Madhav Kafle

In this narrative I share with you my recent realization that despite self-labeling myself a practitioner of critical pedagogy, I do keep following the old teaching tricks in most instances. To begin with, early on my academic journey as a learner, I had figured out that my answers can be only either right or wrong; and the more difficult and arcane words I used in my writings, the more impressed would my teachers be. My very attitude sustained during most part of my graduate teacher training both in Nepal and in the US. However, I was also fortunate enough to get an opportunity to work with champions of critical pedagogy in both countries, and to develop my teaching philosophy and practice accordingly. Nevertheless, I am starting to realize my current practice is not adequate enough to make the pedagogy truly critical. Let me first point out the gap between what I preach and what I practice.

What I think I preach: I’m a language and literacy specialist who believes that languages are mobile resources rather than discrete and fixed entities. What that means is we need to focus on the process of meaning making–not on a predefined form of grammar. Social practice outweighs the individual competence; therefore, assessment practices should acknowledge, if not reflect, that. Learners not only use language, they also change the language; we should not treat the target (language) community as a homogeneous one. Overemphasis to verbal features of the text is limiting as meaning is often created by integrating multiple codes and modalities. Similarly, language learning is a quite dynamic and complex system and does not necessarily follow the same incremental pattern. Even more, I’m all for integrating local epistemologies in my pedagogy;I would like to use what students bring with them as their resources to build up on. All of these sound great, don’t they?

Here is what I practice: Yes, I’m a language and literacy teacher, who keeps correcting my students based on the superficial grammatical errors they make rather than complimenting them on their ability to connect various texts. If they bring in some nuances I’m unfamiliar with, then, I think that they are wrong. I judge my students based on the product not on the process. Despite high level content, I penalize them for using a wrong article when, in fact, I’m still not confident about my own use of articles. Rather than being concerned with if they will be able to utilize their repertoire to accomplish some functions, I’m obsessed with if they will follow what I think are the correct features of academic discourse. And, I’ve to teach them how they should read and write, despite at times lacking knowledge of what goes on in their broader academic communities.

I suspect there is not much I can change in some academic settings. However, something must be missing in my current practice, which hardly can meet the goal of critical language and literacy teaching.Yet, I try to justify my helplessness. One mundane logic that soothes me: I’ve to do my “stuff” as it is generally expected, plus I don’t have a whole lot of time (and resources) with me to improve my practice. Next, in a multilingual class, I also take for granted my expertise in dominant tongue, which assists me to disregard the minority languages. Alternatively, I can pretend that I can’t do anything for the students because I don’t have a competence in most of my learners’ languages as they generally hail from China, Korea, and Puerto Rico than from Nepal. And, yet, I become wishful that whatever I do in class will somehow assist my students to be critical in the long run as long as I keep browsing the critical pedagogy literature. May be to test my pedagogical competence, some students from Nepal have finally landed in my current university this semester. Unfortunately, the current semester is already half way through, still I find myself at unease to do something really critical in class as the majority of the students are from elsewhere. But aren’t those lame excuses?

Now let me get real.In a nutshell, one of the major goals of teaching language and literacy is to enable learners to “language.” So, what does languaging entail? We use language for some tangible purposes. The real question, therefore, is in what ways we can involve our students in real actions, where meaning making can unfold by itself.Some might argue that since we have the hurdle of standardized testingand our academic culture also prioritizes the grades rather than the learning process, languaging is not a good option. However, while I do not mean to neglect these conditions, by being obsessed with gatekeeping we are already undermining students’ creative languaging. If we create some safe houses for them and let them play with the semiotic process judiciously that will provide an opportunity for the students to be real language users. I’m not saying that we as teachers can let students do anything they want in the name of providing agency. Nevertheless, we should not hesitate in letting the students to experience the process of languaging. Please share what you have been doing already or what possibilities you see in this light.

Madhu Neupane

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt.

With Eleanor Roosevelt’s quotation mentioned above, George Pickering (also a life member of NELTA and the past key note speaker of its international conference), who trains English teachers and supports Teachers’ Associations (TAs) facilitated the seminar ‘Sharing Best Practices: Strengthening and Extending Teachers’ Associations in South Asia’ on 11-16 December 2011 in the Brac. Inc, Savar on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. There were thirty participants representing seven different TAs from South Asia: NELTA (Nepal), ELTA-A (Afghanistan), BELTA (Bangladesh), ELTAI (India), AzerELTA (Iran), SPELT (Pakistan) and Sri Lanka (SLELTA). I, along with other three members (Mr. Bishnu Silwal, Mr. Min Bahadur Gurung and Mr. Shankar Datta Bhatta) participated in the seminar that was organized by the Hornby Regional School (HRS), Dhaka Bangladesh with the British Council support.

There were three main purposes of organizing the seminar: to offer TA participants a platform for sharing their success stories and best practices in key areas; to review TAs’ current strategic plans and facilitate on how to prepare an effective strategic plan; and to provide the participants with substantial capacity building training for strengthening and extending TAs in South Asia. The capacity building training was focused mainly on the core financial management skills like marketing, fund-raising and sponsorship, keeping membership databases, empowerment of members, and promotion of more transparent succession planning through open voting, recruitment, and role shadowing and mentoring. Besides, the seminar provided an opportunity for the TAs in South Asia to establish stronger links among them.

Key points of the discussion during the seminar

We were asked if TAs have their strategic plan, which most of TAs had. Following the review of our plans, the course director provided us with some guidelines for preparing better strategic plans. The analysis of the current situation, considering both internal and external customers, using the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) framework is important for preparing a strategic plan. While objective, which should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound) is a key component of a strategic planning, its implementation and monitoring are equally important. We all participated in a selective attention test that showed us how we miss another aspect while focusing on one aspect. We concluded with the fact that proper strategic planning from the bottom-up is unnecessary to materialize the mission of TAs.

Teacher Associations need funds. Fundraising is an integral aspect of running an association successfully. Like Helen Keller’s quote, “Life is a daring adventure or nothing”, fundraising is an adventure and can be a fun if it is planned properly and make clear to others about who we (the associations) are and why somebody should give us funds, as George mentioned. Convincing logic, clear targets and proper communication of such targets to potential sponsors are instrumental in fundraising. Preparing a credibility file consisting of promotional literature, letter of endorsement from experts and prominent figures’ saying about the associations is necessary for convincing sponsors. One of the participants, Sheilagh Nelson, suggested to find out the annual calendars of the potentials sponsors. George presented the key principles of fundraising: giving priority to hi-touch before hi-tech, personalizing message and benefits to the sponsors; and including stories and using visuals to authenticate the message being communicated.

Organizing conferences is one of the main events of TAs. The conferences provide a rich platform for teachers to learn collaboratively through an exchange of their experiences with national and international professionals. Organizing successful conferences is, however, a challenging task. All we need is to pay attention at all the phases of a conference (pre-, while and post). The selection of the conference theme, keynote speakers/plenary speakers, quality of presentations, good communication, participation of teachers, food, accommodation and transportation services to the participants, social activities, variety of speakers in terms of levels and geographical regions, volunteers, provision of training materials and handouts, exhibition and shopping/site-seeing, etc. are the things that should be taken into a consideration before and during the conference. The post conference phase, which includes publication of proceedings, journals, dissemination of PowerPoint sharing among the participants and thanksgivings and acknowledgement to the presenters and other concerned stakeholders and press coverage, is equally important for the success of the conference. The organizers must review the conference to learn from the past experience and plan better for the future.

George said, “Every moment of contact with a member is a chance to impress or disappoint him or her”. As a conference organizer, the teacher association should always try its best to leave positive impression in each and every moment of truth for there is never a second chance for leaving the first impression. Leaving such impressions comes up with different avenues to make it difference and better.

The success of an association depends on the quality of leadership it has. Teachers associations are non profit making organizations and they have continuous change in the leadership and therefore, the new professionals need to be groomed and empowered for handing over the coming leadership. The ‘Leadership Development and Succession Planning’ session was very useful to provide the participants the ideas of mentoring/coaching and leadership training program for preparing the new leadership.

During a mentoring- coaching session, George demonstrated Catherine Kelly’s ideas on the GROW model of mentoring, wherein Goal (Coach and Clint agree on the topic of discussion) Reality (What is the current reality? Invite self assessment and seek specific examples), Options (Suggestions and choices made), Warm up (Commit to action and agree time frame and support required). He summed up the session with the facts that mentoring does not mean imposing. Thus, offering suggestion (Would you like to try this?) can be the best way of mentoring. It is always easy to give suggestions but difficult is to follow them.

People join TAs for different reasons such as practical benefits, sense of belongingness, professional support, desire to make contribution to society, and professional advancement. The role of the leadership is imperative for meeting different expectations of its members.

Information and technology is an integral part for the development of TAs. This is the age of C generation which includes connected, communicated, connect centric, computerized and always clicking. The use of technology saves our time, money and efforts and provides wider exposure to the members beyond geographical barriers keeping them together through professional networking. The web technologies used by teacher associations include TA websites, social networking sites like twitter, face book and LinkedIn, VLEs (Moodles), Google docs, Skype and blogging. It does have environmental benefits too since it helps the association to minimize the excessive use of paper.

Collaboration, linkage and networking with likeminded organizations for TAs. George explored some possible areas of collaboration, linkage and networking with regional level activities which included the publication of newsletter, peer support review, organizing regional conferences, sharing speakers, rapport building with contact persons from each TA and creating yahoo groups. Finally, we agreed on leading regional cooperation forward with further discussion.

Sharing and reviewing the best practices among TAs. The membership of different special interest groups (SIGs) of Bangladesh English Language Teachers’ Association (BELTA), well organized website of Sri Lankan English Language Teachers’ Association (SLELTA), mobile conferences of Society of Pakistani English Language Teachers (SPELT) and regular meeting on every Saturday and a wide range of activities including the publication were the best practices sharing among TAs. However, we were all moved by the struggle English Language Teachers’ Association of Afghanistan (ELTAA) is facing because of insecurity in the country. This is a kind of peer support review and evaluation too, which provides us an opportunity to exchange and replicate the successful ideas from one another.

Conclusion
The seminar concluded with the feedback session, for which we were provided with a questionnaire and Catherine’s inspiring suggestions, “Less is more, do not put for tomorrow what you can do today, set your own objectives, and say what you mean and mean what you say”.

The reflection of the seminar does not end here if delicious food, cozy accommodation and other management facilities provided are not appreciated. Besides, organizing social gatherings by a riverside reflecting the flavour of cultures of Bangladesh, shopping and boating trip were worth mentioning here. A short film capturing the events of the HRS, which I got to know later was shown at the IATEFL Conference in Glasgow 2012 during Associates’ Day.

The seminar was successful in enabling TA participants to share their best practices and collaboratively learn specific skills required for running the teachers’ associations effectively. We, the participants not only learnt about necessary organizational skills required for successful associations but also the ways of organizing successful workshops and dealing with adult learners.

Acknowledgement
My sincere thanks go to the British Council, Nepal for providing us with such an opportunity and the gratitude to the course director George Pickering who facilitated the seminar in an interactive and learner friendly way.

Dinesh Dahal

Introduction
Teaching reading in Nepal is still teacher fronted and it is not believed that teaching reading is not possible unless the teacher reads in the class. But I found something very different during my observation of the Intermediate level English Language Learning (ELL) class in the United States. I am impressed to see how reading skill is taught by making the students read in the class, where the teacher’s role is just a facilitator. The SQPRRS (SQEEPERS) and note taking are key techniques adopted to make students engage in active reading process. Based on my observation of the ELL classes in the US and my own experience of teaching English in Nepal, in this post I am sharing how SQPRRS (SQEEPERS) and note taking techniques can be used in teaching English.

Applying SQPRRS for teaching reading
SQPRRS (Squeepers), which stands for Survey, Question, Predict, Read, Respond and Summarize, is one of the effective classroom reading strategies that I noticed the US teachers use in reading classes. I found this technique quite relevant to promote active reading process in a reading class. I learned that this technique is helpful for language teachers to train their students to use cognitive and metacognitive strategies to process non-fiction texts (and even fictions).

