Category Archives: Miscellaneous

What should one do in a language classroom?

Critical Outlook, Critical Pedagogy, Miscellaneous, Teacher Training, Teaching Tips

Rama Kant Agnihotri*

What students and teachers should do in a language classroom is best left to them. Language teaching is so complex and so contextually rooted that except for very general guidelines, nothing may really help in the actual task. What language professionals can at best do is to make available in as accessible a manner as possible content, form and format (oral, printed, digital etc.) material about the potential of the learner, aspects of nature, structure, acquisition and change of language, features of language variation, nature of learning processes, materials, methods and evaluation procedures. In this short article, I focus only on one issue that may be of some use to language teachers: How languages of learners in a given classroom is not an obstacle in the trajectory of language learning; it is in fact a resource not only in language teaching but also in enhancing cognitive growth and social tolerance.

Most teachers and several language professionals believe that languages of students are an obstacle in the process of learning another language. Many actually believe that they cause major interference and therefore students should not even be allowed to use their languages in the class and the school. The typical paradigm in which they work could be defined as ‘a class, a teacher, a text and a language’. Nothing if you reflect for a moment could be further from the truth. All classes are by default multilingual. Examine your own and examine your own language profile and that of your friends. Secondly, languages student bring with them are and can be used as a resource rather than dismissed as an obstacle. Languages always flourish in each other’s company; they suffocate in prisons of isolation and purity. English today is rich because it keeps its doors open; so were Sanskrit and Hindi till they started closing their doors. Thirdly, it is not at all difficult for all teachers and students to appreciate that all languages are equally rule governed and rich. This is something which is so effortlessly achieved if the strengths of a multilingual class are recognized. For example, all languages will have some technique to indicate the relationship between the subject and the verbal elements. That some languages may look more powerful than others is NOT a linguistic matter but one of history, sociology and politics and these aspects can also be easily demonstrated if the teachers are open to such a discourse. Languages like Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Persian etc. were once very powerful; the power of English is only a few decades old and there is no reason to believe that it would stay like that. If you leave out china, Russia, Africa, India etc., the English speaking world is actually very small.

In any case, we do need to think why theories of interference hold such power and what’s wrong with them. These theories hold power because they are the most convenient answers to what is going on and they stop any deeper inquiry into the issues involved. It is a cosy corner that looks very attractive to a teacher who breathes some relief in saying: They will never learn; their languages always come in the way. What teachers don’t realize is that errors are necessary stages in the process of learning and what is being dismissed as interference may actually be a part of the UG driven way of acquiring a language or a milestone in the process of learning. Let’s consider some typical examples.

Let’s start with syntax. The fact of the matter is that there is actually no major difference between the basic syntactic structure of say Indian English and British or American English. All children, including those from the so-called native English communities, will make such errors as ‘he go to school’; the structural pressure of English syntax dictates that it should be so. Imagine everybody including ‘I, we, you, you plural, they’ ‘go’, why should poor ‘he, she, it’ ‘goes’!!! But if we stop comparing the behaviour of school or undergraduate learners with fluent speakers of ‘standard’ English, we will realize that all speakers of English, whether they acquire it as L 1 or L 2, learn to say ‘goes’ in due course. Take another oft quoted example of the invariant tag-question. When many speakers of the Asian subcontinent use ‘isn’t it’ with all kinds of statements, it is often pointed out as a major interference from say Hindi ‘hai na’ etc. Nobody takes the trouble of finding out how many ‘native’ varieties of English do the same. Some varieties of Canadian English certainly do it with a different invariant tag. Two points may be noted here. It may be a part of the standard commonly used Indian English and there is nothing wrong with this fairly understandable overgeneralization. In fact, in the speech of the teachers and the community, there may be no exposure to the variable tag question. Secondly, in the case of fluent users of Indian English, there may be many who actually use the variable tag question. What you eventually accept as a standard ‘correct’ usage is a matter that is located in a spatial, temporal, historical and sociological space.

Consider morphology. It is well attested that all children irrespective of whether they learn English as L 1 or L 2, go through a stage of using first ‘go, went, gone’ (as unrelated items) and then ‘go, goed, goed’ (as morphologically demanded items) and finally acquiring the exception ‘go, went, gone’. Imagine that all learners go through this stage and the set of irregular English verbs is rather large including such commonly used verbs as ‘come, cut, dig, do, eat, get, give, make…’ etc. Word formation strategies have nothing to do with interference. Yes, languages frequently borrow from each other, particularly cultural items. There is nothing you can do about it. English simply adds an additional appendix to its dictionary every year; speakers of course always move ahead of the dictionary.

Take phonology. Do all the so-called native speakers of English speak the same way? Will any one of you, unless she belongs to north of England, claim to understand a word of Yorkshire English? Or do you all understand rural Texan English? I don’t. I don’t even understand my grand-daughter studying in Malone in New York State. She finds it equally difficult to understand my Indian accent. Phonology is a marker of group identity and if you are really interested it will not come into your way after a while. But if you are already beyond 15-16 years of age, you will notice that your jaw is set and you may not get the ‘English English’ inter-dental fricatives, or the aspirated alveolar stops or the distinction between /v/ and /w/, which is really nothing to write home about unless you want a job at the BBC etc. Every variety has a right to its distinct identity.

So if languages of learners are not in our way, why do we make such a miserable mess of language teaching? At most places I know of, most learners don’t even manage to master the basic skills of reading comprehension and writing coherently. We do need to examine the language profile of our class. Every child brings a different linguistic and cultural resource to the class and these can indeed be sensitively assimilated into the teaching-learning process. The first requirement is of course that the teacher needs to walk out of the position of being the fountainhead of all knowledge and have faith in the ability of children to use their resources creatively. In actual classroom transactions it implies that the time taken by individual learners and their interactions in peer group would be much more than normally consumed by the teacher.

We today know that multilinguality is a default human situation and is constitutive of being human. Every classroom by default is inherently multilingual. Further, in a variety of ways, recent research has established how this multilinguality can be used not only as a resource but also as a teaching strategy and a goal. It correlates positively with language proficiency, cognitive growth, scholastic achievement, divergent thinking and social tolerance. It is also now well-established that levels of language proficiency enhance significantly with metalinguistic awareness which would tend to grow if we allow children to reflect on their languages.

What kind of strategies would be most useful in such situations? In fact, there is no limit and also no defining ‘models’. Freedom from the bondage of script is the first step. With very small effort on the part of learners and teachers, it becomes evident that all languages can be written in the same script, with some modifications. What we do need to understand is that all children and all their languages need to  be involved and the teachers need to create situations in which children can work in groups collecting data from their languages, classifying it into different categories, examine the relationships among different parts and arrive at conclusions and hypotheses that would account for their data. Consider for example, the making of nouns from adjectives in English. Adjectives like ‘dark, lazy, rough, kind, small, rich, soft etc’ can be turned into nouns by adding ‘-ness’. However, this is not where teachers would start; they would instead start by talking informally about adjectives and nouns for a few minutes. Then leave it to groups of children who share some languages to make list of adjectives and related nouns in different languages available in the class. Hindi may not have any such strategy; but it may have some others. Or take the case of making plurals. With very limited guidance children will themselves work out the problems of saying that the plural in English is made not by adding ‘-s, -es or –ies’; once it is explained to them that they should focus on the sounds with which a plural ends, they work out that significance of ‘-s, -z and –iz’ in making plural, themselves pointing that the plural of say ‘dog and baby’ is made by adding the same sound. Another group will come up with a strategy for making plurals in Hindi which has not one but 3 plurals for each noun e.g. in the case of laRkaa ‘boy’, we have ‘laRke, laRkoN and laRko’, being the nominative, oblique and vocative plurals respectively. Consider the case of making ‘negatives’ in different languages. It is possible that children would themselves (and so would the teacher) discover that negatives in all languages are made by putting the negative element close to the verb of the main clause and if a rule is discovered in this way, it is rather unlikely that children would make mistakes in speaking or writing negative sentences. Take the case of translation. Nothing enhances language proficiency more than peer-group attempts at translation, not the traditional type of ‘literally and accurately translating from language X to language Y’. A small poem for example could be taken from any language. Notice that the power structures in the classroom at once start getting democratised; teacher is at the back of the classroom listening like others to a poem in an unknown language which is then written and explained by children in the script they are already using. The poem is then translated into several languages in small groups. Stories, plays, cultural events, social issues etc. could also be treated in a similar way. The kind of phonological, syntactic, semantic and semiotic issues such an exercise raises is overwhelming. The idea is to go through the process, not to arrive at a final, perfect translation.

*Rama Kant Agnihotri, D.Phil. (York), retired as Professor and Head, Department of Linguistics, University of Delhi. He is interested in and has taught and written extensively about Applied Linguistics, Morphology, Sociolinguistics and Research Methods for several years. He has lectured in Germany, UK, USA, Canada, Yemen, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, among other countries. He has also been working with several NGOs across India in the area of elementary school education. He co-edits, with A. L. Khanna, the Sage series on Applied Linguistics. He was Chair of the NCERT Focus Group on The Teaching of Indian Languages during NCF 2005.

NNESTs and Professional Legitimacy: Fighting the Good Fight

Critical Outlook, Miscellaneous, Scholarly Article, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

 Davi S. Reis, Ph. D.*

Identifying and exploring the sources of one’s insecurities and fears is a daunting task for most of us. Yet, when it comes to Non-Native English-Speaking Teachers (NNESTs), taking the time to deliberately reflect on the sources of our professional insecurities is a helpful step in acknowledging, negotiating, and claiming professional legitimacy as English Language Teaching (ELT) professionals. As an example of this type of reflection and with the goal of helping others in their own journey, I share a bit of my own narrative as an NNEST in TESOL, including struggles and successes[i], and offer a few reminders, strategies, and resources for challenging the native speaker (NS) myth (that is, the notion that NSs of English are better language teachers)[ii].

A PERSONAL ANECDOTE

As an ELT professional, I worked hard to become a good language teacher. I pursued a bachelor’s degree in TESOL and a master’s degree in Education (both from an accredited American university), and taught ESL in the U.S. and EFL in Brazil for a few years. Yet, I was unpleasantly surprised when a private English institute in Belo Horizonte, Brazil (my hometown and country) offered my partner a job (virtually on the spot) but denied me the chance to even interview for the EFL teaching position they were seeking to fill. Although my partner is a highly qualified mental health counselor, he had no training or experience as a (language) teacher at that point. He was explicitly told that they only hired individuals who were NSs of English (the case with  my partner). Regardless of their possible motivations for enforcing such a questionable policy (that is, buying into the NS myth themselves or, as they claimed, feeling pressured by students’ supposed demand of and preference for NSs), I found myself doubting my own hard-earned professional expertise and experience. Especially when, though largely unconsciously, I had done my very best up to that point to sound and even act like a ‘native speaker of English’ (for me, this meant emulating and imitating some of the American English accents I had been exposed to while an international student in the U.S.).

A PERVASIVE FALLACY

 

My point in sharing this personal anecdote is that, as a ‘minoritized’ group (NNESTs actually make up the vast majority of ELT professionals in the world), we often suffer the damaging effects of an oppressive ideology. Unfortunately, the message heralded by the NS myth is clear and widespread: NSs do it better! They speak English better and, so goes the logic, will be better teachers and make for better learning and happier students (or should I say customers?). Despite its harmful effects, this clear message often works its way into NNESTs’ psyche through its pervasiveness in popular culture, teaching materials, and even published research in TESOL and Applied Linguistics. To make matters worse, the attribute of ‘native speakerness’ is conflated with phenotype (i.e., ‘real’ NSs of English are white, have blond hair, blue eyes, and, preferably, either an American or a British accent). NSs are also perceived as being largely monolingual (after all, according to the NS myth logic, if one already speaks English natively, there is little need to learn another, less influential language). My goal in grossly identifying some of the discourses around the NS myth is to expose it as a fallacy with harmful consequences to NNESTs and to the TESOL and ELT fields.

USEFUL REMINDERS

The so-called ‘NNEST movement’ has been growing exponentially since the late nineties thanks to various converging efforts: the creation of the NNEST Caucus/Interest Section in TESOL, TESOL Position Statements against the employment discrimination of NNESTs, and quite a bit of research[iii]. Yet, too easily we still buy into false dichotomies and blindly adopt disempowering discourses. But if our goal is to continue to improve the work conditions for NNESTs around the world, we must tirelessly, diligently, and unwaveringly challenge the status quo by working against the NS myth. In other words, I believe we can improve our own situation and that of our field by challenging unexamined assumptions and thinking and by encouraging and helping others do the same. Because, in my experience, this is much easier said than done, I offer ten points below as useful reminders regarding NNESTs’ quest for professional legitimacy:

1)      NNESTs make up the vast majority of English teachers worldwide, so our needs and strengths as professionals cannot be easily dismissed;

2)      NNESTs can relate to and support learners in unique ways that are often unavailable to NESTs, such as understanding first-hand the language learning difficulties and empathizing with students’ struggles.

3)      We all have (at least) one native language. So NSs of English are also NNSs of many other languages (this is an issue of positionality). Similarly, we can choose to think of ourselves as bi- or multilingual rather than simply NNSs of English;

4)      What counts as ‘native’ English is highly debatable. Language use is embedded in various but specific sociocultural, sociopolitical, and socioeconomic contexts, so holding an unattainable image of a mythical variety of English is likely to do more harm than good;

5)      The term ‘near-native’ may be an improvement over the term ‘non-native’, but still positions NNESTs as second best in relation to a ‘native’ target (an often ill-defined and unattainable expectation);

6)      All of us (NSs, NNSs, and all in between) make ‘mistakes’ when using language. But rather than viewing such occurrences as ‘errors’, we can think of them as natural and even helpful processes in most types of (intercultural) communicative encounters;

7)      Communication is a two-way street. Both interlocutors should make an effort to understand each other and to clearly communicate their ideas;

8)      Students learning English today are much more likely to be using their language skills with other NNSs, rather than with NSs of English;

9)      Accent (we all have one!) is not a predictor of language proficiency. It may reveal one’s pronunciation skills, but very little about their skills as a language user in real-life contexts and situations. In addition, because one’s accent is intricately connected with one’s identity, it should be honored and respected;

10)  Though language proficiency is a worthy goal we should aspire to achieve and maintain (regardless of native speaker status), it should not be conflated with one’s ability to teach language. In other words, being able to speak a language well does not automatically translate into being able to teach it well. Becoming a teacher takes training, time, and dedication.

TAKING ACTION!

In light of the points presented above, I also offer the following suggestions for taking action and becoming an active contributor to the NNEST Movement:

– Get involved! To the extent possible, become involved with or a member of a professional organization. These organizations help members create synergy about important issues to the profession (such as discrimination against NNESTs) and move the field forward by fostering collaboration and providing a sense of direction.

– Speak up! Silence is often perceived as an indicator of acquiescence. In many contexts, both social and professional, you may be the only individual who is aware of the dangers of operating under the NS myth. Speak up when you see a job listing or advertisement seeking only ‘NSs’. When NNESTs collectively make their voices heard, such discriminatory ads are sometimes removed or revised.

