Lina Mukhopadhyay In the present age, we need to impart language education in a way that learners find it meaningful and beneficial. Learners will be convinced of the benefits if they are able to use the target language (here, English as a second language) to communicate successfully. One of the ways of enriching language education is to use assessment in an ongoing form and capture learner growth. This assessment form, most often, would require learners to use the target language in an array of real life contexts with reference to specific language skills such as reading and writing. Continuity in use of the target language through ongoing assessment procedures can assure learners of an immediate language gain. Let us try to understand how this language gain might take place with the help of an example. Imagine two instances of language use through two types of language assessments: in one, learners in the secondary level are asked to perform on a timed, objective item-based, short language test; in the other the same group is asked to perform on an extended language assessment in class where they have to read a text on the pros and cons of using social networking sites for present age communication. After having read the text, the learners would have to express their opinion on the same topic in a group. This assessment will not be strictly timed and can span over a few lessons interspersed with teacher’s assessment and feedback, learners’ opinion on the group discussions and so on. To evaluate the degree of usefulness of these two types of language assessments, we can pose the following questions: In which context is language use going to be more? Where is language production going to happen in a relatively easy and less anxious manner? Which assessment mode are the learners likely to find more useful? The answers to all the three questions will undoubtedly be pointed to the second case of assessment. So, from this short example we can suggest that when language assessment is done in an ongoing and communicative manner, it requires learners to use language for real-life communication and promotes learner-centeredness. Such an assessment mode can therefore prove to be highly meaningful and motivate learners to perform better. This in turn can increase the reliability and validity of the assessment tool and its effective use in the language classroom. In this article, we discuss the scope and significance of using an ongoing mode of language assessment termed as Continuous

Rama Mathew In this article, I will share some of my experiences and ideas on assessment, especially language assessment. As I write it, what I want to convey seems to vacillate between utter frustration and disillusionment on the one hand and a good deal of ‘we-can-do-it’ kind of optimism on the other. This ambivalence is not without reason. The negative feeling is largely due to the kind of summative assessments (SA) that secondary exam boards and universities conduct, year after year, with almost no research/review that feeds back into improved ways of designing and constructing such exams. It is the high-stakes, one-shot, paper-pencil exam, that invincible weapon, on which our students’ future lives depend. The optimistic note comes from the possibility of what teachers can do in classrooms to support learning through formative assessment (FA). FAs help us monitor progress in the classroom and therefore enable us to individualise the kind of support each (type of) student needs to reach the target. Since it is the individual teacher who can design and implement FA in the classroom, we can hope to do it in such a way that millions of children in the classroom can benefit from it, regardless of how good or bad the SA is. Let us first try and understand what these two types of assessment do. SAs are assessments of the products of learning which come at the end of a course and are a means to find out how well a student has met the intended objectives or goals of any instructional programme. They are meant to inform students, parents, schools/universities and others if the student has successfully completed the course of study on the basis of which decisions about the future course of action can be made. In the case of English language exams, they should be able to tell us how well the student can use the language for different purposes in a variety of contexts. In other words, they should tell us how well the students can read, write, listen and speak in English for different purposes. The author is currently the Dean of Faculty of Education at Delhi University. Her research interests include English language teacher education and assessment. She can be reached at ramamathew@yahoo.co.in. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

T Sriraman Teachers and syllabus makers always come up against the problem of selection while designing remedial courses, or “bridge courses” as they were once called. While there is general agreement about the problem areas for Indian learners of English – articles, tenses, prepositions, interrogatives, word order, position of adverbs and so on – prioritising the areas that need attention often proves difficult in view of constraints of space (with regard to materials) and time (with regard to classroom teaching). I would like to look at a couple of these areas of “error” and ask whether we should include them in our programme of remediation at all, or at least whether they deserve to be high on our list of priorities. The question whether grammar should be taught at all is no longer as vexing as it was a few decades ago. There is now general agreement about the following: Grammar teaching in some form is inevitable (especially for the majority of our learners who come from regional language backgrounds). The grammar taught should be as little rule-oriented and as much use-and context-oriented as possible. Grammar is best taught not in isolation but in conjunction with other language skills, especially writing skills. The focus should be on production rather than on transformation of sentences. The development of accuracy need not take place at the cost of fluency. The areas I propose to consider however seem to demand a high and conscious level of accuracy if our target is the acquisition of native-speaker like competence. Strict adherence to the “rules” here is clearly felt to hamper fluency while not necessarily facilitating clear communication. The author is a retired faculty member of The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

Malini Seshadri You are a teacher of English and you are visiting another school. The students are strangers to you. You have just asked a senior class to write out their answers to this question: How is the sex of a child determined in the womb? They have no idea what kind of answer you are looking for. You may receive an answer like this: In the prenatal period, sex determination and differentiation occur in a series of sequential processes governed by genetic and environmental factors. OR like this: In the womb, a few weeks after conception, an embryo will form ‘proto-gonads’. Several weeks later, those proto-gonads will take one of two paths to become either testes or ovaries. This will determine the sex of the foetus. OR like this: Deep within my cells, a muffled detonation of one of my chromosomes triggered an unstoppable and irreversible chain reaction. A new genetic force pulsed through my miniscule body, throwing one switch after another and resetting the coordinates of my embryonic voyage. Cells within my body laid aside one set of genetic instructions, unrolled another blueprint, and set to work altering my small anatomy. Seven and a half months later I was pushed out from my warm home into the blinding white light of the world. The very first words I ever heard defined what I had become: ‘It’s a boy!’ All are in perfectly correct English. Let us assume that all of them answer the question satisfactorily. As a teacher of English, how would you assign marks to these three answers? Why? Hold that thought a minute, while I cut in here with a confession. I have never taught English in a classroom. Let me expand on that; I have never taught English at any time anywhere to anyone. Period. My only experience with English teaching has been from the receiving end, as a student. A couple of my teachers I remember with affection; one I remember with dread; most I do not remember at all; and one, only one, I remember with awe and unabashed admiration. Let me hasten to add, however, that my intention is not to criticise English teachers, it is to comment on the status of English teaching. Everyone I know, and therefore, by extrapolation, many, many others, have their opinions about how English is being taught in our schools, how it should be taught, and even whether it should be taught. (Let us label the latter group as outliers and