S for Survey
First, students are asked to scan (Survey) the text in 2- 3 minutes. They are asked to read the first line of each paragraph, look at the titles, pictures, graphs, captions and words in the bold face or italics.
Q for Question
Next, the students are asked to write 4-5 questions that they will be able to answer after they have finished reading. Students might feel difficult to formulate questions. But the teacher can facilitate them by suggesting some questioning words like what, where, why, etc. The teachers need to make sure if they have written the questions.
P for Predict
Third, the students are asked to make predictions about the text. Predictions can be of two types: one, for fiction – What is the theme of the text? and for nonfiction – What will you learn from this text?
R for Read
Then, the students are asked to read the text in detail. While they are reading, they are asked to look for the answers to their questions and check their predictions. But they will not be allowed to write.
R for Respond
After students finished reading, they are asked to respond to the questions they asked themselves. Here, they will be allowed to correct the predictions if needed.
S for Summarize
Finally, they are asked to write a paragraph summary of the text on a worksheet (the format is presented below) with the teacher’s help.

Applying NOTE-TAKING for teaching reading
NOTE-TAKING is another technique that works very effectively in teaching reading. The students are asked to take a note following the format presented below and to make a 4 squares about the text with the main idea at the center and supporting details in the periphery. And finally they are asked to write a summary and present it.

Conclusion
On my return to Nepal, I would follow these techniques to teach reading at my class. I am also planning to disseminate this idea to my colleagues through workshops and conference presentations. The article is also part of my commitment to share these techniques to other readers. I would appreciate your comments on this post.

Formats of the Worksheets for SQPRRS and Note Taking:
Name: _______________ Roll no. ____ Date: ________

SQPRRS
Survey the text.
What do you see?

Question
Right There
1. ________________________________________________________________________
Think and Search
2. ________________________________________________________________________
Author and Me
3. ____________________________________________________________________________
On My Own
4. ________________________________________________________________________
Write a Prediction about the text.
This will be about….

Read the text
Read with your partner.
a. Partner A read 2-3 sentences. Partner B listen.
b. Partner B explain what partner A read.
c. Partner B read next 2-3 sentences. Partner A listen.
d. Partner A explain what Partner B read.
e. Repeat, asking teacher for help with difficult words or sentences.
Respond: answer the questions that you wrote before you read:
Right There
1. ________________________________________________________________________
Think and Search
2. ________________________________________________________________________
Author and Me
3. ____________________________________________________________________________
On My Own
4. ____________________________________________________________________________

Make a 4-sqqare about the text

Doc1

Write a Summary of the text.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Format for note taking

Peg no

Tara Sapkota

“…… it was in the SLC (School Leaving Certificate) test, I had, for the first time, sat for a listening test.….” I wondered when one of my classmates told this to me. I was doing my intermediates then. I was even more surprised when I heard that all the answers to the questions were written on the board by the invigilator during their test and nothing significant was asked in the speaking test as well! There was nothing more to talk about, we stopped our conversation then.

I discovered that I was the only one, in the group of my colleagues, who had as experience of listening practice in school. I began to see myself as a lucky person among the friends. Not only this, every now and then, then, I realized that I had so many things to share with my friends about my English teacher, “……our English teacher did this in class, our English teacher did that in class, we had learnt to do this and we had learnt to that…..” I wasn’t boasting about my teacher and the school, of course, but unfortunately, they realized the same, however, it made no difference, I was still happy that I had some extra knowledge and skill of the English language which allowed me to speak and write simple texts without much trouble like they used to have.

Of course, the reason behind the so-called ease was the frequent use of language, may that be in spoken or in written form. In addition, I used to feel that we had got good exposure of the language. In the junior grades, the practice remained limited to reading, writing and speaking. As my school was an English medium school, no doubt, ENGLISH was medium of instruction between teachers-students and students-students interaction. Further, we also used to hear the teachers speaking in English whenever they had something to communicate among themselves. Perhaps my listening skill in English was strengthened by the occasional listening practices I did in schools, I thought.

This was the reason I had given some listening classes when I started teaching. I didn’t know how it was being practiced in other schools, but the way I gave the classes were just like the way I had taken them; I used to have a class on listening after a certain period of time. I taught the other sections in the class. I had at least three exercises of listening in one class. In the class I did nothing more than letting them listen to the recordings and do the exercises they had in their textbooks. It was something that we used to do when we were taught. As a teacher, I used to have easier classes on the day. I didn’t have to do anything in the class more than playing the tape, nor I had to prepare a lessson in advance. This way I recounted my stories of listening English while talking with the friends and also while working as an English teacher.

I had to go back to my school in the last evening once again, however, the reason behind the reminiscence was completely different this time. We had a class on designing tasks for listening skill last Wednesday. The teacher wrote a series of steps that a teacher has to follow while teaching listening which showed that a teacher has to do a lot of homework before coming to the class with the recorded listening texts. There I was enlightened that a series of exercises are to be produced for the students so that they develop a better understanding through the text.

The teacher told me that I have to start the class with schema activation by giving a background context of the listening text so that the students make themselves ready for the class. They, at least, have some clues about the following exercises they are going to do. Similarly, the difficult words of the text have to be dealt with before the text is played. They also need to be made curious about the text so that they listen to it actively. In addition to this, the extensive and intensive exercises need to be developed that are followed by the text related activities to keep the students engaged throughout the class.

I had never done these things as a teacher. All I did was I made them listen to the text and do the exercises of their textbooks. Now those students are in college, perhaps, they don’t say to their friends, “…… it was in SLC, I had, for the first time sat for a listening test.….”

Sarmila Sitaula

Introduction
Learning language is one of the basic aspects of human growth and development. Allowing both intra-personal and interpersonal relation, language, “socially shared code or conventional system for representing concepts” (Owens, 1996, p. 8, serves as a means of communication. Among three forms of language – spoken, written and sign – the spoken form is generally considered to be primary as it can be understood and used by all, both literate and illiterate people. Written form of language is considered secondary because all people do not learn to write and communicate by writing. The sign language, also known as the body language, may be the language that is understood by the vast majority of the people, even more than the spoken language. It is said that body language is the language that can be understood across the geographical locations. Whatever the form, language is the basis for establishing human relationships and interactions.

“Language acquisition is one of the most impressive and fascinating aspects of human development” (Spada, 2006, p. 1). A child learns a language as soon as she/he is born. The primary language or the first language is the language that a child has learned since his/her birth and learning of such language can be considered as ‘learning without awareness’ (Rünger, 2012). Due to human progress, the first language of the child may not always be the mother-tongue of the child. The mother-tongue is the language of the ‘ethnic community’ (Selinker, 2008) that the child belongs to, or the language of his/her parents. However, the language of the ethnic minority may not always struggle over the language of the majority; this is why the child never really gets maximum exposure to the mother-tongue. Then, the child may have to learn the mother-tongue as a heritage language and learn it as a second language. Likewise, the child in the process of growing up may be exposed to a different language and may want to or have to acquire it, which is categorized as a second language. Now, in the following chapter let me share my process of learning language:

Process of Learning Language
The different questions such as: how can we learn a second language? Is there something inside us that helps to learn more than one language? etc are some of the frequently asked questions among the individuals. There may be many reasons why we are able to learn any language in addition to our first language. There are many theories that define why and how we can learn a second language. For example; behaviorist theory claims that language acquisition is the process of habit formation. “It is based on modeling, imitation, practice and selective reinforcement”(Robert E. Owens J. , 1996, p. 8) Likewise, Chomsky talks about the LAD or Universal grammar which he says is inherent in every child, only needs to trigger it so that language learning becomes a natural process.

Context
I have been able to acquire English as a second language because I have had enough exposure to this language at school and also because I have been motivated to learn the second language. As a person from a Brahmin family, my first language is Nepali and that is what I was exposed to during my early childhood. Later on, I went to school where teacher taught me though I was quite small, and I could utter a few words and that helped me to catch a few words in English like “hello” “hi” and “bye” and so on. This was probably my first direct exposure to the English language. My learning of second language was limited to English because nobody could speak English at my home. Later on, when I started to know some English words and when I got more exposure, then I was keener on learning English. My Village was near to Tamang community so I could speak some Tamang words too. When I moved to Dhading Bensi for my further study, I couldn’t get more exposure and now I have forgotten those Tamang words. This is mostly because I got minimal exposure with the Tamang community there, and even the Tamang people communicated with us in Nepali. There was no need for my family to learn or to communicate in the Tamang language. I was motivated to learn English from my childhood because I wanted to understand the stories from the English story books, which made me learn English from my own will. I wanted to be good at English because I used to dream about the wonderful stories that I read in the books. My mother had a role to play in my acquiring of English, as she taught me the ABCs when I was around four years old and started to go to school. It is needless to say that I got exposed to more English in my school, and that has continued until my M.Ed. in ELT. So, the following will discuss all about my learning second language as need or preference:

Learning Second Language: Need or Preference
With the support of exposure and largely because of motivation, I acquired English as a second language (I may not go into the philosophical/literal distinction between a foreign language and second language at this point). Additionally, I have also acquired some Hindi as a second language. However, my learning of Hindi language was an inactive process in the beginning. I did not have communicative opportunities in my surrounding for this purpose and I did not have any formal teaching either. I got exposed to Hindi due to the television and movies that were in Hindi. Likewise, Hindi songs have been a source of fascination and interest to me ever since I was a small girl. I wanted to understand the dialogues in the movies, the television series as well as the lyrics of the songs. This was only possible if I learnt Hindi. So, my learning of Hindi language was my own preference to understand Hindi movies, Hindi series and songs. The learning of Hindi language was thus possible mainly because I was fascinated by the fun world. Now, it is beneficial for me to be able to converse in Hindi if I require it. To my understanding, I preferred acquiring both languages, but the fundamental needs were different. Learning English was supported by formal teaching and related exposure, while learning Hindi was supported by the fun world, which perhaps was relatively painless. The more informal and fun oriented the language learning environment is, the easier and interesting it is to learn the new language. However, I may not be good at accuracy of Hindi.

Motives for Learning English
In case of acquiring of English language, there are several needs on my reflection. Firstly, I wanted to be able to read in English. This is purely individual or my preference. If this was the only motivation factor for me to learn English, then I would not learn it so well. As mentioned above, I needed to understand English stories. This reason for learning English can be kept under the need of learning a language. Secondly, everybody learnt English due to the effect of globalization. Especially in the schools and colleges, if you don’t know English language you may not get admission. In a way, it is promoted in our educational institutions as a medium of teaching and learning. There is no way out, if you want to get a college degree of any sort, then you need to be apt in English. Not only me, but everybody else is in some way encouraged to learn English. This reason is also need or necessary to learn English to achieve any kind of concrete success. Finally, the most important and hidden necessity why I learnt English is that it is a language that people feel is superior and globally recognized. It has been deeply rooted into psyche of human beings. Of course, English is a global language. Where-ever you travel, you see English signs and advertisements. Whenever you enter a hotel or restaurant in a foreign city, they will understand English and there will be an English menu. If your English is good or mother tongue is English, you may feel pride that your language is the one which has been so successful. If you know English, then you can go anywhere in the world, and at least be able to communicate minimally. Likewise, if you know English then you can have the most attractive jobs that you want. This reason is also need, even though it is not seen at the surface. English has been promoted as a lingua franca throughout much of the world as a result of political and cultural influence. In some ways, it can also be considered a linguistic cum cultural imperialism; a welcome imperialism of the modern world!

Conclusion
I am quite glad that I can use and understand more than one language. If I knew only one language, then my thoughts and creativity and experiences would be confined to the world equipped with one particular language. I am so delighted that I can watch movies, listen to songs and be adapted to the cultures of at least some different languages. I can have my preferences and decide to listen to the language I prefer at different times. It is my privilege that I got exposed to these languages and also my luck that I got interested in more than one language. In my view, all people should be open to more than one language so that their knowledge of the world and of the cultures is broadened. The point is that you need to be motivated, but you should also get some kind of exposure for the enhancement of second language learning experience.