– Collaborate! Identify and take advantage of ‘allies’, including NESTs who are aware of the NS myth and work against it. NEST allies can help clear up many of the misconceptions we carry unknowingly about being a native English speaker (e.g., the U.S. is a very large country with many Englishes spoken throughout, rather than the land of a mythical, pure ‘American English’ as it is often portrayed).

REACHING OUT!

Though strong in numbers, NNESTs often feel isolated, powerless, and ‘minoritized’ in light of persistent native speakerism. But by reaching out to others and connecting to various resources, NNESTs can gain the knowledge, skills, and support they need to help collectively combat and overcome the NS myth. Here is a list of several groups, efforts, and resources you may want to check out, join, and contribute to:

NNEST Interest Section: Although you must be a member of TESOL International Association in order to become a member of one of its interest sections, doing so can open up a number of resources, such as the NNEST Newsletter and the NNEST-IS Listserv, where NNESTs from all over the globe can connect, learn, and challenge one another to improve our professional lives. Even if you are not a member of TESOL, you can find resources on the NNEST-IS website, such as a brief history of the NNEST movement and a list of resources and links.

 

NNEST Interest Section Blog: This forum was created in 2011 as a venue for focused discussions on issues relevant to NNESTs. Along with the NNEST Listserv, it provides a space where NNESTs and allies can connect, share, and ‘synergize’. But this synergy will not happen without the inclusion of various voices and experiences, including yours! So next time you have a question or comment related to NNESTs, consider sharing it with like-minded colleagues via this forum.

NNEST of the Month Blog: Featuring a vast collection of almost 100 interviews and tackling a range of NNEST-related issues, this blog welcomes contributions by practitioners, graduate students, researchers, scholars, and anyone who is interested in issues related to NNESTs and professional legitimacy. As one of the members of this blog’s editorial team, I can attest to the high professional development value of the voices and perspectives represented in the contributions from NNESTs around the world.

NNEST Facebook Group: Currently with over 400 members, the NNEST Facebook group is open to all NNESTs and friends of NNESTs. It provides yet another forum where NNESTs can share their concerns, struggles, successes, and resources. One of the main advantages of this group is the immediacy of posting and receiving responses or feedback. As with all things Facebook, it is always being updated.

Equity Advocates – Working toward Professional Equity in TESOL: With over 120 members, this Facebook group invites members to share “knowledge and strategies” for fighting “professional inequity in the field of TESOL”. So when you witness discriminatory practices or feel victimized yourself, try reaching out to this group. As a professional group, NNESTs can make a much bigger difference by joining forces and acting collectively, rather than in isolation.

TESOL Position Statements: Several position statements put forth by TESOL International Association are relevant to NNESTs, but a pivotal one is the Position Statement Against Discrimination of Nonnative  Speakers of English in the Field of TESOL (March 2006) . Although these position statements are not policies, they influence policy, so it is important that we be aware of such statements and spread the word.

Finally, five volumes focusing on the professional lives of NNESTs are especially helpful (see full references below; with the exception of Braine, 2010, all are edited collections): Braine (1999), Kamhi-Stein (2004), Llurda (2005), Mahboob (2010). In addition to helping coalesce the NNEST Movement, these titles cover a range of relevant issues for NNESTs and provide much food for thought.

In conclusion, there are ways to resist native speakerism and the discrimination we often experience. With every interaction, we can help erode the NS myth and strengthen the NNEST movement. It will not happen overnight, but the better NNESTs are able to articulate why they deserve to be treated as qualified ELT professionals in TESOL, the better chances we have of making a real difference. So next time someone implies that NSs make better language teachers, caringly give them some food for thought. They will be better for it, and so will we.

References:

Braine, G., Ed. (1999). Non-native educators in English language teaching. London, Lawrence Earlbum.

Braine, G. (2010). Nonnative speaker English teachers: Research, pedagogy, and professional growth. New York, Routledge.

Kamhi-Stein, L. D. (Ed.). (2004). Learning and teaching from experience: Perspectives on Nonnative English-speaking professionals. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Llurda, E. (Ed.). (2005). Non-native language teachers: Perceptions, challenges, and contributions to the profession. New York: Springer.

Mahboob, A., Ed. (2010). The NNEST Lens: Non Native English Speakers in TESOL. Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Moussu, L. and E. Llurda (2008). Non-native English-speaking English language teachers: History and research. Language Teaching 41(3), 315–348.

[i] If you’d like to know more about my own experiences and views as an NNEST, you can read about them here.

[ii] To be sure, I have many friends and colleagues who are native speakers of English and believe that they, too, can make fine ESOL teachers with proper education and training.

[iii] For a helpful state-of-the-art article on NNEST issues, see Moussu and Llurda (2008).

*Davi S. Reis is an assistant professor in the School of Education at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, PA. He teaches courses on cultural and linguistic diversity to pre- and in-service teachers and to graduate students in the master’s program in ESL. His scholarly interests include NNEST Studies and Teacher Education.

Hindu educational ethos and practices as a possible source for local pedagogy

Critical Outlook, Global thought, Miscellaneous

Bal Krishna Sharma*

The term ‘local’ is problematic for several reasons since there is no clear boundary between local and non-local (or global) knowledge and pedagogies. We need to be careful when making a distinction between local and global knowledge and practices because what we say is local is not untouched by another form of culture or knowledge. Nor is it waiting to be discovered. In addition, what we say is global is often another, albeit more dominant, form of some local culture. Keep in mind that the so called global knowledge is somebody’s local knowledge. In the context of Nepal, we have several local traditions although they have undergone changes according to time and space. We have religious traditions as well as oral literacy traditions in Nepal. Taking the case of Hindiuism as a philosophy and practice of education, I want to make two points in this essay with regard to local pedagogies (1) Hinduism urges us to understand the meaning of education and pedagogy in a different way compared to many educational practices, (2) Review of Hindu educational ethos shows that some of what have been regarded as the standard practices and innovations in language pedagogy in the Western world today, especially in Anglo-American educational contexts, were in existence in the traditional Hindu educational ethos found in the Vedic and Upanishadic periods in the South Asian sub-continent.

When we make a historical overview of Hindu educational ideals and practices in the Indian subcontinent, we take account of educational thoughts manifested in different scriptures and variety of ways in learning and teaching them. Ancient Hindu literature is divided into two elements: shruti and smriti. Shruti, meaning ‘listening’ or ‘hearing’, consists of sacred texts and scripts like the Vedas and the Upanishads that are traditionally understood as divine revelation. They are principally oral texts and can best be transmitted as such. Smritis, which means ‘that are remembered’, are sacred writings that originated from human authors and comprise codes of conduct for human life. Examples include the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Manusmriti, etc.

Hinduism conceives the entire course of human life as consisting of four Ashramas or successive stages of life though only a small number of males would pass through all the phases. The stage of studentship is called Brahmacharya Ashrama and it was spent in the Vedic schools. The second stage as Grihasthas or householders began when people entered family life. The third state of Vanaprasthan started when they left homes for the forest to become hermits. And in the final stage of Sanyasashram, they become homeless wanderers with all earthly ties broken. The chief aim of education was to achieve emancipation or liberation by detaching oneself from worldly matters and activities. Emancipation was achieved through sravana, manana and nididhyasana. Sarvana means listening to the words or texts from the teacher or Guru; manana means deliberation or reflection on the topic and nididhyasana means meditation through which truth is to be realized. The ultimate goal of education in Hindu philosophy is to achieve revelation or Brahman.

Learning in Hinduism

Hinduism argues that true empowerment emerges through an understanding of the sources of knowledge, not just its components, which in turn leads to unity with the universe. Thus, Hindu view of learning does not limit itself in learning of facts and figures, but emphasizes in developing wisdom by forming a connection between mind, body and spirit. This is different from dominant Western view of learning which seeks cause-and-effect relationships with the worldly phenomena and believes in learning components as part of a whole.

When we survey learning from more formal and pedagogical perspective, it requires us to uncover methods of learning about the outer world by studying scriptures under the supervision of gurus.  Memorization constituted one of the major techniques of learning. This has recently received scholarly attention. This form of learning by memorization seemingly has parallels with behaviorist principles of repetition, practice, memorization and habit formation. However, I argue that we need to go beyond such accounts at least for two reasons. First, this practice has to be interpreted within the socio-historical context of the region. Given the oral tradition of literacy and knowledge-making, memorization and rote learning could enhance the archiving of knowledge in the form of songs, chants or poems which would be available for the future generations. No wonder these elements were partly reflected in the educational practices of that time. Second, it is to be noted that learning by heart without understanding the meaning of Vedic hymns, and without reflection was condemned. This kind of learning is not based on rote learning, but much deeper comprehension involving reflection, questioning and exercising judgments. Under the modern system, the three processes of teaching, learning and evaluation seem to be treated as working almost independently in the context of South Asia, and hardly any integration or synchronization exists among them. In ancient times, all three processes were integrated well.

Methods of Teaching

The Gurukul system of education in ancient Indian sub-continent provides us insights on methods of teaching during that time and helps us make comparisons with popular pedagogical models today. The Upanayana ceremony, meaning taking charge of a student, was considered as the foundational state in starting the Gurukul or the Vedic education. Students would live with their guru as members of a single family. The system of teaching was communal though there were ample occasions when the teacher explained something to the individual pupils. In addition to teacher-fronted, product-oriented guru-shisya system, teaching was substantially based on practice-based apprenticeship system. Students engaged in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor. As the pupils interacted regularly, more experienced members helped the new members acquire the community norms and the Vedic educational ethos through their mutual engagement in learning activities. The learning system was notably non-formal, blurring the differences between philosophical and technical knowledge, facts and skills, and knowledge and life. This process was more inductive and process-oriented, and teaching methods were diverse depending on learner, context and subject matter.

Teachers exercised total autonomy in curriculum and organization in Gurukuls. Pupils also enjoyed some degree of autonomy in choosing institutions or teachers; they, for example, could move from one Gurukul to another for better knowledge. Sometimes even the teacher could advise the students to go to another teacher to satisfy their queries. Also the Gurukul system did not rule out the possibility of self-study and learning.

Methods of debate, discussion, speculation and argument were salient features of education in the Gurukul system of education.  Discussions and debates would take the form of intellectual challenges between the guru and the students or among the students themselves. Typical of present day symposiums, many learned persons from far off places used to assemble and participate in the debates and discussions that regularly took place at the Vedic education centers. Such use of discussion as a method of teaching later led to the development of logic called Vakovakyam or Tarkashastra or the science of disputation. Such a tradition of arguments can be substantially exemplified from dialogues between Krishna and Arjuna in the Bhagavat Gita – a small section of the epic the Mahabharata. This method of argument shares some similarities to the art of Socratic dialogs in ancient Greek tradition. Based on the idea of promoting democratic values and fostering student-centered learning, such a discussion-based teaching is a major pedagogic technique today, supposedly originated from the Western philosophical traditions.

 Student-teacher Relationships

In ancient Hindu system of education, education was highly individualized. There would be only few selected students enrolled, and teachers knew individual students very closely. Teachers and students were vegetarian and lived a simple life close to nature. Teachers loved students as if they were their own children, and were fully aware what had been learned by each student including areas of weakness. In fact, the Vedic students are regarded as twice-born: first birth from their mother and second from their guru at the start of the Vedic education. A teacher was to possess the highest moral and spiritual qualifications and to be well versed in the sacred lore and dwelling in the Brahman or the Brahmanishtha. Similar was true in higher educational institutions.

This may seem to suggest a stereotypical ‘traditional’ ‘hierarchical’ teacher-student relationship and a supposedly ‘authoritarian’ role of the teacher in Vedic education practices. Of course, at any period, educational practitioners in South Asia as in any other location may misuse a teacher’s power for non-pedagogical purposes. However, the topic of student-teacher relationships has to be understood and interpreted with reference to the socio-historical context of pedagogical practices of that time, in contrast to their use in pedagogies of modern times. Traditional Hindu education system has given more responsibility to teachers beyond classroom teaching. Reverence has been given to the teachers for their position in social and moral hierarchy. Teachers while clearly occupying such a higher social status were expected to mutually participate with students in the classroom, on the playgrounds, and in activities related to the management of the school. Of course, it cannot be said that the teacher and the students enjoyed an equal relationship. However, it should be noted that the teaching and relationship was not solely controlled by the teacher and the students could initiate questions and topics for discussion and debate.

Good teachers were considered to be role models in their virtues and morality, live exemplary lives and change human society toward wellbeing. The literal translation of the Sanskrit word ‘guru’ as ‘teacher’ carries with it deep reverence for the teacher. Reverence is different from respect: ‘Reverence calls for respect only when respect is really the right attitude’.  In contexts where problems of classroom management and student discipline frequently cause ‘professional vulnerability’ of the teachers, requiring sometimes to protect themselves from personal dangers in professional lives, reverence can be a strong tool for creating conducive teaching environment. If students lack certain level of obedience to the authority in classroom, there is a risk that teaching and learning become counterproductive.

Ancient Hindu educational practices did not ignore agency and voice of the students. As mentioned in the Dharmasutra, teacher should not restrain the students for his own advantage in such a way that hinders their studies. Teachers were not given power to refuse instruction to students unless they found a defect in them. In addition, teachers did not appear to have encouraged blind obedience from the pupils. Dharmasutra clearly mentions that students can confidentially draw the attention of the teacher to any transgression of religious injunctions that he may commit deliberately or inadvertently. Students can forcibly restrain the teacher from wrong-doing either by themselves or with the help of their parents. The teacher not imparting knowledge did not indeed deserve the designation of teacher. Although teachers enjoyed certain degree of authority and reverence, they did not compromise learning potential and agency of the students.

Final Words

Presenting the survey in three themes – teaching, learning, and student-teacher relationships – I have presented arguments and historical evidence to show that some supposedly Western educational standards and practices occupied important space in ancient Hindu educational traditions. This observation resembles made by some researchers who argue that that Western knowledge and educational practices are relatively recent phenomena first spread to other parts of the world through colonization and through globalization of culture, education, and economy. Within the seemingly dominant practices of teacher-frontedness, learning by heart, transmission model of education in Hindu ethos of learning and teaching, there indeed were agendas and practices of more student-centered, practice-based, approaches and methods that fostered learning, teaching and autonomy. Revisiting our own educational histories and ancient ethos, we can compare and recontextualize dominant pedagogies in local contexts.

Suggested Readings

Canagarajah, A. 2005. Reconstructing local knowledge, reconfiguring language studies. Reclaiming the local in language policy and practice, ed. by A. S. Canagarajah, 3-24. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Crookes, G. 2009. Values, philosophies, and beliefs in TESOL: Making a statement. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Dharampal, 1983. The beautiful tree: Indigenous Indian education in the eighteenth century. New Delhi: Biblia Impex Private Limited.

Jonston, B. and Varghese, M. 2007. Evangelical Christians and English language teaching. TESOL Quarterly 41. 5-31.

Kumaravadivelu, B. 2003. Problematizing cultural stereotypes in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 37. 709-719.

Merriam, S. B. and Kim, Y. S. 2008. Non-Western perspectives on learning and knowing. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education 119. 71-81.

Mishra, S. K. 1998. Educational ideas and institutions in ancient idea (From the earliest times to 1206 AD with special reference to Mithila). New Delhi, India: Ramanand Vidya Bhawan.

Narain, S. 1993. Examinations in ancient India. New Delhi, India: Arya Book Depot.

