Ratna Rao The teaching and learning process needs at least three domains – the teacher, the learner and the curriculum. This process can either be teacher-centred or learner-centred. Child-centred learning is not as easy as it is made out to be. One needs to pursue methods and strategies to develop creativity and thinking skills, such as analysing, synthesising, critical, logical, problem solving, decision-making, etc., in a child. Benjamin Bloom (an American educational psychologist) has proposed a set of skills, which are now famously known as Bloom’s taxonomy. The simple meaning of taxonomy is classification of phenomena or ideas. Bloom’s taxonomy, visually represented by a pyramid, tries to identify, define, classify and organise a comprehensive range of educational objectives into a compact and meaningful structure. The skills towards the lower and broader end of the pyramid are called Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and the three skills at the peak of the pyramid are called the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS). It is a multilayered model of classifying thinking according to six cognitive levels of complexity. The highest three levels are: analysing, evaluating and creating. The taxonomy is based on the staircase model, meaning that to climb up to the higher levels one has to first master the lower levels. The lower levels being – remembering, understanding and applying. The first skill in HOTS as proposed by Bloom is Analysing. Analysing means to break down a problem into smaller parts and examine each part carefully. It may also help in interpreting and looking at the given text (data) in a different way. Evaluation is to make a judgment on the basis of the data or text provided. The development of this skill may lead to judging the value of a given data for a specific purpose. The sixth and final domain is Creating. This skill is highest in the hierarchy because to create or make something new one needs to involve all the other skills. The author is a teacher at the Calorx Teachers’ University. She can be reached at ratnar_p@yahoo.co.in. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

Usha Raman This headline is a corrupted version of the popular rule – Keep it simple, stupid*. It is changed here because I did not want to run the risk of offending readers right from the first line! This is a basic rule of good writing that we tend to disregard in practice. So, in the composition classroom, the myths take over and lead us to create overweight, obtuse pieces of text that confuse the reader and tire our already overworked brains. We’ve seen the extreme results of this learned tendency to “obfuscation” in government documents, legal notices, application forms. Its critics call it “gobbledygook” – confusing, complicated phrases that don’t seem to mean anything. Most of us have puzzled over such texts and torn our hair in frustration as we struggled to deal with them. So why do we still subscribe to the idea that good writing is about big words, flowery sentences, and phrases that can’t be understood without referring to a dictionary? And worse still, why do we inflict the same expectations on our students? Of course, there is room for complex language, and there are readers who delight in it. But that belongs in the realm of literature, where the reader may take pleasure in mulling over the words and sentences and puzzling over different interpretations. What we are talking about here is the kind of language that is used to communicate, where the interest is in getting the message across. If we expect readers to engage with our message, stick with it long enough to understand it, and process it efficiently so that they can use it in some way, then we must use language as a tool to clarify and explain, rather than as a decoration for our thoughts. So if we want answers to questions, the questions must be worded so clearly that they fetch the answers we are looking for. If we want instructions to be followed, we need to construct those instructions in a way that there is no doubt in the readers’ mind about what has to be done. If we want an explanation to be understood and accepted, it must be crafted in such a way that only one meaning is possible – the one you intend. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

Dharani Kothandapani English is not foreign to most Indians. It is so common to hear English words interspersed with the local tongue so much so, that they do not seem like English words any more. They have become part of the local languages of our country. In Chennai, pedestrians when asked for directions tell us: ‘Right-ikku turn pannunga.” If one were to ask them to use the Tamil equivalents for ‘right’ and ‘turn’, they would find it difficult to think of the correct Tamil words to replace them. And even if they did manage to, the listener probably wouldn’t understand the instructions given in chaste Tamil! For generations, ‘English’ has been synonymous with ‘education’. First generation learners feel immense pride in being able to converse in the language. It is also important for those herding their children into the portals of education for the first time that their children go to ‘an English medium school’. An existing knowledge base and pride in learning the language should make it easier for the teacher and the learner to deal with the language. But this is not always the case. While those who were educated in days of the Raj, spoke a variety of English that was closer to the British Standard and was ‘pucca’, in that sense, succeeding generations have moved away from this Standard, to an Indian Standard and related forms of the language. At the same time, we also perceive the emergence of a tendency to make a little English go a long way. Local pride has led to the rise of local variants of the English language. The most recent of these is the rise of Tanglish, a mixture of Tamil and English, made popular by the recent hit, Kolaveri di’. The ‘kolaveri’ phenomenon lends substance to the argument that Standard English continues to remain important. Terms like ‘soup song,’ used in it, foxed even a Tamilian like me! Apparently ‘a soup song’, is a song about failure in love! This then is the problem that has to be dealt with if Standard English is not used. Communication becomes difficult and at times, impossible; more so, when youngsters of the kolaveri kind are employed in droves by software companies and BPOs. Given the importance of English as the main language of communication in a globalised world, there is a greater need to hold up the Standard form, if only to be able to communicate effectively with the rest of the world. The language has