References
Owens, Robert E. (1996). Language development.Needham Heights, MA: A simon and schuster company.
Rünger, P. A. (2012). Implicit Learning. Current directions in psychological science, , Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 13-18. Retrived from: HYPERLINK “http://www.jstor.org/stable/20182823” http://www.jstor.org/stable/20182823
Selinker, S. M. (2008). Second language acquisition.London: Routledge.
Spada, P. M. (2006). How languages are learned.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Atma Ram Bhattarai & Praveen Kumar Yadav

At a time when community schools across the country are facing a lot of challenges in terms of ensuring access, enhancing quality and educational governance, they are struggling to attract students as increasing number of children are enrolled in private schools, dropping the public schools, to receive education in English medium. Hence, the community schools took a step to compete with private schools rather than closing themselves in the lack of students. Better late than never, they have started teaching in English medium. We can see the trend of such shift at community schools in Nepal proliferating by leaps and bounds.

It is seen that the community schools which have started teaching in English medium are able to attract more students than before. Even, they reject the admission for the current academic session due to lack of infrastructures available for more students. They have chosen this move to save their fate ensuring their survival among the private schools. But such a move at community schools for English medium instruction without adequate preparations and proper plan has brought them at crossroads, where they meet with different consequences than it was expected.

We could draw the above situations reflected during an interaction with the teachers from different thirteen-community schools in Sindhuli district of Nepal held to find out common educational issues focusing on their roles for girls’ education. The interaction was a part of celebration of the first international day of the girl organized by ‘Janta Higher Secondary School’ a community school located at Ratanchura VDC in the district with support of Plan Nepal, Sindhuli Programme Unit. Another significant event to mark the day was the essay writing competition among 26 girl students from 13 different schools on theme ‘Because I Am A Girl.’ ‘Because I Am A Girl’ (BIAAG, in short) is a five-year global campaign officially launched by Plan International, global child-centered development organization with an aim to help 4 million girls to get the quality education, skills and support they need to transform their lives.
Please take a glance on a brief account of the International Day of the Girl Child before we come to the consequences that shifting from Nepali medium to English at community schools has brought in terms of access, quality and educational governance.

International Day of the Girl Child
Last month, October 11, 2012 as the first ever International Day of the Girl Child, which was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, was celebrated by the governments, international development agencies and people around the world. Following are the facts behind the special day;
-Majority of the 75 million girls out of school in the world by the daily realities of poverty, violence, discrimination, and child and forced marriages.
-One in three girls are globally is denied a secondary education.
-Less attention to the difficulties and specific problems faced by girls, especially girls born in developing countries
-One in seven girls in the developing world married before they are 15, some as young as five years old.
-150 million girls under 18 have experienced rape or other forms of sexual violence.
-Pregnancy and child birth are the leading causes of death for girls aged 15-19 in the world’s poorest country.

This is all happening because girls are not being seen as priority at home, community and even schools. The distressing thing is that girls are not even allowed to be born. No one can deny the fact that an educated girl is less vulnerable to violence. We, the people involved in the academia are key stakeholders of the community and hence, we need to be accountable to pay attention on the importance of girls’ rights, particularly the right of girls to access to quality education.

Consequences of Shifting from Nepali to English medium
The shifting from Nepali to English medium is deemed as the matter of great achievement in community schools. However, there are many other issues mounting. It is matter of worries to note that there is a great malady of English language teaching.
Based on the interaction with the participant teachers and our observations of schools in Sindhuli, I have made following analysis in terms of access, quality and governance.

Access:
No doubt, parents in Nepal having even low-income send their children to private schools but the number is very less since all of them cannot afford the high charge of those schools. The community schools charge minimum fees from the students, therefore they are easily accessible to all the parents even the poorer. Besides, textbooks prescribed and prepared based on the curriculum are also provided to them freely in some schools. Once the community schools have started teaching in English medium, they assign English medium textbooks, which are high in price. Some of them have not even been prepared as per the educational goals mentioned in the curriculum of different levels.

Quality:
The percentage of students from community schools failed in SLC Exam in English subject only indicates poor English language proficiency. Community schools which teach all the subjects except English in Nepali language lack English language proficiency greater in comparison to private ones where all the subjects except Nepali are taught in English.
When the teachers who have been teaching all the subjects except English in Nepali medium for years start teaching in English, they face challenges on language issues. They cannot communicate with the students in English and comprehend the subjects since they have a very poor command of the English language.

Governance:
The relation between parents and schools is being improved. The parents started regular visit to schools for knowing the learning achievement and behavior of their children. They are in the practice for improving the sanitation of the children at home as well.
The School Management Committee (SMC) is being responsible for improving the quality in education by the trend in teaching in English medium. The SMCs are always worried on managing quality resources as well.

Conclusion:
It is not surprising that English was the medium of school education in Nepal until the 1950s. Following the facts that there was political move of the educational system from English influence, formulation of the first Nepali language policy and adopting the educational practices from the Indian education system, the National Education Planning Commission recommended to remove English from the medium of instruction through its report in 1956. The New Education System Plan-1971 devised during the Panchayat system under the regime of King Mahendra was also in favour of Nepali language as the medium of instruction. There were not English medium schools except few missionaries in Nepal, which had been operating since the early 1950s. But during the regime of King Birendra the education ideology got change and private schools were encouraged to apply.

The Education Act in Nepal allows schools to adopt Nepali or English or both languages as the medium of instruction without any legal restriction. The Interim Constitution of Nepal has focused on the free and compulsory education of all children. Similarly, the Government of Nepal has initiated different interventions for improving on quality in school education and increasing access of girls of basic education. At last but not least, reward and punish is one of means for improving the above issues which lacks in this period.

(Besides being the members of NELTA, the authors are working for Plan Nepal, Sindhuli Program Unit)

-Madhukar KC
Abstract
This article begins with the general introduction of observation highlighting on observation with reference to teacher development. It draws some examples to justify how (classroom) observation plays a pivotal role in teacher development in terms of developmental purpose of observation rather than observation for assessment, evaluation and training. Finally it relates observation practice in Nepalese EFL context along with author’s own experience of classroom observations of the teachers at the work place.
Introduction
Generally, the term ‘observation’ is used as a research tool that offers a researcher an opportunity to garner ‘live’ data from “naturally occurring situations” where the researcher can actually look at directly what is happening in situ rather than depending on second-hand data source (Cohen et al 2007). Peter Maingay, the ELT expert/trainer argues about various roles of observation for training, development and assessment of the teachers. Observation in the recent years has been rigorously used in the field of teacher development. Different people especially teachers, supervisors, instructors, trainers, and trainees use observation for various purposes in various forms like classroom observation, peer observation, a key tool of teacher development. Wajnryb (2002) states observation as ‘a multi-faceted tool for learning which can be learned and can improve with practice’ (p.1). There are various kinds of observations, however, this article concentrates on classroom observation in the context of teacher’s professional development.
Observation and Teacher Development (TD)
The concept of development refers to change and growth. To be specific, the term teacher development is the process of being better, competent and ‘super-teacher’ in terms of professionalism. This concept of teacher development is a significant issue in teacher education that came into prominence in the field of ELT on account of the demand; especially of in-service teachers who really wanted to get input of recent methodologies/pedagogies to tackle the problems and the challenges that come abruptly on the way. TD is a relentless process of life-long learning. If it stops for any reasons, then the process of development ceases with no sign of any professional development in teachers.
There are many components and strategies that are responsible for teacher development; such as observation, action research, in-service training, supervision, counseling, meditation, motivation, mentoring, reflective practice of teaching and learning, classroom research, collaborative learning and teaching etc. However, this article focuses on area of teacher development that is classroom observation, which has been dominantly used as a significant tool in ESL/EFL teacher education in general and teachers’ professional development in particular. Observation in general is a tool/concept used in any kind of observation- be it a classroom observation, peer observation, supervisor, ELT manager observation or a learner observation. It is equally significant tool for mentoring, collaborative development, classroom research ,etc.

Classroom Observation
As one of the prevailing methods within the real classroom settings, classroom observation is a significant tool for teacher development where the teacher develops by observing the trainers, peer teachers classroom teachings. It is the process of studying classroom activities to scrutinize teaching strategies adopted by the teachers and students’ participation with active responsiveness in classroom activities. It is a process in which a supervisor, instructor/administrator (head teacher/principal) sits in on one or more class sessions, records the teacher’s teaching practices and student actions, and then meets with the teacher to discuss regarding the observations done previously.
English language teaching (ELT) classroom observations have traditionally been seen as part of teacher evaluation regarding their way of classroom teaching and observers are typically administrators, instructors, supervisors, trainers, ELT managers hired and senior teachers. Feedback provided by the observer to the observe after the observation task is over is what Sheal (1989) notes as usually unsystematic, subjective, threatening, frustrating and impressionistic rather than objective, systematic, supportive and motivating. Also, the relationship between observers and observees is based on hierarchy where the observers are evaluative, prescriptive, assertive while the observees, unless otherwise, are defensive. Classroom observations tasks done under such conditions might not help much in the observees’ professional growth and development which is in sharp contrast to the philosophy of teachers’ professional development.
Why classroom observation?
There are a number of different purposes for classroom observation. Nevertheless, the primary purpose of observation is for teacher’s professional growth and development. While the teacher teaches in the language classroom, he/she will not be able to clearly observe the process of learning and interaction as it takes place throughout the lesson. Thus classroom observation renders freedom to the teachers to look at the lesson being taught by other teachers from a range of different perspective outside that of the actual lesson plan, procedures and activities prepared by the teacher. Wajnryb (2002) defines classroom observation as a ‘multi-faceted tool for learning. It is about being an observer in the language learning classroom and learning from the observation process of classroom processes’ (p.1).
Classroom observation helps us ‘to test our personal theories on phenomena around us and refine the social and psychological behavior of others and ourselves’ (Foster, 1996, p. 57). Classroom observation is absolutely required ‘to understand and be aware of the intricacies of the social and psychological processes of the classroom which is central to effective teacher development (Wright, 1990, p. 84). Similarly, Maingay (1991) defines classroom observation as a reflective tool for the teachers to explore their own behavior, attitude and their classroom practices. Kafle (2001) argues that mentoring, one of the key concepts in teacher development requires skills of classroom observation so as to figure out problems of classroom teaching practice of the teachers and provide feedback and eventually render assistance whenever needed by the teachers.
Procedures of classroom observation
There are various procedures of conducting classroom observation. Sheal (1989) gives his own way of conducting classroom observation. Mainly he concentrates on classroom observation for teacher development rather than teacher evaluation. With the purposes of observation, he also came up with the observation forms. They are; frequency tabulation, structured description, checklist and rating scale etc. Among them, using observation checklist during observation is pertinent to our Nepalese context.
Reflection
Fortunately, I got an appointment as an Instructional Supervisor (IS) in one of the prominent schools in the Kathmandu Valley. My job responsibility was not just to teach in the classroom but to conduct classroom observation of the teachers from primary to lower secondary English teachers. The teachers I worked with were trained, competent and skilful. However, I was supposed to manage spare time to sit and discuss with them about the lesson, unit they were about to deal with in the class and later observe their real classroom teaching to see how well they would perform in the classroom and whether they conducted various activities in the classroom with regard to ‘Activity-based Instruction classroom teaching’ implemented in the very school recently. The school administration had given me full liability to conduct classroom observation of the teachers. The administration including myself had also clearly oriented the teachers during the workshop before the early beginning of the new session regarding the observation to be taken by the newly appointed Instructional Supervisors. Since it was mainly for the developmental purpose of observation, most of the teachers took it positively. However, there was some sort of indirect resistance of silence, ignorance towards it which I could sense at the meantime.
Keeping in mind the resistance of the teachers I would observe, I tried my best endeavors to maintain good rapport with them. I used to manage spare time out of their (teachers) hectic classroom schedule so that I could sit with them and discuss for sometime regarding their lesson plan, teaching/learning materials prepared to use in the classroom and teaching/learning activities to be conducted in the classroom. Mainly I used observation format to observe the teachers’ classroom which is divided in to three phases, which is deliberated below:
Pre-observation
During this pre-observation phase, my main intention was to inform the observee teacher about the purpose of the meeting and observation and thus prepare him/her for being observed without any sign of resistance. I also used this phase to build good rapport by using motivational orientation to the teacher saying, ‘it is mainly for both of us and our professional development’. I expressed, ‘there is nothing personal but it’s all about professional development to make sure that the teachers are in the state of welcoming me as the observer of their classroom teaching’.
During the meeting with the teachers in this phase, I used to discuss on the lesson plan they had, teaching/learning materials prepared to use and the teaching/learning activities to be used in the classroom teaching. I used to elicit information about the syllabus, other classroom activities they had been conducting from the teachers. I also asked them if they wanted any sort of help from me, e.g., getting other resources to use as materials in their classroom teaching.
While/during observation
This is the second phase of observation which I used to use for my classroom observation purpose. During this stage or phase, I observed the real classroom teaching of the teacher inside the classroom settings according to their lesson plan using teaching materials/aids and conducting various activities in the classroom. During this phase, I mainly concentrated on classroom management, instructions of the teacher, language use, lesson delivery, activities conducted and the participation of the students in the activities and tasks. I recorded the classroom observation and wrote a reflection of the class I observed so that it would be easier for me to use during feedback session.
Post-observation
It is the phase of feedback session. During this phase, I managed some time to meet with the teachers to discuss how the classroom went, how he/she felt about the classroom teaching, what he/she felt went well, what he/she would have to change, what was typical or atypical about the class. I would mainly elicit responses from the observee teachers and would give them cathartic and supportive kind of feedback. I would discuss on the strategy for the next class. The purpose of this phase is to review the observation data and plan any follow-up and new strategy as required.