Purple, D. 2002. Social justice, curriculum, and spirituality. Educational yearning: the journey of the spirit and democratic education, ed. by T. Oldenski  and D. Carlson, 86-102. New York: Peter Lang.

Sheshagiri, K. M. 2011. A cultural view of education in Hindu civilization. Handbook of Asian education: A cultural perspective, ed. by Y. Zhao et al., 529-547. New York: Routledge.

Thaker, S. N. 2007. Hinduism and learning. Non-Western perspectives on learning and knowing, ed. by S. B. Marriam and Associates, 57-53. Florida: Krieger Publishing Company.

Upadhyaya, P. 2010. Hinduism and peace education. Spirituality, religion, and peace education, ed. by E.J. Brantmeier, J. Lin and J. P. Miller, 99-113. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Pub Inc.

Whelpton, J. 2005. A history of Nepal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wong, M. S., and Canagarajah, A. S. 2009. Christian and critical English language educators in dialogue: Pedagogical and ethical dilemmas. New York: Routledge

 

Note: This blog entry is an abridged and simplified version paraphrased from my article published in Language and Linguistics Compass (2013).

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*Bal Krishna Sharma is a doctoral candidate in Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. His interests include sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and critical pedagogy.

Action Research for EFL Teacher’s Professional Development

Miscellaneous, Teacher Training, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Manita Karki

M.Phil. in ELE

Kathmandu University

School of Education

In recent years, action research has become increasingly popular as a form of professional development for teachers. The reason is, action research helps teachers to “look behind” what they did and  provides space for teachers to correct their past mistakes and analyze needs of the students. Such work significantly helps teachers to grow as professional teachers. So doing action research is one way to solve the faced problems while teaching and to develop teachers’ professional carrier too.

For me the category “Action Research” is not new but the meaning has  changed a little bit recently.  Action Research usually refers to “the researcher doing their research in the field” . Before taking the course “Action Research and Teacher Development,” I thought action research meant  going to the  field, observing the situation and finding out the real problem among the students regarding their study (learning) and then trying to solve those problems by applying different teaching-learning techniques, methods, and strategies. But now I have realized that after completing the process, the researchers should continually look for other difficulties among the same or different level of students. What I used to think was not completely wrong but that was  just the narrow sense of my understanding , which I noticed only after completing course on “Action Research and Teacher Development.”

Action research mainly consists of self reflection as its central tenet. McNiff (2002) opines that “Action Research is a term which refers to a practical way of looking at own work to check that it is as one would like it to be or not.” Because action research is done by self, the practitioner, it is often referred to as practitioner based research and because it involves thinking about owns work, it can also be called a form of self reflective practice. “In traditional forms of research/empirical research, researchers do research on other people but now they do research on themselves” (McNiff, 2002).

Here with the help of McNiff’s idea I can say that action research is mainly based on self-enquiry: conducting research by the self about the self. For example “YOU” as a practitioner can think about  your own life and work and this involves you asking yourself why the way you work is different?, why you are the way that you are? In this way you can translate your research into practice. However,  systematic investigation into your own behavior and the reasons for that behavior is quite essential. Achieving a  better understanding of yourself can further help you to grow personally and professionally.

Action research is an open ended  research and does not begin with some sort of fixed hypothesis because researchers generate knowledge while conducting research  and they keep on thinking and (re)designing what to do next. “The research process is the developmental process of following through the idea, seeing how it goes and continually checking whether it is in line with what you wish to happen” (Norton; 2009). What we can say then is that action research is a process of a form of self evaluation.

Therefore, importance of  applying it in teaching and learning field can be immense. If we  continuously involve  in  thinking about the tasks we do, in checking what went right and what went wrong and keep ourselves busy with reflection, we will be able to see  areas of weaknesses and areas of our strengths.  In the words of Smith and Gillespie (2007), in addition to “knowing what” and “knowing how” teachers must also be competent in “knowing why” and “knowing when”. The capacity to reflect and then develop a culture of questioning (ones practice) helps a teacher to be professionally competent and practically good at teaching because it furnishes positive impact on how and what students learn, and motivates to keep learning further.

So from my own experience now I can say that doing action research is very useful for the teachers to develop his/her teaching style because when the teachers involve in doing action research while teaching then they can look behind what, how, when and why they teach and what they are missing. With the help of the knowledge of weaknesses in their teaching and of the level of students, they can develop their own best pedagogies. In this way doing action research helps  teachers to be a professionals and enhance their teaching learning activities. Because of these reasons I can say that “Action Research plays vital role in teacher’s professional development”.

References

McNiff, J. (2002). Action research for professional development: Concise advice for new action researchers.

http://edavula.co.cc/web_documents/ar_jean_mcniff_-_per_studentet_e_ma.pdf

Norton S. L. (2009). Action Research in Teaching and Learning: A practical guide to conducting pedagogical research in universities. London: Routledge.

Smith, C. & Gillespie, M. (2007). Research on professional development and teacher change: Implications for adult basic education.

http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/tools/initiative/factsheet.pdf.

The English Teacher: Where Is The Shoe Pinching?

Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips

                                                                                                                         Dinesh Thapa, Lecturer of English

Kitini College, Godawary 

 (Taukhel) Lalitpur Nepal

Email: dtdthapa@gmail.com

NELTA Life Member

Asst. Secretary, NELTA Lalitpur 

 

 

The English Class

(Good Morning Sir). Morning. Sit down. Hello, why are you talking? Listen to the attendance. Roll number One. (Yes sir). Two. (Yes sir)……..Sixteen. (Absent sir). Don’t talk. I said…..Don’t talk. Seventeen. (Yes sir)…fifty six. (Yes sir). Give me your book, please. (one student gives the English textbook to the teacher). Ok. Students, take your book on. Today we are going to read on page no. 47. (Students turn the page there.)  Turned- Found? (Pointing to another student) Hello, don’t you have the book? (No Sir, I’ve forgotten). That’s it! You always have to say the same. Share it from your friend, then. Now look there. Listen. Then the teacher reads aloud some lines from the textbook and translates the meaning into Nepali. S/he writes some unfamiliar words on the board and gives the meaning, possibly in Nepali. Students copy them onto the exercise book. There is a short comprehension- check- in through oral questioning. Often, it is the teacher who supplies the responses as it takes longer to get one from the students. By then the time gets over. The teacher leaves the class asking the students to write answers to the questions from page no. 48. The following day the teacher writes an essay on the board and the students copy it and recite for examination.

Where Is the Shoe Pinching?

The Nepalese classroom, especially in the secondary level, displays some unique features which are quite challenging from the viewpoint of teaching English. There are a considerable number of students in one class, possibly over fifty seated in the immovable iron-made furniture. The classroom is highly heterogeneous- in terms of age, ability and culture of the students.  Mostly, the class is a teacher dominated one. S/he exhausts almost ninety percent of the hour, but there is talk in English hardly the half of the period. Presentation of the lesson is generally unaided with visuals and student practise by making written exercises. Although, the students respond to the teacher sparingly, they do not talk in English among themselves. Again, they do not reply in English; they simply understand the prompts…… like facts of biology…..understand them, but they cannot produce English. The response happens in Nepali itself. Also the motivational topics, like jokes, anecdotes, news sharing, and so on are told in Nepali, for the students cannot grasp of what is said to them. There is hardly a speaking class, except the teacher’s questions answered by the students. Teaching for speaking and listening skills does not have a scheduled class; most of the students experience listening to the cassette at exams only.

The teacher- talk during deliberation is directed to make the things clear to the students; so students do understand the matter but rarely can produce it in speech or writing. Similarly, the teacher gives answers to almost all questions, and students copy and rewrite them. Some few students recite the answers, only a few try on their own, whereas many simply do nothing. Although the teacher asks students to complete an assignment (generally in writing) at home, s/he can hardly compel them to do so. Only a small number of students have the habit of self-study at home, but the majority of them do not have even a dictionary and other support materials with them. The texts put in the book are simply unintelligible for them as they have never attempted so yet. For many of them, the grades scored earlier than in grade ten are simply promoted ones. If looked through, English and Mathematics happen to be the- never- passed subjects in all the previous grades. That’s why home study for English is almost impossible for the students. Even if some students do their home tasks, the teacher rarely provides feedback after correction. Correction is generally done teacher-privately, sitting in the teacher- room, in the absence of the concerned students, and the students rarely go over it back. The notes and exercises completed earlier in the session start getting lost over time. Once the course becomes over and revision starts, again the texts and exercises become anew, and are started afresh. All the previous teaching seems to have become a great waste.

There is the structural factor as well in play for the lower proficiency of the students. There are eight subjects for the students to learn in a day; among them seven are delivered fully in Nepali medium, even to such an extent that the terms like ‘ecology’ in environment, ‘evolution’ in biology, ‘rectangle’ in mathematics, etc. are also translated into Nepali. Teaching of English thus becomes the absolute business of the English teacher only. Also the single teacher teaches in classes at over four grades vertically. As the same teacher is taking charge of English, students are devoid of variety in the exposure of English. On the other hand, as there are only a few teachers with the ability to speak English in the whole, the English teacher barely gets a chance to use his/ her English with people other than the students. His/ her English thus erodes gradually. The problem is compounded by the reality that there are not any English medium newspapers, journals, magazines, videos and other reference materials available in school. The library contains books never- used and unsuitable- to be- used by the students. For the students, library seems to be available to see occasionally from the outside only.

 

The other residue of the problem lies with our culture. Absenteeism on the part of the students is still high. Only when the term-exams approach, attendances become more regular. Both girl and boy students have strong cliques to share about private matters; group dynamism is simply directed towards non-academic matters. Similarly, the role of the parents seems very nominal for making learning environment of their wards. They appear in the school only to get their wards admitted and to get the results. Other times, there is hardly only communication with the parents.

Reflections

I raised some pinching issues that might be our practical realities going on in the English classrooms. I want to share with you our present reality and our possible corrective measures for the improvement of our overall teaching scenario, so that the practicing teachers also have a say in the discourse of teacher professionals; so that they could restore the dignity schools possessed in the past. Whether we realize it or not, we are heading towards a challenging future. Our valued bases of faith and dignity are eroding day by day, leaving none of us untouched. Only our sincere efforts and visionary deeds can help us rescue from this ongoing quicksand of the eroding quality of our education. In such a situation, improvement in English teaching practices can work as a rescue rod.

Now I’d like to share with you a simple strategy that works for the improvement of learning English in our school, i.e., student motivation and teacher’s continued reflection over what went well or not. Student motivation is the drive that clears itself from all the barriers impending in the learning environment. We have the history that our former generations, and probably ourselves, learnt sitting under the direct sun. The buildings, sofas, chairs, videos, computers and lifts are not the causative factors for learning to happen. Rather it is the strong willpower on the part of the learner that works to crumble all the barriers. The English teacher should create such an environment that boosts up a feeling of ‘English Thrust’ in our learners. We need to make our classes pleasant, using simple English- in- English method, supplementing the class with tasks that arrest the interest of the learners (like jokes, tales, poems, puzzles, magazines, debates and presentations). The important factor here is that the students themselves should build up the feeling that ENGLISH IS IMPORTANT, NOT FOR OTHERS, BUT FOR THEMSELVES. Unless such a feeling germinates in the learners, all our efforts go in vain. We may get thinner day- by- day, but at the end of grade ten examinations, our students still remain unable to compose even a small paragraph, unable to speak general ideas, unable to comprehend moderate reading texts and to decipher normal spoken English. In order to check this, we need to make sure:

–           that we teaching English as a means of communication, or as a subject like Sciences or Social Education;

–          that our students are genuinely motivated to learn being involved in the learning environment

–          that our students feel (not only think) that ability in speaking and writing English is really important in this modern time;

–          that we exposing our learners to English as a language, not  to the tit-bits of English;

–          that we do create situations in which our students feel a necessary requirement to communicate in English in the lively communicational settings;

–          that we have arranged the class in a scheduled form for the exposure of all skills and aspects of language;

–          that we have sufficient language generating materials other than textbooks to assist to our duties, and

–          that we are dedicated, reflective and change oriented all the time.

Once we consider changing the way we teach bit- by- bit, the challenges will turn into opportunities. The students will be proficient and communicative. The teacher will find his/her own face smiling in the beaming lights of the students’ achievement. Then the responsibility of the boatman will be successfully discharged when the passengers go across the river undisturbed and safely.

ERROR ANALYSIS – Third Person Singular Subject-Verb Agreement

Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

I teach in a secondary school in Sanepa, Lalitpur. I have found that many students in the school commit the errors in “subject-verb agreement,” especially that of third person singular, even when they seem to know the grammar rules. Generally, in private schools, students start learning English grammar when they are in Grade Two and they do so throughout the school years. Despite learning and knowing the rules for multiple years, many students come up with sentences like “He have book….”, “Sir have the book……” etc., in both written and spoken form.

I carried out a mini-research from the perspective of  error analysis to find out the reasons why students commit these types of errors (the omission of simple present marker) and, importantly, to propose a remedy for the problem. I conducted this study among the 22 students of Class 9. For the same purpose, I told the students a story titled “Nashruddin and the donkey” and asked them to write the story from their memory. Since my focus of error analysis was to analyze the errors in subject-verb agreement, I told them the story in present tense and asked them to write the story as homework.

(What follows is a stripped down version of the mini-research, without citations and references.)

Error Identification:

After the students submitted their written work, I went through their work line by line and marked the errors in subject verb agreement. My first task was to determine if the errors done by each student were systematic errors or just random mistakes. Since most of the students made the same error consistently, I concluded that those were errors, not mistakes.

Here’s a sample table of the data that I collected.

Participant 1

Participant 2

Participant 3

Participant 4

Participant 5

Participant 6
All villagers calls him a stupid guy… He wokes up… He have a goose… The boys thinks… … the money he have… All the villagers calls him…
…two naughty boys sees that and tries to trick… There is two naughty boys. …he keep an secrecy… One of the boys untie the rope… One boy go along with… …and he realize that…
So, Nashruddin catch his ears… He sell all the… Nashruddin reaches home and turn back… … goes to buys a donkey… … needs a donkey to works in the farm…
… he kill the goose… Two naughty boys sees and tries to …
…he become very sad…

The above table illustrates that the students commit errors by omitting -s inflection from the third person singular verb in their attempt to make the verb agree with the singular subject like “he kill…” and “he become…”. And, they also add –s inflection with plural subjects.

Explanation of the errors

As you all know, we teach our students that  a verb must agree with its subject. We keep repeating: A singular subject takes a singular verb, likewise, a plural subject takes a plural verb. For instance, the third person pronouns such as “he, she and it” take a singular verb with the -s inflection as in “The boy eats…., She eats….”. Similarly, the plural subject and pronouns such as “I, We, You and They” just take the bare form of the verbs as in “I eat…. We eat….”.

Subject-verb Agreement in English and Nepali:

Subject-verb agreement means the verb will change its form depending on its subject. The subject of a verb may be singular or plural and it may be first-person (I, we) second-person (you – singular/plural), or third-person (he/she/it, they, dog, cats).

In English, in the present tense, a verb changes its form only when its subject is third-person singular (he/she/it). Here’s the confusion and a factor leading to over-generalization. The inflection –s can be used with both third person singular verbs as well as plural noun subjects. Whereas In Nepali, there are different inflectional makers for plural subjects and for verbs.