Latha Vasu The Oxford English Dictionary defines language as “human communication through the use of spoken or written words” and “a particular system or style of spoken or written communication”. English, or any other language for that matter, in my view, has to be handled differently from other subjects such as science and mathematics. While teaching these other subjects, attention should be paid to the exposition of various concepts and theories. Language teaching should focus on communication (as highlighted in the definitions above) in the formative years. Communication forms the essence and purpose of learning any language and this purpose gains main importance when the language also happens to be the medium of instruction. So in brief, my expectation from the English language class is that my child should be able to communicate comfortably and confidently in English, which is the medium of instruction at her school. As she learns the other subjects through this medium, such skill will help her a great deal in learning and interpreting the contents of all other subjects. I shall try to record my views, based on my observations of the six years of my daughter’s schooling. Language skills By communication, I refer to the following broad skill sets, which would enhance and supplement each other: Speaking Comprehension Reading Writing Listening Thinking Speaking My daughter is now in Class IV. She can memorise and repeat flawlessly a lesson even running into a couple of pages, but at times, she gets her English wrong while speaking in general. Here, I am referring to the simple enquiries that she makes or answers that she gives in the course of a classroom talk, or with friends, or at home. The teachers do encourage children to speak in English while at school, However, the children are not trained in informal conversational English. From the lower K.G., children should be taught to speak simple sentences, ask and answer questions concerning themselves, their surroundings, etc., in a natural way. They should be tactfully corrected wherever they go wrong. While teaching the letters of the English alphabet, there is no focus on the phonetics and pronunciation aspects of the language. As speaking skills are not given due importance, even children in higher classes cannot appreciate the reasons as to why a letter sounds different in different words, or why and where a letter remains silent. They do not learn the correct usage and end up with spelling errors or mispronunciation. Comprehension Comprehension is a key skill

Aditi Mathur and Ratnesh Mathur Important note: This article is not about grammar. This article uses grammar to explore a bigger and deeper myth about learning. Do we need to learn grammar? Answering this question in the negative in a teacher’s magazine might be politically incorrect! So, let’s start with a slightly different question? Do we want to/like to learn grammar? If we do a survey, more people are likely to say no than yes. Also, these days with computers coming with built-in grammar checks, they don’t see the need to ‘learn’ grammar. Our theory is simple – if most people do not like learning about a topic, then there is something wrong with it or with the way it is taught or with the reasons why it is taught. So let us once again rephrase our question: What do most people like to do with respect to English language? What we have observed is that most people like to read newspapers, magazines, novels, etc. They also read emails, posts, and tweets. Some people also like to listen to other people, the radio, and the TV. With such constant exposure to the language, usually grammatically proper, it is obvious that most people learn basic grammar without actually realising it. If you haven’t thought much about this before, just watch how most toddlers are able to master sentence formation, tenses, and other idiosyncrasies of English only by exposure to the language and no direct instructions on grammar. Does this mean that we can absorb grammar without actually learning it? We are all aware of the traditional ways of learning grammar, but there can also be alternative ways and one of these alternative ways is to read good books. Let osmosis happen from the well-written to the novice writer. The authors run Geniekids, a learning centre in Bangalore that works with children. To know more about their work visit www.geniekids.com. This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@gamart.in.

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.