Conclusion
Observation is a means through which teacher development takes place and thus it is very significant tool or a key concept for teacher development. Unlike observation for training, assessment and evaluation, observation for development of both the observer and the observee should be primarily focused to achieve the objective of teacher development. It provides both the parties with the reflection of their own class and provides them way to think of some possible innovative strategies to implement them in the classes further. Traditionally, the observation task was taken as evaluative, assessment as mere trainer process. Owing to this, teachers to be observed (observee) and the observer both had developed negative attitudes towards observation process. However, now, positive attitudes have developed among the educators, teachers regarding observation in the recent days for teacher development. People related to teacher education, ELT have duly realized the significance of observation and the impossibility of teacher development without observation to explore their hidden self, identity, creative potentiality which is worth appreciating.
References
Chaudhary, D.L. (2008). Reflection for key concept for Teacher Development. Journal of
NELTA, Volume 13, No. 1-2
Cohen, et, al (2007). Research Methods in Education. Rout ledge
Edge, J. (1991). Co-operative Development
Head, K. and Taylor, P. (1997). Readings in teacher development. Oxford: Heinemann.

Tsai, H. M. (2008). Improving an EFL Class: Starting from Classroom Observations, The Asian EFL Journal, June/2008, Volume 10, Number 2

Sheal, P. (1989). Classroom observation: Training the observers. ELT Journal, 43(2), 92-
104 Corwin, S. (2011). Teacher Observation. IATEFL Voices, 2011 Issue, 220
Wajnryb, R. (2002). Classroom observation tasks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Appendix
The following is the sample of the observation checklist form I used for classroom observation of the teachers at ‘The Excelsior School, Swoyambhunath’ where I worked as an Instructional Supervisor (IS) of English.
Pre- observation
Lesson plan/objectives Use of teaching/learning materials

Teaching/learning activities

While/during observation
Activities conducted Classroom management

Language use/ lesson delivery

Post-observation
Reflection on the very observed class by the observer and observee
Providing feedback (Oral/written)
Constructive/supportive feedback

Strategies/plan for next class

These are the various samples I and my intern pair, Mabindra prepared during our fourth semester class on ‘Teacher Development’ at Kathmandu University which I would like to illustrate as below;
Observation checklist form
Name: Topic: Date:
S N. Indicators 0 1 2
1
Classroom management
2
T/L materials used and Activities conducted in the class
3
Presentation of subject matter/issues/themes
4 Clarity of instructions

5
Pedagogical methods used/ language use
6
Delivery of the lesson

7 Student’s involvement/participation/motivation

8 Body language

9 Personal Reflection

10 Providing feedback (Oral/written)
Constructive/supportive feedback
0= Needs improvement 1= Satisfactory
2= excellent
Note: Comment:
1 1
2 2
3 3
4 4
Observer:

Observation form for creative writing
Name of the teacher:
Name of the school:
Class:
Date:
Duration:
Phase Activities
Initial
Example
Explanation
Production

Observer:

Observation form for checking speaking skill
Name of the teacher:
Name of the school:
Class:
Date:
Duration:
How does the teacher check speaking skill of the students? What specific aspects does he check? e.g. grammar, syntax, comprehension, etc. Does he give feedback? It can be immediate or delayed, individual or to the whole class

Observer:
Observation form for Reading Activity
Name of the teacher:
Name of the school:
Class:
Date:
Duration:
Learner Activity Teacher response Learner response Evaluation method

Observer:

Checking effectiveness of listening activity
Name of the teacher:
Name of the school:
Class:
Date:
Duration:

1. The component that you feel was very effective while teaching listening activity
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

2. The area where you feel that the teacher could have improved by using suggested methods or approaches
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

3. Further suggestions that you would like to give the teacher regarding the class
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………………………………………………………

Hem Raj Kafle

 So many people today — and even professional scientists — seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest.

 – Albert Einstein

The less effective our schooling, the more limited our sense of academic disciplines can become. The more effective the schooling, the more specific our understanding of them becomes. Both cases entail the growth of disciplinary biases. The first involves deprivation as a root of bias such as in a countryside student who ends up doing liberal arts, education or commerce because of ignorance about and inaccessibility to alternatives, or financial inability to cash other opportunities. The second suggests abundance  (both of money and awareness) as a root of bias such as in a city-born child who grows through a more organized and entrenched academic route, and can choose technical and professional disciplines like engineering, medicine and other applied sciences for higher studies in a relatively more developed place, even including foreign institutions.

And society in general allows the biases to flourish in our attitude towards the relation between intelligence and disciplines. To take a case, there was a time, and partly still is, when passing the tenth grade (SLC) with higher second division or first division marks marked eligibility for science studies. Being in a science college then signified an ‘outstanding’ academic history in the school. And being in other disciplines more or less meant the absence of that history. Then not being in science with that history signified other exceptional conditions: either an indelible intolerance for science, a sudden conversion from brilliance to dullness, or unavoidable domestic obligations for landing elsewhere. That one is not born for everything, or that achievements in school did not necessarily signal potential for multiple talents for later life, or that success in life was the product of manifold experiences in addition to academic achievements, did not really concern people. The subjects in schools were forced upon you as quintessential to your growth envisioned in the general educational policy. The subjects you took in the university were supposed to either compensate certain proficiency impairments, or complement your potential for greater achievements. In both cases, an individual’s realization of the need for pursuing certain disciplines was systematically overpowered by external factors.

The biases have been replete among the academics in universities to the extent of mutual exclusion sometimes, and on other times, the unwillingness to appreciate others’ domains. Becher (1989) describes this condition as follows:

Men of the sociological tribe rarely visit the land of the physicists and have little idea what they do over there. If the sociologists were to step into the building occupied by the English department, they would encounter the cold stares if not the slingshots of the hostile natives … the disciplines exist as separate estates, with distinctive subcultures. (p. 23)

Perhaps Becher’s portrayal of academic biases rings very true about our universities also. We can sometimes ascribe this to a natural condition. For example, when we are limited/focused towards a specific course of study in a university, it seems commonplace to take that other areas of studies would never intersect our lines, and would therefore remain insignificant. We are bound (or taught?) to work within formal disciplinary compartments.  But, such compartmentalization lends itself to narrowing the path of scholarship, which only few people seem to realize even these days. According to Lattuca (2001), growth of specializations to the extent of disciplinary biases can “limit growth of inquiries and explanations” and “delimit the way of knowing.” She further portrays such narrowing of scholarship as “the decline of the front porch from which everyone could survey their territory” (p. 1). This implies the absence of a holistic platform from where every other discipline could be viewed as significant for the creation and sustenance of broader worldviews.

I see, however, that the decline is not finality but a temporary process. As we grow to be professionals disciplines themselves invite us to tread their territories, however shallow or deep the treading could be. Because our intellectual needs and reaches are so diverse these days, we are bound to step beyond our disciplinary compartments. In this line Lattuca (2001) suggests, “Scholars in a specialization may have a disciplinary home, but they often travel elsewhere to work.” Shin exemplifies this with a real story in which a group of scholars in geography traced an imaginary geography in the works of Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Jane Austen, among others, which they did to discuss “the possibility of organizing and constructing an ideal place to live…,” and to understand “how places are related, positively or negatively, to the social and individual life of the people living in it” (“Confessions of an Interdisciplinarian”). This travelling is what forms one of the roots for the formation of interdisciplinarity.

Shin further asserts, “Interdisciplinarity begins when disciplinarians realize that what they are looking for is not found in their own disciplines (“Confessions”). Interdisciplinarity, however, signifies more than an individual’s realization for the need to explore knowledge in other fields. It suggests, as Moran (2003) puts, “forging connections across the different disciplines…or even attempting to transcend disciplinary boundaries altogether” (p.15). In the most general sense, interdisciplinarity can be taken to mean a form of discourse between plural fields of knowledge. The discourse, signified by the root “discipline” and the prefix “inter”, implies the expansion of precise, rigorous and focused subjects into warm, pleasant and discrete but mutually uplifting fields of scholarship (Frank, 1988). This further presents interdisciplinarity as being transformative to the direction of generating new modes of inquiries. Nissani names such character as “creative breakthrough” where productivity comes from “linking previously unrelated ideas” for a holistic perspective and “unity of knowledge” which can “readily spot a disciplinary slip up” (“Interdisciplinarity”). Interdisciplinarity thus is perceived as a representative location from where to examine multiple worldviews.

Interdisciplinarity emanates from and sustains in genuine collaboration between disciplines and disciplinarians. It does not signal the end of disciplinarity, but emphasizes the widening of disciplinary horizons and mitigating disciplinary biases. The true sense of interdisciplinary lies in the fact that scholars make efforts to know many fields of use, but not that they try to know everything. Similarly, it does not necessarily take to achieve the depth of every other field of value, but to be informed about the intensity of their value in everyday life. This should entail the awareness and skills to tackle what Nissani calls the “intellectual, social and practical problems” of life through a multi-faceted approach.

I end this essay with a thoughtful quote about how interdisciplinarity resembles the notion of taking different routes to arrive a single destination:

We all want to make our lives more meaningful tomorrow than they are today. This is our ideal. That ideal can be understood as truth for scientists and as an ideal place for geographers, as a good society for social scientists in general, and as a good life for the people in humanities. Because this ideal is to be achieved in the future, it is open-ended, and it requires the use of intuition and imagination. Again, I want to say that intuition and imagination know no disciplinary boundaries. (Shin, “Confessions”)

Perhaps it is time for us to redefine our scholarly pursuits and preoccupations and to begin to see the world through other people’s eyes — irrespective of how we have been schooled. Would the world look different then? Or, would it change the way we see ourselves?

 References

• Becher, T. (1989). Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
• Frank, R. (1988). ‘Interdisciplinarity’: The first half century. In E.G. Stanley and T.F. Hoad (Eds.), Words: For Robert Burchfield’s sixty-fifth birthday (pp. 91–101). Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
• Lattuca, L. R. (2001). Creating interdisciplinarity. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press.
• Moran, J. (2002). Interdisciplinarity. New York: Routledge.
• Nissani, Moti.  Interdisciplinarity: What, where, why? Retrieved October 25, 2005 from http://www.is.wayne.edu/mnissani/2030/ispessay.htm .
• Shin, Un-chol.  Confessions of an Interdisciplinarian. Retrieved October 25, 2005 from http://www.humanities.eku.edu/interdisciplinarian.htm .