I walk. // We walk.
Ma hidchu // Hami hidchaun
You walk. // You walk.
Timi hidchau // Timi haru hidchaun
He walks. // She walks // It walks.
Tyo hidcha // Tini hidcha // Tyo hidcha
They walk.
Tini  haru hidchan
Dog walks. // Cat walks.
Kukkur hidcha // Biralo hidcha
Dogs walk.// Cats walk.
Kukkur haru hidchan // Biralo haru hidchan

While it might be hard to generalize, these contrasting rules seem to be causing a lot of confusion on the matter of subject-verb agreement.

Reasons for the errors:

Here are the possible reasons why the students make error in subject-verb agreement of third personal singular.

1)      L1 influence: possibility of structural interference

2)      Overgeneralization: the learner creates a generalized structure on the basis of a single rule of the target language.

3)      Erroneous input: the teacher makes similar mistakes and feeds wrong input to the learners

4)      Lack of enough comprehension of the rules of subject + verb agreement.

In addition to my own observation, I asked the students about their opinion on this type of error. When I explained the error analysis jargons to them and told them the possible reasons, they opined that it is because of mainly two reasons: over-generalization of the rules and lack of ‘conscious’ practice. In other words, they blame their ‘wrong habits’ as the reason for errors.

Here’s how they normally over-generalize. If sentences like I run… We run…. You run… are correct, the students have developed a habit of assuming that He run… She run… Rabi run… are also correct forms.

Plus, it has to do with native language interference as well. Here’s a case of verb “chha”. In Nepali, “chha” is used to express possession (have/has) in present tense. For example:

First person: Ma sanga gadi chha (I have a car.)
Second person: Timi sanga gadi chha (You have a car.)
Third person: Sir sanga gadi chha (Teacher has a car.)
Third person: Madan sanga gadi chha (Madan has a car.)
Third person plural: Sathi haru sanga gadi chha. (Friends have a car.)

The verb “chha” is used invariably with all forms of subjects – first person, second person or third person and with both singular or plural form. Since “chha” means both has as well as have in Nepali, students unconsciously transfer this concept into the production of English language.

A peculiar pattern

Interestingly, some participants not only removed simple present marker ‘s’ in the case of third person singular subject, they also added the same marker in the case of plural subjects as well. Here’s a sample from the Participant 1.

*All villagers calls him a stupid guy…
*…two naughty boys sees that and tries to trick…

And from the Participant 6.

*All the villagers calls him…
*Two naughty boys sees and tries to …

What these errors show is that there is a pattern among the students to do the opposite – i.e., to use the singular marker ‘s’ with plural subjects.

Let me try to explain this pattern, again from the first language interference point of view. In Nepali, when the subject is plural, the marker ‘chhan’ is suffixed with the verb.

For example:

Madan ghar janchha. (Madan goes home.)
Mera sathi haru ghar janchhan. (My friends go home.)

And since, the equivalent plural marker of ‘chhan’ is the suffix ‘s’ in English, students come up with sentences like “All the villagers calls him…..” by adding ‘s’ to the verbs as well. Just as the English rule says, plural subject requires plural verbs in present tense.

This puts the Nepali learners in a very confusing and complex situation. The Nepali rule of adding equivalent plural marker ‘chhan’ on the verb when the subject is plural contradicts or interferes with the English rules of removing plural marker ‘s’ from the verbs when the subject is plural.

Recommendation and Conclusion

I am in line with N.S. Prabhu that there is no best method (I’m applying this in a narrower sense here) . How I think of going about such errors is to have a mixed approach. Whatever works out fine in our individual context is the best way out. Experimentation is the key. In addition to that, it is illogical to assume that this error will be solved within a day or a week or a month. No one can be sure without further research (locally).

However, here’s what I think is a good approach to go about solving  common errors.

  • Raise the students’ awareness about common errors. In the present case, letting them know that present tense singular is a very common error and even professors at the university level commit this mistake occasionally might boost the morale of the students.
  • Explicit teaching and explicit error correction. Teach them rules and make them practice. Focus on form.
  • Implicit teaching. Give them enough comprehensible input, focusing on activities that enhance their understanding of tense and verb system of English
  • Provide ‘authentic’ opportunity for practice.
  • Mix different teaching methods. Bring varieties into the classroom.
  • And, most importantly, CONTEXTUALIZE. If students can relate to what they are learning, their retention will probably very high.

Because of the L1 interference and the tendency of over-generalization, Nepali students find the use of present tense marker complicated. They have to be constantly conscious of the contrasting rules of singular and plural subjects in Nepali and English.

So the first step to remedy this error might be to raise the students awareness about contrasting system of rules. They need to be conscious about these differences in Nepali and English structures, then practice the rules, develop a habit, in a hope that the habit eventually gains automaticity.

Another remedial step might be to implement Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis, which is to provide and expose the students to massive amount of inputs regarding the subject-verb agreement. Thus, the students might be able to acquire (and learn) the rules unconsciously and ultimately produce the correct forms. However, acquiring a language is not enough. The students should be given enough opportunity to practice in an authentic environment. Hence, authentic classroom activities implicitly focused on the form of third-person singular would help students overcome this error in time. We can follow possible steps for other common errors too.

Reflection

In my experience, I have seen students (and many teachers alike) from all level of classes committing this error. Even the students of Bachelor’s level frequently commit this error regarding subject-verb agreement. I was clueless about how to correct the students but now I have realized that teaching them the rules and correcting them is not enough. The students must be made aware of this type of error. And, with student’s conscious participation, remedial steps have to be taken.

I have seen many teachers jump to the conclusion that the students are not intelligent enough or hardworking enough and thus they make the errors. However, intelligence and hard-work might only be two insignificant factors out of so many other crucial variables that affect  second language learning. There are factors like language transfer, interference, lack of enough input, lack of opportunity to produce and use language, context, motivation, and so on. As language teachers, we need to give the benefit of doubt to the learners before condemning them on the basis of their personal ability. In fact, we ourselves are nowhere near competent enough and we commit errors on a different level than the students. (Plus, we are unaware of it.) If we are to expect better language competency from our students, we need to first change our own view towards teaching and learning a second language.

Umes Shrestha
Kathmandu University
www.latebecame.wordpress.com

IATEFL 2013 Liverpool: My Experience

Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Laxman Gnawali

Last year I felt a strong urge to plan to attend the IATEFL 2013 Liverpool for several reasons. The main reason was that I had attended the conference before. When you have a taste of something and you like it and know the value of it, you want to go for it again.  So, I made up my mind to submit a presentation proposal and plan for other arrangements. I eventually attended the conference and I am recounting the experience of it.    

Whether our proposal is accepted or not, the process of writing it as per the guidelines is a learning experience. There are two documents we need to submit: a 50-60 word presentation abstract outlining what we will do during the presentation and a 200-250 word summary briefly discussing what is that we would like to establish. Though I was not working on it all the time, I spent more than a week writing, revising, editing, starting over again and the same process again and again. I also turned to friends for their input.

I was very careful about the proposal for a valid reason: apart from being accepted for a presentation, I also wanted a scholarship.  If the organizers liked the idea and saw that the proposal was not in a good shape, I would probably be asked to revisit it. But in case of the scholarship, there would be no second chance. I had to write a good proposal. So, I worked very hard. When I felt that my proposal was in good shape and would be competitive, I looked up the list and the descriptions of the scholarships the IATEFL was offering.

I had seen the list of scholarships before but had not minutely studied it to see which ones I was qualified for.  So, I visited the website http://www.iatefl.org/ and followed the scholarship link http://www.iatefl.org/scholarships/scholarship-overview There I saw that the criteria for each scholarship were different. Some were for those who had never been to the IATEFL conference, others for those who had never received any scholarship. Some were for teachers and others for teacher trainers. Some scholarships required the applicants to have an extensive experience in a given area and others looked just for an interest in it. Some scholarships offered a small grant and others had a generous amount for the winner. There were some that covered all the costs. Some scholarships required IATEFL membership, others did not. The deadline for all of them was 22 August. I considered them all and I finally submitted my proposal for five scholarships: IATEFL Gillian Porter Ladousse, International House Global Reach, International House Training and Development, Pilgrims Teacher Trainer Journal, Trinity College London Teacher Trainer.

Come the first week of October, I received an email which read:

Dear Laxman (if I may)

The IATEFL Scholarship Working Party (SWP) is happy to tell you that you are the winner of Gillian Porter-Ladousse Scholarship, congratulations. Please can you let me know immediately if you will accept the award and attend the Liverpool conference in 2013.

Very best wishes

SWP co-ordinator

I accepted the offer right away. Then the preparation started: the registration, the hotel booking, flight tickets, the visa, everything in place. I was at the Arena and Convention Centre in Liverpool on the 8th of April 2013. There were five of us from Nepal.

The 47th Annual International IATEFL Conference & Exhibition was a great experience: A state-of-the-art venue, world class book exhibition, gathering of 2500 delegates from around the world, about 40 parallel sessions at any given time, five key speakers including Prof. David Crystal, out-of-the-box evening events, networking events, live streaming on http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013/, the list goes on.

My presentation was in the late evening and I was worried if I would have participants. To my relief, my session which was on “When Participants Experience, Understand and Articulate” was attended by sizable audience. I was also interviewed for the Liverpool online.

I spent five busy days in Liverpool and returned home re-energized. Two weeks later, I was asked by the scholarship committee to write in 80 words what I achieved by attending the conference, I wrote the following:

“Winning the IATEFL Gillian Porter Ladousse scholarship was instrumental for me to showcase an experiment on teacher training made at my University. Sharing the outcomes of the experiment from Nepal in the IATFL’s international forum was a concrete achievement for me and my University. This sharing enabled me to expand my network with fellow teacher educators from around the world. I also met great ELT names in person and brought home beautiful memories of the interactions I had with them.”

I feel that for ELT professionals, attending international events such as IATEFL has a number of benefits. To list a few: a) It is a great exposure to world Englishes. We experience Englishes from all over the world, b) We meet face to face those writers we have been citing, c) We are updated with the latest development in the field of ELT. We can bring home latest ideas in ELT, d) We can showcase what we have been doing at our workplaces and see where we stand and how others take it. I had all these benefits.

I am grateful to the IATEFL for accepting my proposal and providing me the scholarship. I am also thankful to Kathmandu University, NELTA and the British Council, Kathmandu for other support.

Appendix

This was the Presentation Proposal I submitted  for IATEFL Liverpool 2013.

1. The presentation title: When Participants Experience, Understand and Articulate

2. Type of presentation: Talk (30 minutes)

3. Presentation abstract (50-60 words)

In this presentation I shall focus on a primary EFL teacher training programme in Nepal that requires trainees to design and deliver a training course for working school teachers. How this process allows trainees to articulate their understanding of teaching learning principles thereby deepening their own understanding EFL pedagogy will be discussed; training structure and components will also be shared.

4. Summary (200-250 words)

Apart from experience and theoretical understanding, articulation of the experience and understanding is a firm way to learning (Edge, 1996) which is not realised in most teacher training programmes. Unless trainees explain and express their own experience and understanding to others who belong to the same professional community, their own understanding either will not be clear and even if it is, it will not last long.

With the idea in mind, we designed a primary EFL teacher training programme with touch of innovation. Normally, the teacher certification courses are of one year within which trainees complete course requirements including practice teaching. In our case, we added one more term. During this fourth term, participants are required to assess the needs of working teachers at local schools, design a twelve-hour training course based upon the needs, develop sessions and materials, deliver the training and evaluate the whole process. We saw that this act of expression actually helped them to develop a clearer understanding of the teaching learning principles for which they were trained. As they delivered the training, they not only organized activities but also had opportunities to express their own understanding of teaching and learning.

This has been a successful experiment of preparing principled teachers who know the rationale of their actions. The result is that the graduates of this programme are in demand and there is zero unemployment. In this talk, I share the programme structure and its components, the process and the attributes the trainees graduate.

The link to access my interview for the Liverpool Online:

http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2013/sessions/2013-04-09/interview-eryl-griffiths-laxman-gnawali

Help Emerging ELT Professionals Grow

Editorial, Miscellaneous

– Lal Bahadur Rana

Every year, hundreds of university graduates in English go to the job market in Nepal. A few of them are involved in foreign affairs, civil services, mass media, tourism, business etc., but the majority of them are involved in teaching English at colleges and campuses. They start their teaching career without special kind of orientation or specific training. Therefore, they are not well-prepared to cope up with many challenges related to teaching and learning they encounter in course of fulfilling their duties and responsibilities as teachers. This tradition seems to be one of the reasons why novice teachers do what their teachers used to do when they were students, instead of thinking what activities or practices best befit in their contexts, how they can support their learners etc.

Many teachers working in under-resourced areas unknowingly deteriorate their knowledge and skills year by year, because they hardly ever get opportunities to keep their knowledge abreast and hone their skills. Nor can they share their problems and pitfalls with other colleagues so that they can collaboratively find alternative solutions of their pressing problems. In this scenario, NELTA Chourati as its name implies in Nepali is a common platform where teacher, trainers, teacher educators, mentors, etc. can come together in this virtual space and grow themselves helping tyros grow. With this belief, I have included almost all write-ups of those colleagues who have just started to teach English or who are to start soon. I hope all the viewers of these posts will leave their constructive comments so that the ones who have written these posts will get insights and inspirations of improving their writing in the days to come.

This issue contains five write-ups. The first entry is of Binod Luitel, Associate Professor at TU, who has been undertaking an action research project at Surkhet Campus (Education), Surkhet and Mahendra Ratna Campus Tahachal on how learners’ vocabulary achievement and reading skills can be developed. In this post, he discusses the learner hierarchy in terms of their proficiency level over English. He asks five thought provoking questions related to the topic in question. The second post is of Vishnu Kumar Khadka, who raises issues of teaching and testing listening and speaking skills in SLC examination. In the third post, Ashok Raj Khati shares the strategies which he found to be very useful while he was teaching.  In another post, Resham Bista critically argues that teaching and learning is not confined to language, but also with the policies and politics of the western countries. Last but by no means least, Maheshwor Rijal shares his experiences and process of academic writing with a particular focus on writing thesis.

Table of contents

1. Towards exploration of pedagogical pyramid in the context of Nepalese ELT by Binod Luitel
2. Teaching and testing tastes of listening and speaking by Bishnu Kumar Khadka
3. Student Centeredness: Reflection on my teaching English at secondary level by Ashok Raj Khati
4. Let’s leave English as English by Resham Bahadur Bista
5. Exploring realities of revisiting research practices in Nepal by Maheshwor Rijal

We hope you enjoy reading the posts in this issues.

Happy Readings!

Lal Bahadur Rana
Editor, NELTA Choutari
May, 2013 Issue

Towards Exploration of Pedagogical Pyramid in the Context of Nepalese ELT

Miscellaneous, Scholarly Article

Dr Binod Luitel
Associate Professor, English Education
CERID, Tribhuvan University

Introduction
‘Pyramid’, one of the ‘7 wonders of the world’, is a marvelous achievement of human civilization, which is flat on the bottom with pointed shape on the top. In this article, I am trying to draw the readers’ attention towards the metaphorical rather than literal meaning of ‘pyramid’ and apply the meaning in the context of classroom with mixed-ability group of learners where their population is extremely varied in terms of the level of language competence. This kind of pedagogical pyramid, instead of being a ‘marvelous’ phenomenon, has been a source of bitter experience for teachers and learners. Moreover, while the physical pyramid has been discussed quite a lot, the pedagogical pyramid depicting the classroom reality has not been a matter of discussion in the mass of Nepalese pedagogues.

