend, i got a wonderful chance to attend a training programme for teachers of English. The trainees were from urban and/or semi urban Maharashtra. They teach English to students from the higher secondary , that is, the eighth to the tenth, section. There were two groups of the trainees, teachers who teach English to students from English medium schools, and those who teach English to students from Marathi medium schools.
As the workshop was organised by an extremely well-known educational group famous for its commitment to education, its organisation as such was absolutely committed, and quite flawless.
The problem was dual. To begin with, I was face to face with teachers about whom my students often grumble. Their eternal grouse is that they never were taught English properly during their school days, and i am sorry to admit that my students' complaint is not a 'late teen, early twenties' whine. The state/level of English of many a trainee left much to desire, and that is an understatement. Honestly!
The other aspect of the problem was the teaching methods and materials advocated. I think we have to remember that an eighth standard student these days, around thirteen years old, would be quite aware of the world, given the multi channel t.v., and the ubiquitous social media.
Early teens these days are not exactly ignoramuses. For such students, whose textbooks are rather good, can one think of card games ( they would, unfortunately, be playing extremely complicated, in multiple ways, games on their mobiles!), and other such stuff, as language learning materials and methods? Would they not nicher a smirk at such stuff? Would not it make them feel that language learning is ridiculous rather than fun!?!
Well, under the rubric of the communicative approach to language and literature teaching, which was real popular in the eighties, and some four decades later now, is rather passe in the AI dominated world today, teaching of English often gets too simplistic in India.
To begin with, the communicative approach, an offshoot of the Chomsky-Hymes theory, as developed by Widdowson, insists on the authenticity of materials, and hence, in a way, using realia, for example, as one of the ways of the methods of language teaching. Realia need not at all be simplistic!
The British Council does suggest very simple games, et al, but that stuff is for the primary, if not the pre-primary, school children tops. Anybody who has read the Wilkins/Widdowson/Swain writings on the communicative approach would know that these theoreticians insist on authentic materials, not simplistic materials and simplified methods.
Well, when typical traditional academics is competing with the Google master on the one hand, and the super glossy Byju type of educational materials and methods, on the other, can we continue harping on simplification, which, incidentally the Communicative Method never ever advocated? That is the real question.
Otherwise, we would continue producing half baked learners who submit googled stuff or find the Byju types superior to their teachers! Time we woke up from the blind fold of excessive simplification which would dull with extreme boredom the super active brain of an early teenager!
Pratima@ Simplicity is not simplification!
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