[Courtesy: http://www.kufit.co.cc, April 2011]

-Gopal Prasad Bashyal
When students are inspired to write, they can produce texts beyond expectation. They need motivation and scaffolding – qualities which foster the scope of imagination and develop characteristics of an honest writer. As the metal-worker transfers the iron into desired tools with fire, anvil and hammer, a writer uses his intellect, imagination, passion, vocation and energy for the perpetual refinement of unformed mass of words to the expression of harmonious fusion of dispersed thoughts, feelings and emotions. “Writers are born and made” (Morley, 2010, p.1). I learnt this during facilitation of one day workshop on creative writing for Bachelor level students organized by NELTA Palpa last month.
The workshop started with introduction. I’m Gopal from Nepal. After two minutes’ thinking, I’m Ravi, studying is my hobby, a student said. Likewise I’m Jyoti, I like wearing dhoti. All 40 participants, including 7 teachers, produced two lines rhyming with their first name. This sounds a very simple exercise that made everyone happy as they developed a little hope to write poems. First, I discussed a few opinions of great poets. For example, “Linguistic creativity is not simply a property of exceptional people, but the exceptional property of all people.” – Ron Carter’s statement encouraged all the participants to take part in the workshop optimistically. Second, the differences between expository writing and creative writing helped them to understand writing much clearly. Expository writing is instrumental, factual, externally controlled, full of conventions, logical, analytical, impersonal and concerned with intellect whereas creative writing is aesthetic, imaginative, internally guided by stretched rules, intuitive, associative, personal, full of multiple meanings and concerned with both intellect and senses. Third linguistic devices like i. Simile, metaphor, ii. Personification, iii. Alliteration, assonance, iv. Rhyme and rhythm, v. Parallelism, vi. Repetition, vii. Unusual collocation and viii. Striking word choices were discussed. Mostly, students were introduced sample poems and linguistic and literary features used in them were analyzed with examples. A few sample exercises are discussed below.
i. How creative are you? I’m creative. The students are given objects like stone, wooden piece, piece of paper, stalk etc. They think how many ways they can use the object for and write. They do it in a minute. One who finds more uses is more creative. One student found 13 uses of stone. Though this is not competition, not the IQ test either, it helps them think from different perspectives.
ii. Haiku: This is a three line poem. It contains five syllables, seven syllables and five syllables in the first, the second and the third line respectively. For practice, the first two lines are given by the teacher and the third line is completed by the students. Gradually, they make second line and the complete haiku and haikus. For example: Waiting in the darkness An aged blind man sitting To marry the moon (Gopal)
iii. Parallel poems: The teacher gives a model poem and the students write another poem in similar form/structure but with different tone or on different topics or themes. The themes can be marriage, love, study, education, job or position, workplace etc. I gave a model poem on marriage with negative tone and asked the students to write with positive tone.
Sample poem
Marriage A mistake Everything went wrong Too late Now.
Students’ poems
Marriage A life Everything with joy Too fantastic Now. (Nabin)
Marriage A gift Bond to make life Memory Now. (Sadiksha)
Marriage A journey Towards happiness A suspense Now. (Shanti)
Marriage A dream Of happy life With wife But children Now. (Sangeeta)
Marriage A drama Everyone enjoys Each other Now. (Ranju)
Marriage Hope Love wins Both lose Children win Now. (Bishnu)
Marriage A journey To continue generations Too short Now. (Gopal)
iv. Diamond poem: The name is given after its shape. This is a five line poem. The first line contains the title of the poem. The second line has two adjectives which define the noun in the title line. The third line contains three gerunds which describe the manner or behaviour and the fourth line is a clause and the line has a word that is synonym or antonym or describing the topic word with an effective punch.
Teacher grey, bald-headed striking, striving, smiling enhances humanity for the better world a Creator. (Gopal)
Friend courageous, helpful sharing, pairing, visiting loves studying English Co-worker. (Prakash)
Mother affectionate, compassionate bearing, caring, rearing devotes life to others Selfless (Bikram)
Husband lovely, kind helping, working, understanding looks always beautiful Doubtful (Indira)
Teacher intelligent, dutiful controlling, inspiring wonderful educational job a Tutor (Dam)
v. Metaphor poem: This has three major steps which are as below.
a. First two columns of words are given. For example: hope a spoon life a knife marriage an egg love a brush anger a widow disappointment a mirror work a plate happiness a rope work a plate time a wheel b. Match. For example: life – a mirror, marriage – a knife.
c. Then add clause. For example: Life is a mirror you can reflect on. Marriage is a knife that cuts your singleness. Hope is a spoon that feeds us to survive. Anger is the knife that cuts our life. Happiness is an egg that broods new one. Hate is a knife that cuts relations. Marriage is the wheel that helps to continue generations. Work is a cup that serves life. Love is a wheel that runs life. Time is a wheel that keeps moving. Love is a rope that ties relations. Disappointment is a knife that cuts hope. Life is a mirror that grows through experience. (Contributors: Ravi, Sangita, Durga, Shanti, Nabin, Sadiksha, Dam, Kaushila, Bigyan, Indira, Biju, Ashish)
vi. Hello poem: Each line starts with a hello phrase and ends with a goodbye phrase. These two phrases contain opposite ideas. For example: Hello holiday, goodbye school. Hello girlfriend, goodbye wife. Hello cigarette, goodbye life. Hello mobile, goodbye landline. Hello pop song, goodbye folk song. (Contributors: Subash, Asmita, Pim, Prakash Chandra, Shrawan, Bhima, Gita)
Reflection: During the workshop the students enjoyed reciting their creative works. They were striving hard to find appropriate and new words. Though sometimes many of them wrote poems with tragic note, their willingness to follow the given structure was really exciting. They have problems in selection of appropriate words and fulfill ambition of making a complex sentence. They realised that complex writing is not creative writing. Creative writing flows freely without any extra ornamentation. If the words are put into proper structure, they can convey message effectively. Commonly used words if used at proper place according to the pattern set for particular design can express feelings well. Moreover, the structured use of language helps to convey feelings full. Likewise the students learn to use the language skills appropriately. They recall vocabulary, deliberately violate rules but in rules and these exercises develop confidence in using language. The workshop was thus concluded with the message that everyone can write poems.
Reference
Bashyal, G. P. (2011). ELT handbook. Palpa: Jaya Prakashan.
Marley, A. Mukundan, J. and Rai, V. S. (2009). Life in Words and Words in Life. Kathmandu: Bhudipuran Pubications.
Morley, D. (2010). Creative Writing. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.

-Ashok Sapkota
Abstract
This article tries to explore about the global use of internet in the language classroom highlighting several solutions to it. It tries to explain how the global use of World Wide Web is useful to connect with the interest of our learners by enhancing the professional development of English language teachers. It provides various examples of web addresses followed by their short annotated descriptions. It also suggests some practical solutions to browse and save those contents on our computers.
Key Words: internet, blog, browsers, on-line, information technology

Introduction
English language is regarded as one of the most widely used means of human communication under the sun. It has been in use in almost all fields of human life. English language teaching methodology is influenced as much by linguistic theories as by advances in science and technology. Sophisticated computers, multimedia computers and word processors have virtually contributed a lot for actual practice of language teaching.
Due to the rapid growth and expansion of information and communication technology (ICT), the world is becoming smaller and smaller. This is why; we can view the world with a single click of a mouse. This characteristic of information technology facilitates English language teaching through the use of computers. The learners can get a variety of opportunities to brush up themselves in various skills and aspects of the English language just staying at home. Regarding listening, students may get maximum opportunity to listen input at the computers with appropriate comprehension questions, easily controlled repetition and immediate playback. They can hear the rhythms and accents of the language as spoken by native speakers. Regarding speaking, a speaking recognition technology is adopted to permit the shy students to speak up. Voice and video e-mail play an important role in the design of speaking activities. Likewise, reading, skill programmes are used to enhance reading speed by paced reading activities. Jigsaw paragraphs or jumbled texts can be used to enhance reading in which limited time in provided to read the text just after the time limit the text-lines scroll. Regarding writing, word processing has maximum impact on the pre-set writing habit of the learners.
Hence, as an obedient tool, the language teacher has this machine to teach all four aspects of language effectively. A computer has very important role in the provision of exposure to target language environment to learners; and to motivate them towards learning materials. It is, therefore, regarded as an aid for teaching English.
Use of Internet
The internet has become a chain of a huge network of connected computers, linked across the globe. The World Wide Web (www) is the part of the internet where information can be accessed. It contains ever expanding number of pages which we navigate by using web browsers such as internet explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Safari, or Google’s chrome. Email, as a part of internet, is a means of communication rather than accessing information. Internet offers many opportunities for students and teachers to compose materials other than using paper-pencil works. We teachers or our students largely depend on the hard copy materials, such as books, teachers’ note, etc. In this regard, internet provides a diverse form to the pedagogical orientation than the traditional practices. For Lewis (2009,) some advantages so using the World Wide Web in our classrooms.
The internet provides authentic content: students and teachers get limitless ‘real’ content in the target language. They can read a real menu, find out when a train leaves Paddington station; listen to a sports broadcast, or watch a movie trailer. The internet can complement your course book by bringing language learning to life. Let’s not forget that the internet also provides teachers with lesson plans, ideas banks, test generators, and pretty much anything else you would want to know as a teacher.
The internet offers meaningful language: Studies have shown that students learn language better when the language they are exposed to is meaningful. The internet creates contexts for language use which, through their authenticity, become purposeful in the eyes of the students. The students actively manipulate the language for a clear and logical purpose.
The internet promotes critical thinking skills and ‘constructivist’ learning: On the internet, knowledge is transient. Unlike course books which transmit information in a predictable order, working with the internet is constantly evolving. Students make choices and ‘construct’ knowledge every time they go online. Each search is unique.
The internet reduces focus on the teacher: Working with the internet can take the focus off you and shift communication from teacher-student to student- student. It you are a bit unsure of your own English-language skills, authentic listening and reading from the internet can help model the language you want to teach.
Internet-based work can increase motivation: It is colorful, exciting, and undeniably ‘cool’. Computers and the internet are a key component of youth culture and lend language learning street-credibility.
Students can be benefitted largely by the use of internet network. They can also be involved in chatting online. They can be able to their own first language such as our Nepali language and can chat in English as well. Teachers can organize real time chatting events by using programs like: Google talk or MSN or Yahoo Messenger or face book. It is also easy to set up a chain of network such as groups where people can exchange messages with each other, such as Yahoo groups. Many dictionaries are freely available by the help of internet. One of the potent ways of sharing the people about your creative ideas is the weblog or blog. This is like a public diary that anyone can see or you can design yourself for institutional purpose. It is free of cost. It helps you to tell others what you want to share and get constructive feedback on it. Blogging is not difficult and there are many websites that can help you to create your own personal such as: www.blogger.com