If we analyze the traditional classrooms of Nepalese schools and colleges (particularly if the class size is large in students’ population), as I had hypothesized previously (Luitel, 2010, 2011), we can notice such a pyramidal structure of learners’ population – with several layers that make a hierarchy of ‘strata’. Such a structure is noticed from the point of view of learners’ preparatory condition required for learning (such as aptitude and motivation), their participation in learning, and the level of learning achievement – whereby we find a few learners on the top stratum, and the size of the strata increases as we move down from the top in the hierarchical structure. In most cases, this situation either goes unnoticed by the teachers or is neglected even after knowing this ground reality due to various reasons.

To support the hypothesis of pedagogical pyramid, this article seeks data from two works of the author: (1) a research work that has been completed (Luitel, 2012), and (2) an ongoing research (Luitel and others, forthcoming). While the first one was carried out for the purpose of surveying the existing situation of vocabulary knowledge among the students of B.Ed. studying in the campuses of Tribhuvan University who had just completed their study in compulsory English, the latter is being undertaken as an action research among the students who are now studying the same subject at the same level.
Quantitative data derived from learners’ performance in the testing tools designed to test their vocabulary and reading comprehension (vocabulary in the first study and vocabulary plus reading comprehension in the second one) were analyzed. In both the studies, achievement scores were converted into percentage and the students were categorized under various layers of score range, as presented below.

Previous Study
The students’ vocabulary achievement was tested in context as well as out of context. Based on their response in a battery of 5 different vocabulary tests (checklist test, multiple choice test, matching test, selective deletion cloze test and L1-L2 translation test) conducted among 59 participants, the result depicted in the following table shows a hierarchical situation of learners’ population divided into the various layers or ‘strata’.
Layer categories (Score range)          Students
Layer 7 (85-100%)                                    0%
Layer 6 (70-84.9%)                                   12%
Layer 5 (55-69.9%)                                    24%
Layer 4 (40-54.9%)                                  42%
Layer 3 (25-39.9%)                                   22%
Layer 2 (10-24.9%)                                   0%
Layer 1 (0-9.9%)                                         0%

 (Source: Luitel, 2012)

Thus, the total sample population was found in four different layers (6th, 5th, 4th and 3rd), while there was no student in the 1st, 2nd and 7th layers. As such, keeping the case of the bottommost layer of students aside, the figures clearly depicted a pyramidal structure with a narrower space on top and relatively wider space on the bottom. The data showed that the hypothesis of pyramidal structure of learners’ population was proved true at least among 78% students in vocabulary achievement. However, since the sampling of students in the study was completely ‘voluntary’ instead of being ‘random’ or systematic (the subjects were asked to participate in the test if they wished), the study might not have represented the actual bottommost layer of students’ population in the classrooms. A significant portion of their population having poor level of competence had not shown their willingness to participate in testing. Had the students of all intellectual levels participated in the study, the bottommost layer could yield a figure greater than that shown here.

Ongoing Study
In the ongoing action research project, as mentioned above, students of B.Ed. first year have been tested in vocabulary as well as reading comprehension, using the same vocabulary testing tools employed in earlier study; and multiple choice test has been employed to test reading comprehension. These test items were based on the reading texts given in New Generation English (the textbook of General English for B.Ed. students) being taught to the students. Altogether 197 students from 2 campuses of Tribhuvan University (Mahendra Ratna Campus Tahachal; and Surkhet Education Campus) had participated in testing. Unlike in the previous study, the participation of students was not entirely ‘voluntary’: All the students present in the classrooms were encouraged to participate in testing. Based on their correct responses in the testing tools, the students’ performance has been demonstrated below after categorizing them into several layers.
Layer categories (Score range)              Students
Layer 7 (85-100%)                                          0%
Layer 6 (70-84.9%)                                        1.02%
Layer 5 (55-69.9%)                                         0.51%
Layer 4 (40-54.9%)                                       4.06%
Layer 3 (25-39.9%)                                         29.4%
Layer 2 (10-24.9%)                                         56.9%
Layer 1 (0-9.9%)                                               8.12%

It should be noted that students’ performance in the tests has ranged from 4% to 74.4% – showing a drastic difference between the two extremes. As depicted in the table, 6 layers have been identified using the same scale for categorizing students employed earlier. Keeping a small size of students’ population (9.14% including those in layer 1 and layer 6) aside, data have clearly depicted the situation of pyramidal structure of learners – the population size increasing progressively as we go downwards from layer 5 till we reach layer 2.

Reflection
When we confront the situation of a vast degree of intellectual difference between the students studying English in our colleges on one hand and the highly demanding standard of course materials in English offered to them on the other, we are in a dilemma of how to handle the lessons. If we think over why such an ‘unwanted’ kind of disparity occurred among the students who have passed the same level exam, our minds start ‘roaming around’ the contemporary educational situation in the country and mull over the issues related to unhealthy practices in the exam, lack of conducive teaching-learning environment, lack of proper efforts on the part of schools and teachers to transform the situation of teaching-learning, etc.
The quantitative data from two sources just mentioned, of course, represent a huge world of evidence from the English language classrooms at various levels in Nepalese context, whether the language teaching professionals are aware about it or not, and whether the circumstances they are working in is encouraging towards initiating something to deeply reflect on the problem or not. However, the situation can be explained further only after studying our learners closely – including their psychology, personal life stories, educational history, family/household situations, parental education, community situation, etc.

If we are in a position to consider the problem of learner hierarchy with importance, the situation depicted here instigates the need for further exploration into the qualitative dimension of the phenomenon. In this connection, our temptation of inquiry needs to be directed towards studying the variation in learner characteristics associated with the pyramidal structure of classroom population from elementary school to the level of higher education.

Some of the questions that deserve our attention in this regard include the following:

  1. Designated as the ‘same grade students’ (studying in the same class and taught through the same course), what are the factors contributing to such a vast degree of variation among the learners? How far are the factors related to the institutional functioning and environment associated with the hierarchy among learners? Is the environment external to school/college playing role in creating the problem?
  2. Have the learners noticed this situation? What is their perception about it?
  3. Do the learners of different strata have the willingness of working together? Are those in the upper strata willing to support those who are in the lower ones?
  4. How far are teachers noticing this problem? What do they feel about it? Are they thinking creatively to address the issue?
  5. Is the hierarchy temporary or permanent in a learner? Can anything be done to minimize the problem in classrooms and enhance the learning of students from the lower strata in particular?

Concluding Remarks
Particularly for addressing the problems of English language teaching (in schools and colleges), there is the need for focused attention in transforming our classrooms after a thorough study of existing situation incorporating the issues pointed out above and the like. Awareness among stakeholders is an essential condition for initiating any new action in this regard. The traditional ‘preaching’ in the name of teaching without concern for students’ learning cannot address the problem at all. Some of the efforts made by the Campus Level Action Research Team (CLART) members working in two campuses of TU for addressing the learning problems in the areas of vocabulary and reading comprehension in the ongoing action research project mentioned in this article are noteworthy in this connection. The result of this intervention is yet to be seen.

References
Luitel, B. (2010). ‘A Cooperative Learning Model: Strategy to Address Learner Hierarchy’. A paper presented in the 15th International Conference of NELTA, Surkhet, 24-25 February 2010. NELTA Conference Proceedings 2010. Kathmandu: Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association.

_______(2011). Samajik rupantaranka lagi kaksha kotha (“Classroom for social transformation”) Terhathum Today, Monday, 19 Poush 2067 B.S. (3 January, 2011).

________(2012) Vocabulary in the English Language Pedagogy: Input, Process and Product (A Study in the Context of Bachelor’s Degree Level under Faculty of Education, Tribhuvan University). A research report submitted to University Grants Commission/Nepal. Sanothimi, Bhaktapur.

Luitel, B. and et. al. (Forthcoming). Improving Students’ Learning of English and Teacher Professional Development through Action Research: The Case of Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension at B.Ed. Level. An ongoing research project undertaken by CERID with the support of University Grants Commission/Nepal.

Teaching and Testing Tastes of Listening and Speaking

Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Bishnu Kumar Khadka
Vice-chair of NELTA Surkhet


Like in the previous years, the teachers who have been teaching English at the secondary level in Nepal have already examined the listening and speaking abilities of those students who have appeared in the so-called iron gate examination-SLC. The result is due to be published in a few weeks. Perhaps, most of the students will have very good marks of listening and speaking in their mark-sheets irrespective of their actual listening and speaking abilities, because both the students and their subject teachers expect the monitors to assign very good grades. It is because the marks students get in practical examination can also be of very high importance for the divisions they deserve. This is why it is not a matter of surprise for the monitors to give full marks in the listening and speaking tests, no matter how they perform in the practical examinations. In other subjects-accountancy, health population and environment education, science and even computer science students deserve twenty-five by twenty-five without carrying out specific projects or tasks. Thank god, the teachers of the English language require their examinees to listen to the tape and appear in front of them!

My Reflections as a teacher
When I began to teach English some five years back, like many other enthusiastic novice teachers of English, I was proud. I thought I had done the best job, because I could make all the students understand the text. What I would do was to go thorough reading texts and translate each and every line into Nepali from English and ask the students whether or not they had understood. The students would also reply that they had understood. Their affirmative nodding made me feel happy. I also did not think the other ways, because that was how I was taught while I was studying at schools and even colleges. I am deadly sure that teachers in govern-funded schools in Nepal have been doing so, for the one or another reasons, such as students do not understand if teachers teach them in English only or there are more than one hundred students in their classes and so on.

My happiness lasted until I began to think critically on my own teaching. When I was in my third year of teaching, I began to ask a number of questions such as-‘ Do I really help my students in learning English?, Why do I practice teacher centered techniques of teaching though I know that in order to facilitate learners in learning language I should adopt learner centered ones?, Why are there such incompatibilities? and so on. Having pondered in the answers of these questions, I thought that I should change my teaching activities in the classrooms. Since then, I have been trying my best to play the role of a facilitator or co-worker of students. But I faced and even have been facing a lot of challenges. For reading lessons, I ask students to read in groups or individually. While students busy themselves reading the texts, I go around them and support if they have some challenges. Once they have finished reading the given texts and doing the exercises, I ask them to go for the next lesson. Often some of the students say to me, “Hami lai yo path padhaunuhunna sir? (Don’t you teach us this lesson, sir?). Students have stereotypical feeling that if a teacher goes in front them and tells everything in Nepali then only they think that they have learned and the teacher has taught.

In my contexts, teaching English means teaching reading and writing skills only. For these two skills also, learners are confined to the texts or exercises given their text books. Theoretically, I know that teaching language means teaching all language skills and aspects, but practically, I cannot help confining myself in teaching reading and writing only. Listening and speaking are the primary or natural skills of language and therefore teaching and learning of these two skills equal to preparing learners to understand others who use English and make others understand by using English. Despite the importance in real life communications, these two skills are often neglected in our classrooms, may be because we can mange students get good grades even if they perform very poorly in the practical examinations.

My Reflections as a monitor
After getting the monitor training provided by District Education Office for conducting listening and speaking test, I and Parbati, my life partner got the responsibility to conduct the test in one of the SLC examination centers of Surkhet. When we reached the exam center, the administrative personnel of the examination were eager to welcome us and most of the students were waiting there without having lunch. No sooner did the students see us, they hurried to say ‘Namaste’. I found them to be eager to return their homes. They did not seem to be worried about their practical examinations at all. I thought that the test I and Parbati were going to administer had no face validity, because it did not appear to be like a test to the students.

While conducting the listening test, first of all, we gave them a set of instructions on how the students were supposed to take the test. Having distributed question papers and answer sheets, we played the tape. The students looked at us without considering the questions. After playing the tape for the first time, we asked them to write down the answer of the first question and after five minutes we again played the tape for the second question and finally, we played for the third time for proving students with an opportunity to review their answers. But to my great surprise, most of the students had not written the answers of the listening text; rather they were just looking at one another’s face and waiting someone to do something for them. I asked them to write the answer soon considering the time. They shared their inconveniences that they had not listened to any listening texts during their school life and they didn’t understand anything about the text. They said to us, “How could we write the answers if we have not understood the text?” Their question reminded me of my own ELT classes without any practice of listening and speaking skills, meanwhile I missed my students who were expecting high marks in the listening and speaking test. Then, we read out the scripts for the students slowly so that the students could answer the questions.

After completing the listening test, we immediately started to take the speaking test. I asked simple questions starting from the name, address, number of the family members, name of English teacher etc. but most of the students found these questions difficult to respond in English except their names and their English teachers’ names. There were few students who tried to respond in English. When I asked them to describe the pictures, then most of the students started to look at my face rather than at the pictures. I created a fun during the time saying that, “I am not as handsome as the man in the picture “. I asked you to describe the picture not my face. Therefore, please describe the pictures given to you. Most of the students nodded their heads and some of them tried to describe in English and some others replied in Nepali too. I was in moral crisis to circle the marking score because both the students and teachers had expected me to assign high marks in the test. When I checked the answer sheets of the listening test, their scores were very low. Since I was familiar with their listening abilities, I had assigned high scores in speaking test disregarding their performances so that they would get at least pass marks in aggregate. One thing for sure is that they will certainly curse me when the result is out.

Here, my serious concern is not for their performances but for the lack of practice of listening and speaking. Both teachers and students know the fact that they should teach and learn these two skills not only because they are very essential for genuine piece of communication but also for the practical examinations to be administered at the end of an academic session. Undoubtedly, the result of the poor performances in listening and speaking is caused due to the lack of exposure in these skills. Of course, it is we teachers who have to manage the necessary exposure to our students. If we don’t provide exposure and only test the learners in these two skills, it is a kind of injustice to the students. How do we expect the learners to demonstrate their performances in listening and speaking skills without providing them ample opportunities to get exposure? Did we achieve the goal of communicative competence as envisioned by the secondary level curriculum of English?

Testing of listening and speaking skill should be considered as integral parts of teaching learning process and these skills need to be tested on regular bases and the tests should reflect the real life listening and speaking events. These two skills often go together except in very few situations. Therefore, these two skills should be taught and tested in an integrated way. For example, we can make our students listen to the news, sport reports, chatting at a party, hearing announcements over the loudspeaker, interviewing, hearing speech/lecture etc. and let them speak about what they have heard As our present secondary level curriculum suggests, we need to test our students in the use of language functions and this can be done best if we give them situations and ask them to perform in them. If the goal of teaching and learning English is to enable the learners to use English, teaching and testing activities should also be geared towards it.

It is the fact that language is for communication; language means primarily speech and speech means listening and speaking. If we don’t teach listening and speaking, then how can we enable our students to make the users of language? If the students cannot produce single simple utterances in English having been taught for ten years, it is a matter of shame for us. It’s high time to think what we have done so far to support learners in learning English. Therefore, it is mandatory to give due emphasis on teaching listening and speaking in our EFL classrooms. The provision of testing of listening and speaking should not be made just the formality; rather they are to be made an integral part of teaching.