Web Search
Browsing the web is the door to the World Wide Web. When we browse the website, web browsers read html code they receive from a website. The code tells the browser to display the information on our computer. If we have this plug- in our computer, it will immediately open it and display the requested content. If it is not available on our computer, we need to download the plug-in from the World Wide Web. Some of the plug-in that are essential to be installed in our computer are:
Media players (such as real player, windows media player, or quick time) allow us to play video and audio files.
Adobe acrobat allows us to display documents formatted as PDFS (files which can be read without a word processing programme)
Flash and shockwave allow us to open web animation files.
Java is a programming system of language which can be used across multiple computer platforms, making it very practical.
In the recent times, there are a number of web browsers available to download free from the World Wide Web. If a web-browser is your gateway to the internet, a search engine is our guide to contents. When we know the URL (Web address) of each site which we wanted to visit, these remains no need of search engine. When we click a simple topic, these appear 100 million websites and 85 million individual web pages displayed on our computer screen. In this mis confusion among the people, e-programmers have created search engines in order to help people to find their way around the internet, ‘Google search’ has become a common search engine, in the today’s world, Like wise ‘yahoo search’ etc. The world has become so much narrower with the help of computer search engines. People create their own personal blogs, web-pages, business sites, job-sites with the help of internet sources.
Web-search engines or e-sources has become a successful means of collecting, sharing our feelings, knowledge, and researches. The trend of online study, face to face chat, and online discussion has become a popular concept in the globe today. Here, I have tried to mention some important URL (Web address) which could be largely useful for English language teachers to derive their professional goals in connection to e-world and helpful to bring the technology into the classroom.
GENERAL WEBSITES
Many (but not all) of these websites have interactive activities which you can use in your schools if there is a computer room or you can recommend to students to access the activities at home.
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/
http://www.teachers.tv/
http://www.onestopenglish.com/
http://www.johnsesl.com/
http://caslt.org/resources/general/program-support-clip-art_en.php
http://www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub/?cc=gb
http://www.resourceroom.net/
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/education/resources/water_for_all/

The Global Gateway

GRAMMAR WEBSITES
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-grammar-archive.htm
http://www.grammarforteachers.co.uk/
http://www.usingenglish.com/handouts/index.php
http://www.englishpage.com/
http://www.world-english.org/

SPEAKING and PRONUNCIATION WEBSITES
http://mylanguageexchange.com/
http://www.anglik.net/
http://www.fonetiks.org/
http://www.fonetiks.org/spokenenglish/
http://www.btinternet.com/~eptotd/vm/vowelmachine/vowelmachine.htm
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml

LISTENING WEBSITES
http://www.elllo.org/
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-songs-homepage.htm
http://www.englishlistening.com/
http://www.podcastsinenglish.com/
http://www.videojug.com/

READING, SHORT STORIES and LITERATURE WEBSITES
http://www.link2english.com/teacher_index_top.asp
http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids-stories.htm
www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/indexframe.html www.channel4.com/learning/microsites/B/bookbox/home.htm:
www.teachit.co.uk/index.asp www.wingedsandals.com/
www.aesopfables.com/ www.darsie.net/talesofwonder/ www.andersenfairytales.com/en/main www.jkrowling.com/
www.scholastic.com/harrypotter/ www.pbs.org/mythsandheroes/
http://repeatafterus.com/index.php www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/mythology/mythology.html http://www.webenglishteacher.com/
http://www.eldrbarry.net/roos/eest.htm
http://www.penguindossiers.com/audio-frameset.asp
http://www.channel4learning.net/sites/waywithwords/main.html
http://www.dramainelt.org/
http://www.pbs.org/cgi-registry/shakespeare/shakesearch.pl
http://wiredforbooks.org/kids.htm
www.etprofessional.com/

WRITING WEBSITES
www.readwritethink.org/index.asp: www.fictionpress.com/ www.englishbiz.co.uk/index.html www.midlandit.co.uk/education/writingtips.htm www.planet.eon.net/~bplaroch/Write.html

BBC websites include:
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/english/writing.shtml
www.bbc.co.uk/blast/writing/ www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/

GAMES WEBSITES

Speak English Fluently!

http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/
YOUNG LEARNER WEBSITES
http://www.britishcouncil.org/kids
http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/

Home

http://www.show.me.uk/
http://www.primaryresources.co.uk/english/english.htm
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html
http://www.starfall.com/n/level-c/index/play.htm?f
http://www.exploratorium.edu/
The Exploratorium Museum
http://wiredforbooks.org/kids.htm

Study Skills, Reference Resources, and Research Strategies
Dictionary and Thesaurus Resources
Cobuild
http://titania.cobuild.collins.co.uk/index.html
Merriam-Webster
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary.htm
Roget’s Thesaurus
http://www.bartleby.com/62/
Your Dictionary, A Global Language Resource
http://www.yourdictionary.com/
Encyclopedia Resources
Britannica
http://www.britannica.com/
Columbia Encyclopedia, from Bartleby
http://www.bartleby.com/65/
Encarta
http://encarta.msn.com/
Encyclopedia.com
http://www.encyclopedia.com/
Helpful Study Skill Links
http://www.stthomas.edu/academicsupport/helpful_study_skills_links.htm
Advice on time management, test taking, note taking, and much more.
Journals and Magazines
English Teaching Forum (ETF) Online
http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/
Forum Electronic Journals
http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/journal/
Language and Civil Society
http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/journal/intro.htm
Language and Life Sciences
http://exchanges.state.gov/forum/journal/llsintro.htm

Once you have added a basic structure (or, URL address) to your bookmarks, you can save in your computer. You can read it on your leisure period. Lewis (ibid, p.49) provides some procedure to organize our book marks:
• Open a search engine and search for two or three websites that you particularly like or that interest you.
• Bookmark the sites (add them to your favorites), then create two folders by clicking on the favorites menu.
• Click ‘organize favorites’/ ‘create folders’.
• Name the folders to reflect the content of the websites you selected.
• Select one of the websites you added, by left-clicking on the title with your mouse.
• While still holding down the mouse drag the favourite to one of the folders you created and release the mouse.
• Do the same for the other favorites you created.
• If you like, open one of the folders, select a link as above and drag it from its current folder to another folder on your favorites list. In this way you can reorganize your favourites according to your needs.
By the stages mentioned above we can easily save the selected documents in our computers. In the leisure period we can read those selected articles whenever we feel necessary.
Conclusion
The use internet in this e-world and e-classroom has occupied a greater space not only in the pedagogical orientation but also in the minds of many learners. Well, all e-materials may not be so authentic as we have speculated. It is us to verify whether internet site is authentic, valid, reliable or updated. If we can verify these matters we can occupy our in own space o in this global IT era to make us professionally equipped.

Suggestions for Further Reading
Bhattarai , G.R. and Gautam, G.R. 2005. English language teachers at the cross roads: The journal of NELTA Vol.10 No. 1&2, Nepal English Language Teachers Association.
Dudeney, G.2000 The internet and the language classroom, CUP, London
Harmer, J. 2010. The practice of the English language teaching, Person Longman
Lewis, G. 2010. Bringing technology into the Classroom. OUP, London.

-Ashok Raj Khati
-Ganesh Shrestha

Abstract:
The title itself is the theme of the branch conference of NELTA in Ramechhap held on 21st and 22nd September 2012. More than two hundred fifty English language teachers attended the conference from this region. The conference made the ELT professionals meet at a platform once again in the mid-eastern hill of Nepal. The conference attendees shared their experiences and challenges in teaching English as foreign language and excitements with other participants and presenters. This is a brief account of a two days event.

Introduction
The two-day conference and training program was a significant get together of EFL (English as Foreign Language) teachers in Manthali. The teachers from Sindhuli, Dolakha and Okhaldhunga also attended at the program. Majority of the participants travelled for two days to attend the branch conference of NELTA Ramechhap in Manthali. NELTA Ramechhap had decided to hold this event particularly to energize the NELTA members and English teachers of this region to expand the NELTA networks and generate discussions on how a teacher from hinterlands of the country grow professionally through professional networks.
Inaugural
The inaugural ceremony was chaired by Mr. Tanka Prasad Dahal, the chair of NELTA Ramechhap, and Mr. Hemanta Raj Dahal, President, NELTA Centre was the chief guest. There was the gracious presence of Mr. Narayan Mainali, Local Development Officer Ramechhap, Mr. Yubaraj Poudel, District Education Officer Ramechhap, Mr. Damodar Regmi, Department of Education, MOE, Mr. Kamal Poudel, General Secretary, Ms. Motikal Subba Dewan, Ms. Madhu Neupane and Mr. Ashok Raj Khati from NELTA Centre, heads of different governmental and non-governmental organizations, representatives from various publications, campus chiefs and head teachers. Mr. Hemanta Raj Dahal, President, NELTA Centre and Mr. Narayan Mainali, Local Development Officer/Chair of District Education Committee jointly inaugurated the conference in the presence of 250 English language teachers/professionals/practitioners at DDC hall in Manthali. Mr. Chandra Singh Dhami, one of the founding members of this branch, welcomed the guests and participants by making special recall of its initial days. Mr. Nanendra Singh Dhami recalled the hardworking members and NELTA activities on its initial days.
On the occasion, Mr. Hemant Raj Dahal elaborated the theme on the first day sharing a lot of examples of himself on how he grew at this level of professionalism. He highlighted the importance of teachers’ professional networks to grow and update professionally. Further, he explained on how NELTA is working in the field of teacher development in collaboration with government of Nepal and other national and international agencies. At the end of his remark, he mentioned the future directions of NELTA including the building of resource centre in Kathmandu.