Revisiting Research Practices in Nepal: My Reflection

Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Maheshwor Rijal, KU
maheshwor.rijal@gmail.com

There are several issues related to testing and evaluation in our education system in Nepalese context. Some of those include carelessness in marking systems, delay in examination results, abolishment of entrance exams, habit of reading guess- papers and designing question papers. As a student of Kathmandu University, I accomplished different practical assignments. The educational standards of Kathmandu University (KU) have broadened my horizon of thinking, particularly in terms of almost all the aspects of testing and evaluation including general principle of testing, evaluating test item, designing and conducting test, alternative approaches to students’ evaluation and so forth. However, there are some issues related to testing and evaluation which touched my heart and I have made an attempt to explore current realities of testing particularly research assessment through this blog entry. I believe that my reflective understanding will be one of the lessons for improving and minimizing aforementioned issue allowing conducive environment for learning.

A couple of months ago, while I was busy in finalizing the first draft of my research proposal for my supervisor, one of my friends came into my study room. Observing my hard work and time I was putting into my research proposal endeavor, he was amazed to see piles of reference books on educational researches and EFL pedagogy. We had a long tea-talk until I came to know my friend’s secret suggestion to purchase a ready-made thesis paper. “Oh my God, What a terrific and shameful crime!” I replied to his suggestion. On hearing that, all of my enthusiasms and vigor were gradually going down and down.

Some days later, while I was on my way to Tribhuvan University to search for reference materials in the library, I saw an advertisement of thesis writing services, which was an utter surprise to me. The ad was pasted in the electric pools and walls with contact address and phone numbers of the service provider. It read;

“Available!! Available!!! Thesis of M.A. M.Ed. only for 7000 rupees”

The fact that was more astonishing to me was the contact number of the advertiser explicitly printed on the ad. I moved with my camera and captured the photos of those ads hanging on the electric-posts. I could realize the disgraceful and pitiable fate that is waiting ahead of us. Who is responsible for this? Where is law and order to stop this kind of sinful business? Then, what is the value of testing and evaluation? Such kinds of questions are roaming in my mind even now.

In Kathmandu University, I learned that a research should aim at transforming a society towards further progress. If so, can this type of activity really contribute to the debunking of the existing myth of the society? It is difficult to believe how education can be an efficient instrument for reshaping the quality of the individual, society, and nation at large. I was overwhelmed and stressed even though I am carrying out on my research activities very seriously. Based on my observation and experience, I have found there is no reading habit developed among the youths. Majority of them nowadays hardly go to libraries since majority of them are habituated to pass exams without rigorous studies.

Making educational and intellectual exercises profit oriented cottage industries like selling the thesis is undoubtedly a criminal act. These kinds of crimes should be identified as sharp indicators of overall social degradation, particularly among intellectual circle of the society. Such activities will have negative backwash in teaching and learning. There will certainly be no value of testing and evaluation in terms of dissertation writing and other types of examinations. Unless these heinous and deplorable activities are stopped, there will be no efficiency, validity and reliability of testing, assessment, and evaluation. It will generally affect entire education system.

The famous leader Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which can use to change the world”. Does such issue of testing and evaluation prevailing in our education system be the powerful or destructive weapon to change our society?

It is high time the concerning authorities need pay attention to the prevailing issue or it will adversely affect the whole education system; input, process and output at large.

Creative Writing for Students and Teachers

Creative Writing, Creativity, Critical Outlook, Critical Pedagogy, ELT Resource, English as a Global Language, Global thought, Miscellaneous, Scholarly Article, Writing

Alan Maley

U.K.

Why is it that most institutional systems of education develop such narrow and unadventurous teaching procedures?  How is it that joyful learning somehow gets overwhelmed by institutional rituals: the worship of the syllabus, the obsession with ‘covering’ the textbook, the manic preoccupation with the exam, the compulsion to conform?  It seems that only in rare cases, through the determination of individual teachers, is joyful learning achieved.  In most other cases, the language is reduced to drumming in material as if it were a set of mathematical formulae in preparation for the exam, after which it can safely be discarded.  Small wonder that many students simply switch off  and develop a lifelong aversion to the language in question.  What they learn is neither enjoyable nor perceived as useful in the ‘real’ world outside the classroom.

This applies to much English language teaching too: all too often, it lacks a creative spark.  John McRae goes so far as to say,

“In future years, the absence of imaginative content in language teaching will be considered to have marked a primitive stage of the discipline: the use of purely referential materials limits the learner’s imaginative involvement with the target language, and leads to a one-dimensional learning achievement.  Representational materials make an appeal to the learner’s imagination…”  (McRae 1991:vii)

In this article I shall be arguing for the need to develop more creative approaches to writing as a way of enriching the learning experiences of both teachers and learners.

 

What is Creative Writing?

Creative writing is often contrasted with Expository writing.  I have summarized the principle differences between them in the following table:

   Expository Writing   Creative Writing

 

     Instrumental

 

     Facts

 

     External control

 

     Conventions

 

     Logical

 

     Analytical

 

     Impersonal

 

     Thinking mode

 

    Appeal to the intellect

 

    Avoidance of ambiguity

 

    Aesthetic

 

    Imagination

 

    Internal discipline

 

    Stretching rules

 

    Intuitive

 

    Associative

 

    Personal

 

    Feeling mode (plus thinking!)

 

    Appeal to the senses

 

    Creation of multiple meanings

When writing an expository text we are essentially instrumentally motivated. We have a quantum of facts, ideas and opinions to put across.  Expository writing rests on a framework of externally imposed rules and conventions.  These range from grammatical and lexical accuracy and appropriacy to specific genre constraints.  The aim of expository writing is to be logical, consistent and impersonal and to convey the content as unambiguously as possible to the reader.

Creative writing, by contrast, is aesthetically motivated.  It deals less in facts than in the imaginative representation of emotions, events, characters and experience.  Contrary to what many believe, creative writing is not about license.  It is a highly disciplined activity.  But the discipline is self-imposed: ‘the fascination of what’s difficult’ (Yeats).  In this it stands in contrast to expository writing, which imposes constraints from without.  It often proceeds by stretching the rules of the language to breaking point, testing how far it can go before the language breaks down under the strain of innovation.  Creative writing is a personal activity, involving feeling. This is not to say that thought is absent – far from it.  The ingenuity of a plot, or the intricate structure of a poem are not the products of an unthinking mind: they require a unique combination of thought and feeling – part of what Donald Davie (1994) calls ‘articulate energy.’  An important quality of creative writing however is the way it can evoke sensations.  And, unlike expository writing, it can be read on many different levels and is open to multiple interpretations.

The Case for Creative Writing.

 

It is reasonable to ask however, how we can justify the inclusion of creative writing, in addition to aesthetic reading, in our language teaching practices.  A recent small-scale survey (unpublished data) I conducted among some 50 leading ELT professionals, especially teachers of writing, yielded the following reasons:

1.  Creative writing aids language development at all levels: grammar, vocabulary, phonology and discourse. As learners manipulate the language in interesting and demanding ways, attempting to express uniquely personal meanings (as they do in creative writing), they necessarily engage with the language at a deeper level of processing than with expository texts (Craik and Lockhart 1972).  The gains in grammatical accuracy,  appropriacy and originality of lexical choice, and sensitivity to rhythm, rhyme, stress and intonation are significant.

2. Creative writing also fosters ‘playfulness’.  In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in the role of play in language acquisition. (Cook 2000, Crystal 1998)  In some ways the ‘communicative movement’ has done a disservice to language teaching by its insistence on the exclusively communicative role played by language.  The proponents of play point out, rightly, that in L1 acquisition, much of the language used by children is almost exclusively concerned with play: rhythmical chants and rhymes, word games, jokes and the like.  Furthermore, such playfulness survives into adulthood, so that many social encounters are characterized by language play (puns, jokes, ‘funny voices’, metathesis, and so on) rather than by the direct communication of messages. In creative writing, learners are encouraged to do precisely this: to play creatively with the language in a guilt-free environment.  As Crystal states, ‘Reading and writing do not have to be a prison house.  Release is possible.  And maybe language play can provide the key.’ (Crystal 1998:217)

3. This playful element encourages learners to take risks with the language, to explore it without fear of reproof.  By manipulating the language in this way, they also begin to discover things not only about the language but about themselves.  They effectively begin to develop a ‘second language personality’.

4.  Much of the teaching we do draws and focuses on the left side of the brain, where our logical faculties are said to reside.  Creative writing puts the emphasis on the right side of the brain, with a focus on feelings, physical sensations, intuition, and the like.  This is a healthy restoration of balance between the logical and the intuitive faculties.  It also allows scope for learners whose hemisphere preference or dominance may not be left-brain, and who, in the usual course of teaching, are therefore at a disadvantage.

5.  The dramatic increase in self-confidence and self-esteem which creative writing tends to develop among learners leads to a corresponding increase in motivation.  Dornyei (2001), among others, has pointed to evidence that suggests that among the key  conditions for promoting motivation are:

‘5. Create a pleasant and supportive atmosphere in the classroom

6.  Promote the development of group cohesiveness.

13. Increase the students’ expectancy of success in particular tasks and in learning in

general.

17. Make learning more stimulating and enjoyable by breaking the monotony of

classroom events.

18. Make learning stimulating and enjoyable for the learner by increasing the

attractiveness of tasks.

19. Make learning stimulating and enjoyable for the learners by enlisting them as active

task participants.

20. Present and administer tasks in a motivating way.

23. Provide students with regular experiences of success.

24. Build your learners’ confidence by providing regular encouragement.

28. Increase student motivation by promoting cooperation among the learners.

29. Increase student motivation by actively promoting learner autonomy.

33. Increase learner satisfaction.

34. Offer rewards in a motivational manner.’(Dornyei 2001: 138-144)

All these conditions are met in a well-run creative writing class.  This increase in motivation is certainly supported by my own experience in teaching creative writing.  Learners suddenly realize that they can write something in the foreign language which no one else has ever written before.  And they experience not only a pride in their own products but a joy in the process.

6. Creative writing also feeds into more creative reading.  It is as if, by getting inside the process of creating the text, learners come to intuitively understand how such texts work, and this makes them easier to read.  Likewise, the development of aesthetic reading skills provides the learner with a better understanding of textual construction, and this feeds into their writing.  There is only one thing better than reading a lot for developing writing ~ and that is writing a lot too!

7. Finally, the respondents to the questionnaire survey were almost unanimous in agreeing that creative writing helps to improve expository writing too. In fact, by helping learners to develop an individual voice, it makes their factual writing more genuinely expressive.

All of the above factors were mentioned by the respondents to the questionnaire.  Respondents noted that students who become engaged in CW tasks demonstrate a robust sense of self-esteem and are consequently better motivated (Dornyei 2001).  They also become more aware both of the language and of themselves as learners. The virtuous cycle of success breeding more success is evident with such students.  As they become more self-confident, so they are prepared to invest more of themselves in these creative writing tasks.  Above all, students derive not just ‘fun’ but a deeper sense of enjoyment from their writing.

References

Arnold, Jane.  (1999).  Affect in Language Learning.  Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Boden, Margaret.  (1998)  The Creative Mind.  London: Abacus.

Carter, Ronald.  (2004)  Language and Creativity: the art of common talk.  London: Routledge.

Cook, Guy.  (2000)  Language Play: Language Learning.  Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Craik, F.I.M. and R.S. Lockhart (1972)  ‘Levels of processing: a framework for memory research.’  Journal for verbal learning and Verbal Behaviour II: 617-84.

Crystal, David. (1998)  Language Play.  London: Penguin.

Davie, Donald (1994)  Purity of Diction in English Verse and Articulate Energy.  London: Carcanet.

Day, Richard and Julian Bamford.  (1998)  Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom.  Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press

Dornyei ,Zoltan  (2001) Motivational Strategies in the Language Classroom.  Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Gardner,  Howard. (1985)  Frames of Mind.  London: Paladin Books

Gleick, James. (1988)  Chaos.  London: Sphere Books

Koch, Kenneth. (1990) Rose, where did you get that red?  New York: Vintage Books.

Krashen, Stephen  (2004 second edition) The Power of Reading.  PortsmouthNH: Heinemann

Maley, Alan (ed) (2007 a)) Asian Short Stories for Young Readers.  Vol. 4.  Petaling Jaya: Pearson/Longman Malaysia

Maley, Alan (ed)  (2007 b))  Asian Poems for Young Readers. Vol.5. Petaling Jaya:Pearson/Longman Malaysia.

Maley, Alan and Jayakaran Mukundan.  (eds) (2005 a))  Asian Stories for Young Readers, Vol 1   Petaling Jaya: Pearson/Longman Malaysia.

Maley, Alan and Jayakaran Mukundan  (eds)  (2005 b))  Asian Stories for Young Learners. Vol. 2  Petaling Jaya: Pearson Malaysia

Maley, Alan and Jayakaran Mukundan (eds) (2005 c) Asian Poems for Young Readers.Vol. 3.   Petaling Jaya: Pearson/Longman.

Maley, Alan and Jayakaran Mukundan (eds) (2011a)) Asian Short Stories for Young Readers.  Petaling Jaya: Pearson Malaysia

Maley, Alan and Jayakaran Mukundan (eds)  (2011 b)) Asian Poems for Young Readers. Petaling Jaya: Pearson Malaysia.

Maley, Alan and Jayakaran Mukundan (2011 c))  Writing Poems: a resource book for teachers of English.  Petaling Jaya: Pearson Malaysia

Maley, Alan and Jayakaran Mukundan (2011 d))  Writing Stories; a resource book for teachers of English.  Petaling Jaya: Pearson Mal.aysia

McRae, John  (1991) Literature with a Small ‘l’.  Oxford.: Macmillan.

Matthews, Paul. 1994. Sing Me the Creation.  Stroud:Hawthorn Press.

Mukundan, Jayakaran.  (ed)  (2006) Creative Writing in EFL/ESL Classrooms II.  Petaling Jaya: Pearson Longman Malaysia

Rubdy, Rani and Mario Saraceni (eds) (2006) English in the World: Global Rules, Global Roles.  London/New York: Continuum.

Schmidt, Richard (1990).  ‘The role of  consciousness in second language learning’.  Applied Linguistics. Vol. 11, No. 2 129-158.  Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Schumacher, E.F.  (1974).  Small is Beautiful.  London: Abacus/Sphere Books

Spiro, Jane  (2004)  Creative Poetry Writing.  Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Spiro, Jane.  (2006)  Creative Story-building.  Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Tan, Bee Tin (ed) (2004). Creative Writing in EFL/ESL Classrooms I  Serdang: UPM Press.

Tomlinson, Brian  (1998). ‘Seeing what they mean: helping L2 learners to visualise.’  In B.Tomlinson (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching.  Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.  265-78

Tomlinson, Brian (2001) ‘The inner voice: a critical factor in language learning’  Journal of the Imagination in L2 learning.  VI, 123-154.

Wright, Andrew and David Hill. (2008)  Writing Stories.  Innsbruck: Helbling Languages.

Writers Teach, Teachers Write

Creative Writing, Creativity, ELT Resource, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips, Writing

Kirk Branch

U.S.A.

Over 15 days, I traveled throughout the southern part of Nepal (“I went down,” I tell my friends in the United States, who expect to hear stories of the Himalayas), working with teachers and students – writers – who were looking for ways to incorporate creative writing into their English language classrooms. At the invitation of the U.S. Embassy, and hosted throughout by NELTA representatives in Kathmandu, Birgunj, and Kawasoti, my short trip will stay with me well after my return.

Before every workshop I ran, before the talk I gave in Birgunj, I asked participants a simple question: “How many of you are writers?” Sometimes, nobody raised a hand; occasionally, some raised a tentative hand, nervous about claiming the title of writer but unwilling to say that they weren’t. That question introduced the simple idea at the heart of all the workshops and conversations I had in Nepal: If you are not a writer, you are not qualified to teach writing. How can you teach guitar, if you can’t play guitar? How can you teach volleyball, if you don’t play volleyball? Of course you cannot, or at least you cannot do it very well.

And so, in all the places I traveled, we wrote. We wrote stories, and memoirs, and poems, haikus and slam poetry and fables. I heard stories about family members who sacrificed for their children, poems full of frustration at the current politics of Nepal, diatribes against the bandh. The writings were by turns funny, beautiful, sweet, angry. And we shared the writing, reading aloud, sometimes laughing, sometimes tearing up, sometimes feeling the anger and frustration, always supportive and always curious about what each participant had to say and wanted to explore.

In the process, I hope that the participants began to understand how to think like a writer. Writers know a few things about writing that non-writers don’t usually understand. Perhaps most importantly, writers understand that the rules provided in textbooks and in official curricula are usually too simple and often are just wrong. Some writers use an outline when they write, but most don’t. Some writers create texts with only five paragraphs, but most don’t. Some writers have a topic sentence at the front of every paragraph, but most don’t. Teachers who write as well as teach writing are better able to help other writers find things to write about and support them as they create a text, not by giving them strict rules, but by offering knowledgeable support.

All writers know that writing is hard, that becoming a more proficient writer requires regular practice, that even people who write for a living struggle with openings and agonize through several drafts to reach a level of satisfaction with their work. All writers know that at some point, they have to share their work with an audience, that their main job is to connect with that audience, and that all the questions they have about style and structure matter not because they are “rules for writing” but because style and structure are the ways the ideas of a writer become accessible for that audience.  All writers know that the work of learning to write never stops, that a piece of writing can always improve, that writers need support and encouragement as much as they need criticism and commentary.

By the end of the workshops I ran, by the end of my trip, more people raised their hands when I asked “Who here is a writer?” I hope that even more would raise their hands now. Being a writer, identifying as a writer, requires only that a person write, commit on a regular basis to the work of sitting with a piece of paper or in front of a computer screen and filling it with words, with language. I hope that these newly identified writers in Nepal experience the joy of discovery, of writing something they didn’t know they thought, of surprising themselves with a beautiful image or important idea or funny description. And I hope they share their writing with other writers and inspire them as well with their ideas.

Mostly, I hope these new writers – these writers who teach writing – use their experiences as writers to help their students engage with the task of writing and reading. I hope all the writers who are also teachers of the English language in Nepal will harness the creative power of their students to inspire each other and embrace the joy of creation, to write texts they care deeply about and want to share with other students.

Like teachers all over the world, teachers in Nepal must follow official curricula, must prepare students for tests required by the government. Like teachers everywhere, teachers in Nepal sometimes become frustrated by these requirements because they do not allow enough freedom for teachers. I hope that by joining with other teachers, by learning the power of creative writing, of helping students learn language – any language – by helping them become excited about what they have to say, teachers in Nepal can start to have more voice in shaping a curriculum they are excited to teach!

I end this piece with a poem I wrote during a workshop at the NELTA headquarters in Kathmandu, with a group of teachers and students who walked as much as 12 kilometers over the course of a 2-day bandh, to participate. I dedicate this poem to them, and to all the other participants I met in Birgunj and Kawasoti, who inspired and excited me to do my best teaching, who took my challenge to become writers, who I hope I will see again. It’s dedicated to all the people at NELTA who made my trip so wonderful and engaging. I hope I have a chance to meet some of you again. I promise I will never forget you!

Whose language is this, English?

Can I call it mine,

this language of my childhood stories,

my mother’s soothing,

my father’s rebukes,

my brothers’ tauntings,

my teacher’s lessons,

my lover’s caresses?

Yes, it is my language!

Does that mean I own it?

Do you own the water you hold in your hands?

Do you own the air you breathe into your lungs?

Do you own the spirit that animates your soul?

What Writers Need to Know about Starting and Then Getting Better at Writing

Creative Writing, Creativity, ELT Resource, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips, Writing

Jayakaran Mukundan

Malaysia

Most people think they cannot write and when they start having these thoughts they will never begin writing. It is not easy to write a poem or a story if you haven’t done much of it but if you start and if it isn’t good at least you have tried. Once you start, get someone who writes frequently to look at your work. Get advice and then re-work your stories and poems. Once you finish start on new work so that you get “addicted” to it. Here below is some advice on how to get started and how to keep the momentum:

  1. If you have written a story or poem and after a while you don’t like it, don’t throw it away. Get some advice from people who write often and ask for help on improvements. Rework the poem or story and then show the expert to see if he/she likes it after the changes
  2. Sometimes no matter how much you try your writing stalls and this is referred to as “blocking”. You may then be, without your conscious knowledge, a “blocker”. People who are blockers are usually writers who are too afraid of making mistakes. If you are this sort of person, learn to relax and have a positive attitude towards your writing. Just keep writing and tell yourself you will change course or look at errors after you have written a page or two. If you worry about bad ideas or errors you may never get to start!
  3. Read more stories and poems and get ideas from professional writers. The more we read the more we are aware of how other people write their stories. We cannot copy these stories but we can learn some strategies so that our stories get better.
  4. If interested in writing poems but you have no idea as to how to start, get a reference which deals with scaffolding strategies that help learners become beginner poets. All you have to do is to learn some of the patterns (for form poems) and then you are on your way!
  5. In order to boost your confidence try publishing your work. The Regional Creative Writing Group does publish the work of amateur writers. Even if you don’t join the group, you can send in work (there may be a representative of the group in your country!)
  6. When you go to places like your ancestral village listen to what elders would say. Keep a record in your notebook. These may become ideas for new writing. When you are free try recalling some things at school like a teacher who is funny or a teacher who constantly forgets. Try writing poems about these people. In fact try writing about people in your family.
  7. Photographs are a good way to start writing. When at home sit with an older person; your father or mother and grandparents. Go through the family album with them and try getting as many stories about people and places from them.  Family albums are a great way to start writing stories and poems.
  8. Last but not least never say you can’t write. Most people who say this end up being good writers after some practice!

Some observations on Nepali teachers writers during the recently concluded Creative Writing Workshops

Generally different people have different personalities and individual preferences, hence write differently. Generally Nepali teachers are very enthusiastic. When at first they were taught scaffolding techniques they began to realize that they could write. This took place when they were taught some scaffolding templates for developing form poems. These exercises soon raised their eagerness to experiment, manipulate and essentially “play” with the language. When they started playing with language the creativity of these teachers soon began to show!

The writing trip was another instance where they learnt to write creatively “after making close observation”. It was good opportunity for them to realize that writing was not just confined to classrooms. The entire space that surrounds them can be inspiration for their writing. Many of the participants confirmed that they would also be working on creative writing projects with their own students after the workshops. That was indeed nice to hear!

Birgunj Truly Represents Nepal

Creative Writing, Creativity, ELT Resource, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips, Writing

-Vishnu S Rai

Place: Kailash Hotel, Birgunj

Date and time: March 8, 7 PM.

We are standing at the threshold of the hotel to greet the members of the Asian English Teachers’ Creative Writing Group (AETCWG). There is excitement in the air. People are expectant: cameras ready.

A Hias approaches us slowly and stops. The doors open and produces Jay from Malaysia, Iqbal from Pakistan, Kanokon from Thailand, Li Wei from China and Moti, Sarita, Tapasi and Maya from Kathmandu in a row. Then, slowly from the open door emerges the saintly figure of Alan Maley from the UK. Cameras start clicking, there are handshakes and the sounds of pleasures, “Nice to see you again’, ‘Welcome to Nepal’ are heard. The group is joined by Kirk from the USA and the group slowly enters the hotel.

They are the members of the AETCWG who have come to Birgunj from different parts of the globe to meet at their annual meeting and produce creative works that can be used in ELT classrooms on one hand, and to help develop creativity in those English teachers of the region who aspire to be creative. They are here to break the myth that only the god-gifted people can be creative.

Man is not anything by birth

He is what he makes himself

By passion,

Diligence, and

hard work.

9th March: Workshop Day 1

The first day of the workshop starts with introduction of the new members from Birgunj. They are Sajan Kumar, Suresh Shrestha, Ram Abadhesh Ray, Praveen Yadav, Kamalesh Raut and Jyoti Tiwari. The best thing of AETCWG workshop is that there are no formalities of opening, etc. It starts its works like a big family. There is no President or General Secretary and there is no membership fee. Anyone can be the member of the group provided that they, from the bottom of their heart, want to write.

Alan does some warm activities and then the members start looking at each other’s writings for the sake of discussion, constructive comments and feedback. They work for the whole day until it’s time to stop. One example is given below which is based on the painting ‘Nighthawk’.

Empty city

With light and all

Preoccupied people

With lost soul.

Lots of food

But no apetite

Lost in thought

Tongue tied.

Eerie feeling

Gloomy atmosphere

Empty heart

Nothing to share.

Neither they want

to show nor to be seen

In this very world

We pay for our sin.

10th March: Workshop Day 2

The group is ready to go for a writing trip. Each member has been asked to observe things on the way and make notes which can later be developed into poems and haibuns.  The group reaches Trikhandi –the crystal clear water of the river is hurrying down like someone who hurries to meet their love. People are bathing in the river and the goddess watches them benevolently from her little temple perched on a rock just over the river.

The group later visits the martyr park and pays their homage to those brave sons of Nepal who sacrificed their lives for us so that we could breathe in the free and fresh air of democracy. The group returns to Kailash at 6. An example from the writing trip is given below in the form of a haiku.

A chimney and a

Hospital stands side by side

Demand and supply

11th March: Workshop Day 3

The group members present their creative ideas and activities that can be used in the actual classroom situation. For example, the members were asked to pick up a stone which they liked and observe it carefully: its colour, shape, size, touch everything, and then write about it in the first person as if the stone was telling its story. The same could be done with the students. I picked up a small stone which was smooth by touch and had the shape of a heart. Here is what I wrote about it. Other members also wrote about their stone and each writing was different

I’m a stone.

I’m the heart stone.

You might think how could there be a heart stone.

But I am.

I’m the heart stone.

No, seriously.

Look at me!

You see my shape? It’s like a heart.

Touch me!

Do you feel my softness?

No, no. Please don’t rub me with your rough fingers.

Put me onto your cheek and then you’ll feel how soft a heart is.

I’m not a heart made of stone.

I’m the heart stone.

Would you pick me up?

I suggest you should.

You can take me to your love, to your sweetheart.

They will be so happy.

A heart stone as a souvenir from a river of Nepal.

And what’s better than making your love smile which brightens your own heart.

Would you now pick me up?

Gently please!

For I’m the heart stone.

The workshop ends with the discussion of publishing the workshop products and the next meeting of the group in some other country.

12 March: Conference Day 1

The conference starts one hour late which is unusual to the foreign guests. Some muttering and grumbling are heard but later they realize that it is not a big deal in Nepal to be late.

How time flies for non-Nepalis

When they are having fun

It travels slowly for Nepalis

Like a penguin walks in the sun

The conference was inaugurated by Prof. Dr. Gobinda Raj Bhattarai which was followed by the presentation of the keynote speaker Prof. Alan Maley. Next: Dr. Kirk form the US gave his plenary talk which was followed by the concurrent sessions.

It was a pleasant surprise to find participants in such a great number from the adjacent districts viz. Dhanusha, Mahottari, Bara, Makwanpur and as far as from Kailali.

13th March: Conference Day 2

The second day of the conference started with the plenary from Prof. Dr. Bhattarai, followed by Dr. Vishnu S Rai and Prof. Dr. Jayakaran Munkundan. After the lunch break concurrent sessions started.

One of the special features of the conference was that at the end there was poetry recitation programme for one and a half hours in which poets recited the poems in five different languages viz. English, Nepali, Bhojpuri, Maithili, and Punjabi. Here is a poem recited in the ceremony.

My Child’s Eyes

I walked through the windows

Of my child’s eyes

Into a world of wonder

Where the grass is always green,

No sky is ever anything but blue,

The sun shines eternally from one corner,

Houses puff dainty smoke for ever –

And people never cry.

A land of bright-eyed foxes,

Breathtaking birds,

(Occasionally flying upside-down),

Daddies and mummies,

And people who never die.

And then I walked out again,

Crying for the innocence she’ll lose.

I walked through the window of my child’s heart –

Trying not to break it.

Birgunj hospitality

The members of the group were overwhelmed by the generous hospitability of the host. They were taken to different local members’ home for dinner to taste typical hill and Terai dishes of Nepal. They ate Gundruk and Dhindo, Dahibada and Kadhi,  Mohi and Lassi and what not. Nepal is a multilingual, multicultural country and the work/conference reflected it in its papers, its poems, its food and its cultural performances. This was a great experience. Birgunj truly represents Nepal –a town where Hills and Terai and their different cultures and languages meet together and turn into a mosaic.

My Reflection on Birgunj Conference

Creative Writing, Creativity, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips,

Kanokon  Opasmongkonchai

Thailand

One of my great experiences which I’d like to share with you was to attend the conference that took place in Birgunj, Nepal on 12 -13 March 2013. It was Asian English Teachers’ Creative Writing Conference (2013), in which apart from gaining knowledge from expert creative writers, Prof.Alan Maley, Prof. Jayakaran Mukundan, Dr Kirk Branch, Prof. Dr. Govinda Raj Bhattarai, Dr. Vishnu Singh Rai and other scholars, I also obtained friendship with warm hospitality, as well as Nepalese cultural learning.

In fact, I had been there in Birgunj in a team four days before the conference. We had a three-day pre-conference session of only core group members. In the session I got acquainted with some new faces. We shared our poems and stories and had peer-editing that offered an ample opportunity to understand and learn how uniquely we take up creativity. The second day was much more memorable. We had a trip to Trikhandi on a bus. It was about three hours to the south of Birgunj. There I saw mountains stand very close all around and a clean stream rush down. I felt it special for getting intimacy with nature. We were there to empower our creative writing being close to nature. We all carried some stones of our choice and I brought back a heart-shaped one. On the third day we had a great time sharing our poems and stories that we had composed on the stones we had carried. It was of the greatest significance, since we had penned what we had observed on our field trip. It gave us another but the most crucial lesson how to find our surroundings in our literary work.

It was on March 12, the first day of the conference after the key speech by Prof. Alan Maley and a plenary session by Dr. Kirk Branch, I had a paper to present in one of the buildings of a nearby college. I was delighted to have about 35 participants to join the creative writing activity with me “Using a Picture to Stimulate Creative Writing.” I was very much impressed by participants who paid a great attention to the activity. While making a presentation, I wondered if the picture would be too difficult for them to write on or not. But, with their abilities and talents, it was obvious that they could write poems and short stories rapidly and colorfully, indeed.