Mr. Kamal Poudel also made remark on the prominent role of professional networks and supporting role of NELTA to enhance professionalism among its members and non-members. DEO, Yubraj Poudel expressed his pleasure being a part of this event and thanked NELTA branch Ramechhap for holding a two-day branch conference. He promised to support NELTA in the days to come and requested NELTA Ramechhap to come with plan to improve the performance of students in English at 10th grade for collaboration. Mr. Damodar Regmi from Department of Education, MOE and Mr. Gunja Bahadur Shrestha, Campus Chief of Manthali Sahid Smriti Multiple Campus, also thanked NELTARamechhap for organizing the branch conference and highlighted the importance of conference.
At the inaugural ceremony, Mr. Lambodar Ghimire, the chair of Shuvaramva Publication handed over a computer to Mr. Tanka Prasad Dahal, the chair of NELTA Ramechhap and expressed that he wanted to see more collaborations with NELTA in the days to come. On the occasion, Mr. Ashok Raj Khati, central committee member and former chair of NELTA Ramchhap, shared the experiences of working in NELTA in rural context and appreciated various contributors of this branch.
Mr. Hemant Raj Dhahal offered the letter of appreciation to special contributors from different institutions who contributed to establish NELTA Ramechhap branch. Mr. Ganesh Shrestha, an executive member of NELTA Ramechhap branch, expressed vote of thanks to chief guest, guests, all the participants, contributors, on behalf of NELTA Ramechhap, who had extended their hands to make the event happen and made an appeal to all be unified under the umbrella of NELTA to develop the professionalism. Mr. Tanka Prasad Dahal, the chair of the programme and the president of NELTA Ramechhap branch, expressed his pleasure for the remarkable attendance of the participants and for their enthusiasm.
Training Sessions
Ms. Motikala Subba Dewan, central committee member, presented a session on “Creating Short Stories from Everyday Life”. Her presentation made participants think practically to produce short stories from everyday events. She demonstrated many real incidents through short stories of real interest. All the participants enjoyed and felt its relevance to make the classroom learning lively and full of creativity.
Mr. Kamal Poudel gave a session on, “From Recipients to Initiators and Players: Transforming EFL Classrooms into playgrounds”. He focused on the failure of traditional teaching strategies in Nepalese contexts where most English classes end up with teachers’ one-way instructions, and learners are left as bored recipients. The workshop focused on EFL games and activities which enable the learners to hold the roles of initiators and use L2 with fun while playing locally relevant and context bound games, and thus improve L2 innately being motivated intrinsically. He shared various activities to make the classroom live.
Mr. Hemanta Raj Dahal presented some practical tips in ELT. He particularly focused on assigning tasks to the students to make English language learning meaningful. His emphasis was on creating authenticity in EFL classroom. Further, he made the participants involve in various activities during the workshop.
2nd Day: Training Sessions
On the second day, Ms. Madhu Neupane Bastola, central committee member, gave the first presentation on “Promoting classroom interaction using cooperative learning” with special focus on maximizing student talking time and minimizing teachers talking time. The presentation focused on the elements and benefits of cooperative learning. She activated the participants involving in many activities like Four Corners, KWL, JIGSAW, Debate, Panel Discussions, One Sentence Story and Interactive Reading to promote collaboration in learning in the classroom.
The second session was followed by the workshop of Mr. Kamal Poudel, on “EFL songs and stories for young learners”. He stressed on the issue that teaching L2 to young learners is a daunting task in Nepalese contexts. In this light, he suggested that a teacher could exploit locally tuned L1songs to enhance their L2 motivation, which are enjoyable too. With the support of context-bound pictures, local melody, and L2 activities, the teachers can make their classes instrumental for learners to emulate their target language. He made the session lively and enjoyable by making the participants sing the EFL songs in melody of Nepali folk songs like Resham Phiriri.
Mr. Ashok Raj Khati, central committee member, briefly shared about his experience on teaching reading texts, particularly, advertisements at tenth grade. He generated interaction among the participants on the experiences of teaching English and preparing students for SLC examination to perform better in the written test.
Closing
There was the gracious presence of various dignitaries in the closing ceremony. Mr. Hemant Kumar Budhathoki, the under-secretary, District Education Office Ramechhap, was the special guest who expressed his pleasure on the entire effort of NELTA members and English teachers of this region to enhance professionalism. Further, he made the remarks that the conference had given a great message to foster the professionalism.
Mr. Kamal Poudel, General Secretary, expressed his pleasure for the overwhelming responses of the participants to the event. He mentioned that the event was remarkable particularly to expand the NELTA networks and to learn from each other.
Ms. Madhu Neupane conveyed the message that this type of platform was really crucial to grow professionally on the part of English Language teachers at outlaying part of the country. She found NELTA branch Ramechhap vibrant, organized and dedicated.
Similarly, Mr. Laxman Kumar Ghimire, the advisor of NELTA Ramechhap, appreciated the effort of NELTA members for holding the branch conference in Manthali. He further expected that NELTA would organize the level wise training for English teachers only after collecting the trainees’ needs.
At the end of the both days, children from various schools performed a cultural show reflecting the ethnicity of this region, mid-eastern hill of Nepal.
Participants’ Remarks
“It’s a great event of NELTA Ramechhap. The conference has increased the level of confidence on the part of English teachers. The sharing of experiences of speakers was really insightful. I was thrilled by inaugural, training sessions, closing and cultural show.” -Dinesh Kumar Shrestha, Principal, Gangalal Academy Ramechhap
“First of all, the conference made me know many English language teachers/professionals from this region. The event provided a key message to me that teaching and learning are the collaborative processes. The event is like an eye-opener for me in the sense that we need to think globally to grow professionally in our own local context. ” -Deepak Khadka, Principal, Tamakoshi English School, Manthali
“The second branch conference and training program was so systematic in terms of management related perspective. I am very glad to be a part of this event. This event made my hesitation in speaking in public remove i.e. it built up my level of confidence.” -Gauri Tamang, Teacher, Little Star Academy, Manthali
“This is the first time I have ever attended a big NELTA event. The conference made me more shared and know how others are doing. It provided me a great opportunity to know many NELTA colleagues and English teachers.” -Rajesh Thapa Magar, Teacher, Vangeri High School, Ramechhap
“I am very glad being a part of this event. I learnt how professional networks do work to produce a different outcome. I knew a lot of ELTers on this occasion. Even in this large get-together, I enjoyed the interactions and discussions during the training sessions. I would expect, NELTA would organize specific training program in the days to come.” -Keshav Timilsina, Principal, Karkaladevi English School, Manthali
“ I had never participated such a grand event. I really enjoyed the remarks made by the president and other speakers on their speeches. Actually they did not delivered speeches; they shared their experiences regarding English language teaching and professional growth through NELTA like professional associations. I felt privileged being a part of this event. I enjoyed the practical training sessions on using songs in EFL classroom and tongue twisters very much.” -Ramita Rai, Teacher, executive member, NELTA Ramechhap
Conclusion
The branch conference was successful in terms of generating discussions on how a teacher can grow professionally in rural area. NELTA like professional associations are instrumental to connect the digital world to non-digital world through networking. In forms of organizing workshops/training events, conferences, publications, chaining of members at different levels, and mechanism of support from bottom to top or vice versa may certainly assist English teachers to grow. An affiliation to the NELTA like professional associations seem to have increased the feeling of ownership among the members, furthermore, that has fostered a sense of belongingness in a wider ELT community. Eagerness to make difference professionally and active involvement of participants of this branch conference made NELTA Ramechhap review its future directions, particularly, to increase its institutional capacity in terms of human and physical resources to host the international conference phase II in near future.

Ashok Raj Khati is an executive member of NELTA and former chair of NELTA branch Ramechhap.
Ganesh Shrestha is an executive member of NELTA Ramechhap branch and he teaches at Seti Devi college, Salu, Ramechhap.

-Raju Shrestha

Introduction

Recently, the focus of teacher education in the Ministry of Education has shifted from teacher training to teacher professional development with the view to transforming today’s schools from a place of knowledge-transmission to the knowledge-creating/generating space that considers classrooms as a learning-community. This means teacher professional development program has been introduced in our teacher education programs to promote teachers with creative and critical ideas and skills to bring changes in their teaching. Moreover, from this program we have high expectations from the teachers with regard to their personal and professional development. Our planners, who do not have to train and teach, at the policy making level have envisioned bringing substantial changes in current educational scenario by implementing the teacher professional development program.

The term ‘Teacher Professional Development’ (TPD) has already become a buzz-word. People who are working under the Ministry of Education (MoE) always produce this word as it is one of the crucial parts of the MOE’s School Sector Reform Program (SSRP). TPD has already been implemented for three years. People working in the field have experienced both opportunities and challenges of this program.

Voices on-the-ground

We cannot deny the contribution of teacher training to teachers’ professional development. It plays a prominent role in teacher professional development. But, the teachers on-the-ground usually perceive that teacher training and teacher professional development program are synonymous. They think that TPD is the continuation of the previous training programs. This kind of belief system of the teachers, head teachers and PTAs and SMCs create a big gap between the 98.2% data of the trained teachers from community-based schools (NCED-2066) and teachers’ demands about the what ‘aspect’ and how ‘aspect’ of their teaching in the TPD program. I find a significant gap between the expectations of the policy makers and teachers. It is, therefore, necessary to make teachers clear about the difference between training and professional development. Here, I don’t mean to say that training does not have any role for the teachers’ professional development and empowering them. As mentioned above, to a large extent, it facilitates to enhance teachers’ professional development, but the activities and the way they have to be performed in these two areas of teacher education differ largely. Head and Taylor (1997, p. 5) have presented following differences between teacher training and teacher development:

 Training                                                             Development

-Compulsory                                                      -Voluntary

-Competency based                                            -Holistic

-Short- term                                                         -Long- term

-One-off                                                              -Ongoing

-Temporary                                                         -Continual

-Skill/ technique/knowledge based                     -Awareness based

-Product/certificate weighted                             -Process weighted

-Done with experts                                              -Done with peers

This distinction indicates that in comparison to teacher training, teachers are expected to perform higher level activities in teacher development. But unfortunately, what has happened is whatever the data of trained teachers we have gathered in statistics, the teachers’ classroom behaviors have not changed a lot. They still need the toolkit of some techniques and specialist knowledge of classroom teaching and classroom management. NCED has made a claim that it has brought this program after a series of discussions and interactions with various stakeholders. NCED (2011 in TPD policy guidelines) purports that:

A working framework was developed and stakeholders’ observations and aspirations were gathered through consultative meetings and workshops. It is worth mentioning that national consultative workshops were conducted for two rounds with participation of representatives from universities, teacher unions/professional organizations, implementing agencies and national/ international experts.

An issue arises here. NCED’s, the sole responsible MOE’s agency for taking initiatives in implementing every provision of the policy guidelines, claim does not match with on-the-ground reality.  Based on my conversations with teachers, I have indentified following key issues;

• Most of the teachers have native attitude about their own teaching profession.
• The teachers have only heard about the term TPD but they are not fully aware of it.
• Some teachers are not ready to fill out the demand-collection form.
• The TPD program has been conducted without collecting teachers’ real needs.
• The TPD module has not be prepared and implemented in accordance with teachers’ needs and contexts where they are working. Same module is used in many TPD hubs. There is the system of copy and paste. It neglected the concept of “site-based TPD”.
• The teachers who are going to retire soon are not ready to fill out the TPD form. They feel that action research and project works are extra work.
• The Roster Trainers seem less competent and confident in their subject matter although ETCs ‘ka’ is providing a 12-day TPD TOT program every year.
• In some cases, the Resource Persons are biased in selecting the roster trainers from their Resource Center (RC) areas.
• The Head Teachers did not pay much attention to help their teachers in academic and technical aspect. They always seem to be running for the administrative work.
• The Resource Persons (RP) think that the present framework of TPD is time consuming. It demands a whole year to finish.
• Teachers feel that TPD is compulsory than necessary and,
• Most importantly, there is lack of conceptual clarity of TPD among practitioners

Based on these voices of teachers on-the-ground, we can say that in real field, whatever the beneficiary points it has in its literature, the teachers and head teachers have faced myriad challenges to tackle while grasping the essence of teacher development as outsiders’ i.e. planners, implementers, managers, facilitators and so on, expect from them. It is because of this I have given the title of this article as the TPD: Boom or Bane?

Then what is teacher professional development?

Different scholars have viewed it from different standpoints. Richards and Farrell (2005, p.1) assert that ‘professional development is next step when once teachers’ period of formal training is over’. Craft (1996, p. 6) says professional development ‘ is sometimes used to describe moving teachers forward in knowledge or skills’. Similarly, Victoria (in Burn, 1999, p. 216) argues ‘professional development or growth means enabling teachers to generate their own ideas about classroom practice’.  After going through these views on TPD, it will be fruitful to mention Reimers-Villegas’s (2003, p. 1) ideas here. What Reimers-Villegas says is that TPD should move towards achieving ‘double roles of teachers’, that is to say, both subject and object of educational reforms. Firstly, teachers are the object of the educational reform. This means their professional development should be considered. They should be brought in such activities which help them ensure their professional development. Secondly, they are the objects of the educational reform. This means by their involvement they are responsible to bring changes in their classroom in particular and in education at large. They will be expected to be professionals and to play the role of change-agents. In our context as well we ‘outsiders’ are expecting this kind of dual roles of teachers from the TPD program. We expect to change teachers’ role from technicians to classroom researchers to equip them with the skills to deal with their own pedagogical problems in their own settings. It is not always possible to bring teachers in the Educational Training Center (ETC), Lead Resource Center (LRC), and Resource Center (RC) to discuss all the issues they have.  Therefore, if they are able to carry out action researches, they can solve their own problems. This is what we expect from our teachers.

Now, to achieve the above mentioned goals of TPD we need to engage our teachers in the following activities (most of them are from Richards and Farrell, 2005):

• Workshops
• Self-monitoring
• Teacher support groups
• Keeping a teaching journal
• Peer observation
• Teaching portfolios
• Analyzing critical incidents
• Case analysis
• Peer coaching
• Team teaching
• Action research
• Subscribing to ELT magazines and journals
• Joining professional organizations such as NELTA, IATEFL and TESOL and attending their conferences wherever possible
• Forming local teachers’ groups and holding regular meetings to discuss common problems
• Inviting fellow teachers / teacher trainers and guest speakers to contribute lectures and workshops
• Reading professional publications
• Publishing an ELT newsletter on a local or national scale
• Self-directed study
• Using distance learning materials
• Receiving on-the-job coaching, mentoring or tutoring
• School-based and off-site courses of various lengths
• Job shadowing and rotation
• Experimental ‘assignments’
• Collaborative learning

Conclusion

Although the TPD program is necessary for the professional development of teachers in Nepal, due to lack of teachers’ efforts to engage themselves in doing professional development activities most of the teachers are confronting many challenges in the classroom. They have experienced the TPD program as as obligatory condition (in the sense of the top-down approach and a formality) than the necessity to enhance their professionalism. It is therefore, time has come to reflect on the whole idea of the TPD program and critically discuss how we can go further for better result.

References:

Craft, A. (1996). Continuing professional development: A practical guide for teachers and schools.  Rutledge Famer: London; New York.