Here are some of the poems on the pictures that they composed during the session and that I would love to share with you hoping that you may also try writing:

My Heart Says  

Oh, Dear
You look as fresh as dew
I don’t have many words to say
But only few
You are the old one for others
But in my sight, you are always new
I am the sky, you are my moon
When I see you, I forget the morning or noon
I have devoted my heart to someone and that is you
No matter you love me or not
But dear, really I love you

(Krishna Chaudhary)

Mona Lisa’s Change  

Oh, Mona Lisa
Pure and pretty woman
You’re born in a palace
And you end in the Mc Donald’s
Why you change your life?
I know well, my Mona
You don’t like the servants
You just wish a coca- cola!

(By Spanish participant)

……………………………….

What eyes she has,

What eyes!

It’s hardly a surprise

That millions have looked into them –

She looks so calm and wise.

But if, by some strange chance

We passed with a quick glance

Today,

Would we even spare the time

To ask her for a dance?

Or simply walk away?

(Alan)

………

And my friendly souvenir to you:

Let’s Smile!

Nothing to pay
When you smile.
So, let’s smile.

Something you gain
Is friendship
Hope
Joy
Peace
So, let’s smile.

Anything makes you pain,
Forget it awhile.
So, let’s smile.
Smile! Smile! Smile!
(Kanokon Opasmongkonchai)

Pictures used in the workshop:

Picture1

To my mind, participants were quite active and confident of doing the activity with me. They had proudly presented their writings. It was very nice that they had different views-points to write, so it made the workshop more interesting, making me feel that they could secure their own space for potential writers to grow out of them! Best Wishes!!

After the paper presentations on the first day, we got back to the Town Hall to observe the cultural program held by cute school boys and girls. Several times they got me to feel like singing and dancing next to them. They sang songs and danced so well that I couldn’t at all feel how swiftly time had flown away. I also learnt about the diverse cultures in the country through their dresses.

On the second day just before the closing ceremony we had another literary taste. It was a poetry recitation. Several participants including Prof. Maley, Dr. Branch, Prof. Bhattarai, Dr. Rai recited their poems in different languages – English, Nepali, Bhojpuri, Maithili, etc. Although I could not understand the poems in the languages other than in English, yet I could perceive their elegance through the ways they were recited. It was really a good example of multi-lingual harmony in Nepal.

In my view, creative writing is the best challenge to accept if you are learning to write. It requires a great deal of patience as well as love to do that. Maybe love should come first. Self-discipline to practice writing with figurative languages together with observing things around us deeply and correctly with imagination is a very important qualification of being a good creative writer. It is certain that it gives us pain when the idea doesn’t come out and in particular when we write in English, which is not our mother tongue. But, when the good result ripens, I dare say it’s worth it, indeed!

Before taking leave, what I am feeling now is:

Loneliness is…

Loneliness

Is

Fungus:

It’s fast to grow

It’s hard to heal

Its root

Is too deep

To eradicate

And

Ready

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Blog on Creative Writing Workshop and Conference in Birgunj, Nepal

Creative Writing, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes, Teaching Tips, Writing, , , ,

Li Wei

China

March 9-13th, 2013

This is my fifth time attending Creative Writing Workshop since 2006. I have been to Vietnam, Indonesia, and Nepal with other core group members during the past few years. Birgunj has been my second trip in Nepal. I have had wonderful memories about the beauty of local natural scenery and the hospitality of local people. The experience in Birgunj has deepened the unforgettable impression of Nepalese culture and people.

Every time when I prepared to attend the creative writing workshop, I went through a very energetic and productive period of writing. The time constraints pushed me to engage in the writing, thinking, creating and rewriting cycles. My mind has been occupied by the inspiration of creative impulse and the floating images occurring from my life experience and my imagination. I was often tortured by the writer’s block at the very beginning. Facing the blank paper, my mind was full of unknown thoughts. It seemed so difficult to get started sometimes that I switched to absent-minded state. Usually, the nervous mind got relaxed during the time. Then the inspiration returned little by little and the writing process started from the moment I typed in words on the computer screen. Once I started writing, my hands would be led by the inner talk or ideas appearing in mind. As an effective way for me to keep writing creatively, free writing helped a lot.

Writing leads to rewriting. It becomes much easier to rewrite or revise once there are plenty of words on paper waiting to be reshaped and processed. Our brain works better under a little bit pressure but not so well under an enormous burden of the external or internal pressure. Facing a blank page brings much more pressure for a novice writer, which stops him or her to pick up courage and start writing. While facing a fully occupied written page, the brain is more relaxed and ready to cut dissatisfied parts and add more details from visualization. After some practice, gradually I come to understand the tips of overcoming writer’s block, which are free writing without self-judgment or self-criticism and fast writing without thinking too hard or worrying too much. Free writing and fast writing are the two best ways for me to start writing and keep on writing whenever I face the blank page. In addition, extensive reading and journal writing can also bring inspiration now and then.

Things are getting much easier when the first draft is ready to be read. Revision is cooking a ready-made dish with some sources and refreshing views. Inspiration only comes naturally after racking one’s brain. It is a bit like giving birth to a baby. Thinking is the pregnant process and inspiration is like the hard push. The new-born baby looks ugly as if the first draft seems rough and imperfect at the first glance. Revision and rewriting are the upbringing process, which take a lot of energy of the writer but the writing piece is taking shape after some hard work. In the creative writing workshop, every participant shows others his or her prepared writing as if showing the photos of the cute baby. Then the readers are supposed to give comments or suggestions to the writer.

The communication between the readers and the writers is crucial during the revision process. The writer can receive different opinions from different readers and find out the weaknesses or shortcomings in his or her writing as well as the positive feedback about the writing. The whole communication process is carried out in a friendly and helpful atmosphere. No one should be laughed at or belittled during the mutual comment process. It is often an interesting process to discover how your readers understand your story or poems in a slightly different way according to their own life experiences and cultural backgrounds. If the writing touches the heart of the reader, it can be shared in experience universally no matter which culture it might represent. There are a lot of commonality among human life experiences and emotions. Cultural differences bring diversified settings and environment into the story and show various mentality of the main character, but the basic emotions are in common.

In our creative writing workshop we worked as a team. We read one another’s story and poems, and then we gave our comment to the writer. I could often learn a lot from my readers and realize how to revise my work. For example, as core group members, we were required to write about a picture called Nighthawks. It was interesting to discover that everyone saw the same picture in different ways. Although the main theme was the same about solitude or loneliness, the writers in different ages and from different cultural backgrounds did illustrate the picture in their own way. It was inspiring to read various poems written about the famous painting Nighthawks. The universal emotion of human being was very influential and powerful. Writing from observing a picture was also an effective way to learn to observe carefully and write something out of box. The picture was the stimulator and the restraint. We need to observe the characters in the picture and we also need to think imaginatively out of the picture. As creative writers, we should not be locked into the picture itself like the main characters in it, but we should jump out of the frame and write something unseen.

Talking about my presentation during the concurrent session, it had attracted a roomful of audience and most of them were students in the university. They were eager to listen to my talk and I could feel their enthusiasm from their eyes. I divided my talk into two parts. The first part was about what creative writing meant to me. I thought creative writing had made me love writing much more than before. It was a process of learning to write and also a process of self-discovery. Whenever I tried to create a character, my life experience and people who were familiar to me were jumping into my mind. I thought creative writing could not come from an empty space. The seeds of a story must lie somewhere in our daily life. Through reflection and observation, stories would take shape in some way or another. The second part was about activities which could be used in English writing classes of different levels. Even some very simple activity could lead learners to create unexpectedly beautiful poems through right guidance. For example,

‘When I think of …

I can see…

I can smell…

I can taste…’

One girl in my presentation room wrote about sunset in the form of the above simple pattern. It was so beautifully written that I could not help offering my praise to her in front of the audience. Her poem really inspired me to use the simple-form poem activity with more advanced students because their imagination and language expression were more interesting in a way. Although the form could be simple, the ideas and the feelings were thought-provoking without limitation. Once learners knew how to play with words within the restraints of the form, their thoughts and imagination could be as flexible as the flowing water which could be filled into any shape. I felt the most rewarding experience of doing creative writing was that the potential inner creativity of oneself could be stimulated in the process of word play. The sense of achievement was fulfilling for most English learners. To find your own voice and express your inner thoughts in a foreign language were very challenging as well as exciting. The happiness of composing a short poem or a short story was so strong that the painful producing process seemed bearable.

In a word, the Birgunj Creative Writing Workshop and Conference were very successful and unforgettable with the help of many organizers and participants. I believed that there would be more creative writers appearing in Birgunj who would love to share their stories and their poems with the rest of the world in both Nepalese language and the world language English. Let’s write and enjoy!

Key Speaker Dr. Richard Smith’s Key Speech and Plenary

English as a Global Language, Global thought, Miscellaneous

Transformations in ELT: Contexts, Agents and Opportunity- Key Speech

Professor Richard Smith began his talk with a brief historical overview of western language teaching methods and their export, highlighting the needs revealed by this history for teaching methodology to be appropriate in context. Moving on to agents, he stressed that the main agents of change in ELT are teachers, and he argued for the idea that the genuine transformations only tend to happen gradually, from within existing affordances. Finally, then, he laid emphasis on some practical and realistic opportunities for teacher development and teacher research which have the potential, at least, to bring about lasting change. For his presentation slides/materials, please click here Transformations in ELT: Contexts, Agents and Opportunity

Teaching Large Classes: Plenary

Referring to cases of good practice from recent research in developing country contexts, he has shared the findings on how  some teachers and learners have addressed difficult circumstances including large class size, lack of resources and heterogeneous groupings. On this basis, he mapped out some directions for future  teacher development and research work, drawing particular attention to the activities of the Teaching English in Large Classes network. For Dr. Smith’s plenary talk on teaching large classes, please click the link Teaching Large Classes 

 Teaching and Researching Large Classes: Workshop

Building on his plenary  ‘Teaching Large Classes’, Dr. Smith encouraged the participants to share their own recent teaching successes. He also mediated further ideas from teachers elsewhere, and he showed how they can show themselves do research into the problems they face without too much added burden, indeed actually lightening their load.

Key Speaker Dr. JoAnn (Jody) Crandall’s Key Speech and Plenary

English as a Global Language, Global thought, Miscellaneous

Preparing Global Citizens for the 21st Century: The Role of Content-Based Language Instruction – Key Speech

Content based language instruction has a valuable role to play in preparing global citizens in an increasingly interconnected world. It builds content knowledge and offers the possibility of integrating the “21st century skills” of critical thinking, problem solving, communication and collaboration. It also fosters authentic use of language, with real purposes and audiences, in a range print and digital literacy and in contexts that promote authentic and often intercultural communication. These skills can begin to be introduced to young learners in language programs and ne expanded as students move through secondary school and the university to achieve more advanced language, literacy and content knowledge and skills. For her key speech, please click the link here Prepari_Global_Citizens-Role_of_CBI_CLILNepalfnl

The Expanding World of the ELT Professional: Opportunities and Challenges – Plenary

A number of factors have come together to make the world of English language teaching one of increasing opportunities. These factors include the globalization of English, the introduction of English in early grades, the increasing use of English as a medium of instruction at some level of education (especially higher education), the increasing reliance upon digital technologies, and the rapid creation of new knowledges, which if met, enable us to continue to grow and perhaps, reverse the tendency to “burn out” or become less motivated by the profession we have chosen. Dr. Crandall’s talk focused on the opportunities and challenges that are presented to us in the new life cycle of an ELT professional. Please go through her presentation in the plenary by clicking the link ExpandingWorldofTESOLProfessionalNepalfnl

Culture as Content in the ELT Classroom: Helping Learners Develop Intercultural Competence – Plenary

The language classroom has long been seen as a natural context for the teaching of both explicit and implicit culture. We include cultural practices and institutions, customs and traditions, verbal and nonverbal communication and many more cultural topics in our classes (Datesman, Crandall & Kearny, 2005) In many English classes, we also include both target (where the language is widely spoken) and source (the students’ own) culture, since one goal of the language class is to help students better understand their own culture. But the role of the culture in the English classroom is more complex and the goal of intercultural competence even more critical, as English is used internationally to communicate across cultures. Thus, those of us who teach English as foreign or additional language (EFL/EIL classes need to take responsibility to build students’ intercultural communication skills in order to prepare them to be effective users of English in global contexts. An important step is to build a “sphere of interculturality  ” (Kramsch 1993) in the EFL classroom that promotes a healthy process of learning about cultural difference through reflection on one’s own culture. That can be followed by the use of a number of activities to promote intercultural awareness, knowledge, tolerance/respect, and behavour and to help learners develop increasing “intercultural sensitivity” (Bennet 1993) and intercultural competence.  Please click the link Culture as Content in EFL-EIL- Helping Learners to fnl for the materials/slides presented in the plenary.

Take-away of this year’s NELTA Conference Key Speeches

English as a Global Language, Global thought, Miscellaneous, Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Ganga Gautam

NELTA Member

This year’s NELTA conference began with the two powerful key speeches;

1)      Dr. Richard Smith – Transformations in ELT – Contexts, Agents and Opportunities

2)      Prof. Dr. Jodi Crandal–Preparing Global Citizens: The Role of Content-BasedLanguage Instruction (for English language instruction at all levels)

Dr. Smith in his presentation talked about how ELT has undergone massive transformation and he highlighted the key milestones of the shitfs in the ELT paradigms. One of the important messages that Dr. Smith brought in his presentation was the shift in the teaching methodology. He made endeavors  to communicate that talking about the single generalized method of teaching would be irrelevant at present context because it is the teachers who invent and create the methods by themselves based on the local contexts and the need of the learners at the local level. Rather than just following the approaches and methods from the BANA countries, it would be wise for the teachers to look at those methods and see how they can judiciously use them with the modifications and changes to suit their learners and the local context. Collaboration among the teachers from different settings would thus, produces appropriate methodology for the teachers. The methodological inventions are, therefore, bottom-up and they are led by the teachers rather than top-down as it was in the past. He concluded the session with a thoughtful question

“How can you bring about appropriate transformations in your ELT practice, in your own context, as an agent – at least partially — of your own destiny, and what opportunities do you see for supporting your students’ as well as your own development?”

The second key speech, which was given by Dr. Crandal, highlighted the role of content integration in the EFL/ESL materials. She shared that the global citizens of the current world need the 21st century skills and the EFL/ESL classes should include the materials from the wide array of disciplines so that the language teaching becomes not only lively and meaningful for the learners but also expose the students to the materials they will encounter in their real world after graduation. She also presented how language and content can be integrated together and shared some examples of the collaborative efforts made by language and content teachers to implement content integrated language teaching and learning in class.

So the take-away of the conference from these sessions is that it is the teacher who is responsible to make the methodological decisions in the local context to suit the learners’ need, interest, culture, their native language and so on. Collaboration with other teachers at the local, regional, national and international level will promote mutual learning building upon the successes in different countries and enhance professional harmony among the practitioners. Similarly, the integration of language with the content area subjects will promote thinking skills among the learners and the learning will be authentic for our students.