Head, K. k Taylor, P. (1997). Readings in teacher development, Oxford: Heinemann ELT.

Richards J.C. and Farrell T.S. (2005). Professional development for language teachers; strategies for teacher learning. Cambridge: CUP

Reimers-Villegas, E. ( 2003). Teacher professional development: An international review of the literature. UNESCO: International institute for educational planning.

Teacher development policy guideline (2011). Preparing for effective implementation of school sector reform plan 2009-2015. NCED.

– Anil Kumar Nidhi

I write, therefore I am is a modified version of French philosopher, mathematician and writer Descartes who holds the views, “I think, therefore I am”

On 24th August, 2012, Nepal English Language Teachers’ Association (NELTA) Rautahat organized a One-Day Training Program on “I write, therefore I am” at the premises of Madhya Rautahat Multiple Campus, Garuda. The program was organized with a view to empower the branch members with professional skills for writing journal articles at large and for its annual journal ‘The ELT Issues’. The theme of the training facilitated by Mr. Sajan Kumar Karna was “Write to grow.”

The inaugural program started with the flames of the candles kindled by the Chief Guest Mr. Yogendra Prasad Yadav, the facilitator Mr. Sajan Kumar Karna, NELTA Rautahat Chair Mr. Anil Kumar Nidhi and other guests. The children of Mid-Rautahat English School, Garuda chanted the national anthem accompanied by the participants of the training in a chorus.

Felicitation
In the meantime during the inaugural ceremony of the training, NELTA Rautahat felicitated Mr. Praveen Kumar Yadav for his sincere contributions in NELTA Branch formation in the district and Miss Sonu Silwal who stood the district topper in the School Leaving Certificate (SLC) Examination 2012. On the same event, Moonlight Academy Chandranigahpur was offered with the letter of appreciation for collaborating with NELTA to organize Two-day ELT Training for English Teachers of All Levels facilitated by Mr. Kamal Poudel, General Secretary of NELTA Central Committee at Chandranigahpur, Rautahat on June 29-30, 2012.

‘I write, therefore I am’

Mr. Karna had a discussion with the participants over the following key points during his facilitation;
 Write but why?
 Write but when?
 Write but to whom?
 Write but what does it mean to write?
 Write but where?
 Write but how?

Write but why?
In the beginning of the training, he asked the participant teachers why they would like to write. Some of their answers in their own words are as follows;
– I write because I am asked to write
– I find joy in writing
– It makes ideas wider and easily available
– It popularizes me
– I contribute while I write
– I express myself in writing
– It gives me a space in the world I live
– I grow while I write
– I exercise democracy while I write

Write but when ?
During the discussion with the participants on write but when, they came up with following situation, time and context when people generally write.
– When ideas start overflowing your head or heart
– When you want to change the world you work in
– When you are not happy with certain systems
– When you like to propose certain changes
– When you have new experiences and you would like to share
– When you think it is important to critique against certain practices
– When you face some crisis in your teaching
– When you have better ideas to address the issues, etc.
–
Write but to whom?
When discussed over ‘write but to whom’, the participants responded with the following target groups, to whom authors suppose to write,
– Audience
– Teachers
– Colleagues
– Professors/lecturers/teachers
– Teachers in making
– Administrators/supervisors
– Intellectuals /educationists/curriculum framers

Write but what?
The following contents that the participants write were extracted from the discussion in participatory way,
– Poems
– Stories-success stories
– Essays(articles)
– Short articles (2000 words)
– Long articles (5000 words)
– Reflective articles
– Insightful articles
– Travelogue
– Memoir
– Lesson plans
– Book reviews
– Article reviews
– Interviews
– Experiences
– Comments, etc.

Write but what does it mean to write?
As a result of discussion, here are the things that writing meant to the participants of the training.
– Putting down your original thoughts/ideas
– Putting down your gained experiences
– Putting down your new learning
– Putting down things that are relevant
– Putting down things that benefit the larger community
– Putting down things that help transformation
– Putting down things to initiate discussion
– Putting down things that have pedagogical implications

Write but where?
Mr Karna concluded by mentioning following forums where the participants could write.
– Blogs
– NELTA Choutari
– Journals
– Journal of NELTA
– Journals and newsletters of different NELTA branches
– Regional journals
– ELT journals such as
– ELT Journal,
– English Teaching Forum
– Asian EFL Journal, etc.

Write but how?
During the training the participants were engaged with following strategies in order to write academically.
– Read in order to write
– Follow the general format (Title – Abstract -Introduction – Body – sub titles – Conclusion & References)
– Write the rough draft of the article
– Proofread the article
– Rewrite the article as often as it takes
– Submit the completed article.
– Follow the editors
– Follow the reviewers
– Resubmit the article

The facilitator facilitated that a good paragraph must contain a topic sentence (Introduction), body (supporting details) and conclusion (a transitional sentence to the paragraph that follows). He added that the good paragraph always maintain Unity (state the main idea of the paragraph in a clearly constructed topic sentence and make sure each sentence is related to the central thought), Coherence (arrange ideas in a clear logical order and provide appropriate transitions to the subsequent paragraph and adequate development (develop the paragraph with specific details and examples.)

Conclusion

Mr. Karna concluded the training session with some remarkable suggestions that were helpful in preparing articles for publication. He suggested the participants to avoid plagiarism, i.e. the act of academic dishonesty such as copying and pasting others’ sentences from books, paraphrasing others’ ideas and sentences and claiming them to be our own and summarizing in our own words without citing references.

The training programme was very important for NELTA Rautahat since it dug out wonderful opportunity to empower the branch members so that they could contribute with their articles for the upcoming second volume of The ELT Issues, journal of NELTA Rautahat. Altogether there were thirty-five members of NELTA including the potential students who could write the articles.

– Mandira Adhikari

Gender Disparity

Gender disparity means not having equality in terms of gender, either in language use, equal participation in educational program or in the form of textbook or curriculum itself. We can find disparity in different aspects and it is most commonly found in classroom interaction. Similarly, various researches have shown that we can find gender biasness even in the interaction between the teachers and the students. As Freeman and Mcelhynny, (cited in Mckay & Hornberger, 2009) put, especially in teacher fronted classes, the amount of interaction between girls and boys can be defined by the teacher because he/she is the one who defines students’ role and can change the dynamics in the classroom. Thus we can say that the teacher is a person who can provide identity of the students inside the classroom. Wardhaugh (2008) says, gender is a key component of identity (p.316) and if the teachers are focused in the language of a group, another group is left out. Focusing on the place of women in society, Lakoff ( 1973) says “ in every aspect of life a woman is identified in terms of the men she relates to but the opposite isn’t true of men as they act in the world as autonomous individuals but women are only ‘John’s wife’ or ‘Harry’s girlfriend’.  Thus, women’s social identity believed to be is related with that of the men to a large extent.

In the area of applied linguistics, we can find gender disparity because of the use of sexist language. The term ‘sexist language’ means the use of language focusing to a certain gender and not indicating to the other gender. Holmes (2008) says, “Sexist language is one example of the way a culture or society conveys its values from one group to another and from one generation to the next” (p. 317). Thus, we can find the trend of repeating the same sexist language generation to generation as a process and the reason behind it is the use of such sexist language. She further says that language conveys our attitudes and sexist attitudes stereotype a person according to gender rather than judging on individual merits which encodes stereotyped attitudes to women and men.  In this way, she has clearly mentioned why the use of stereotyped language helps to develop negative attitudes to the particular gender and if we are habituated to using such language, we happen to use it regularly because we have already developed our attitudes with the help of such language.

Similarly, focusing more on the user of the language, Wardhaugh (2008) asserts that the disparity and the use of sexist language depend on a person. The Chinese, Japanese, Persian and Turkish do not make the kinds of gender distinctions English makes through its pronouns but it is difficult to claim that males who speak those languages are less sexist than males who speak English. So, a teacher using such language in the classroom must be aware.

By and large, the issue of gender is a global issue and can be found discussed in various parts of the world and even in our Nepalese context. Let’s analyze our own context regarding gender disparity.

Gender Disparity in School

School is a place where the learners come from various social backgrounds carrying their own social identities. Freeman and Mcelhinny (cited in Mckay & Hornberger 2009) suggest that in school children come to understand their social identity relative to each other and relative to the institution. They further say that although schools are not only responsible for teaching students their gender-differentiated social roles, they often reinforce the subordinate role of girls and humans through curricular choices or classroom organizations that exclude, denigrate and/or stereotype them.  Thus, we can say that the source of gender disparity lies in the curriculum and it further comes as a reading material which helps learners(especially girls or females) to stereotype them.

Gender Disparity in Textbooks

Various researches have shown that there is imbalance of using language in terms of gender, especially in textbook.  Fatemi, Pishgham & Hidarian (2011) conducted a research on gender delineation in high school textbooks and pre-university ELT textbooks and revealed a clear gender imbalance, both in text and illustrations in favor of males. Similarly, Hartman and Judd (1978) reviewed a number of textbooks for the purpose of assessing the image of women and men that they present to the student and found out that women suffered most obviously from low visibility and in most cases male referents heavily out- numbered the female.

I found through a study that in terms of using language inside the classroom or in different books articles, there is biasness. I tried to analyze the primary level textbooks used in Nepalese schools. I prepared a checklist to analyze whether the use of language of those textbook is biased or not. I selected a book entitled Delights a Multi-genre Reading Course in English’ by Deepa Shakya, Bunu Dhungana and Nina Amarasinge to analyze whether the writers are concerned about the matter of gender or not.

The cover page of the book has altogether four pictures where an adult male can be seen with a boy and an adult female can be seen with a girl. There is the involvement of both male and female gender in the picture and the book isn’t biased in terms of picture in cover page. I then looked at both pictorial and verbal aspects of the book’s contents. In pictorial part, I analyzed the pictures using two categories:

1. Adult (male or female)
2. Child (boy or girl)

I analyzed the content part in three different categories:

1. Title
2. Main characters refer to male or female
3. Authors (male or female)

The writers have used 11 pictures of male adults and 3 pictures of female adults, which clearly shows the disparity in using pictures in the textbook. Similarly, we can find altogether 8 pictures of boys and 7 pictures of the girl. In this way the book is biased in terms of gender in pictorial part.

In the verbal part, the author of the first lesson isn’t mentioned but it has got male main character. The author is a male in unit two and the picture of a boy clearly helps us to guess that the main character of this unit is male. Third chapter is concerned with nature thus; the main characters are both. The Fourth chapter is also devoted to male. The fifth chapter has both characters and is written by a female author. Similarly, the sixth chapter contains the picture of a male and is by a male author. The content choice therefore shows a disparity in consideration of gender. It implies that the sense of masculinity is dominant in the text book while the space for feminine gender is literally underestimated and limited.

Concluding Remarks

The analysis of primary level textbook has revealed a clear gender imbalance both in the texts and illustrations in favor of males. This type of imbalance is the prominent factor which must be considered in every policy and publication to reflect equality between males and females.

A shift towards the way of creating the equality among the genders in education ensures the social and individual confidence particularly in female students. This will help in the social uplift of females in the future. So, curriculum planners should broaden their view towards gender roles and stereotypes. This equally applies to text book writers, who I believe, should be careful while dealing with gender in their textbooks.

 [Mandira Adhikari is a Masters in ELT scholar at Kathmandu University]

References

Fatemi, A. H., Pishghadam, R., Heidarian, Z. (2011) Gender delineation in high school and pre- university elt textbooks: a criterian- oriented approach to text. The Iranian EFL Journal, 7 (3).

Hartman, P.L.,Judd, E.L.(1978) Sexism and TSOL materials. TESOL QUARTELY, 12 (4).

Holmes, J. (2008). An ntroduction to sociolinguistics. Longman: Pearson.

Lakoff, R. (1973). Language in society. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mckay, S. & Hornberger, N. (2009). Sociolinguistics and language teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wardhaugh, R. (2008). An introduction to sociolinguistics. London: Blackwell

17th NELTA Confernce Phase I