Gopal Prasad Bashyal

As I reflect on the year 2012, it turned out to be a wonderful one. It was not a giant leap, though. I think I am self-consented with my ambitions, some fulfilled, and some waiting in the lobby or some others thrown into the dust bin. Perhaps everyone enjoys such diverse currents in their life. From the point of view of my professional growth, the year could record some historical foot prints, and also brought some bitter realities of life. It generally happens to all, I guess. Then, why am I going to share them with my respected Gurus and colleagues? Certainly, I do not have any magic thrills. Yet I want to share the moments I cherished in the year.

As a NELTA activist, I began the year with some preparation for the 17^th International Conference of NELTA. I planned to present a paper on “Autonomous Learning: Enabling Learners.” I am always worried about growing carelessness on the part of learners. They want some ready made junk food-type of knowledge, easy to prepare and tasty. Perhaps, guess paper writers and sellers are making their fortune in such an environment. I’m convinced with the idea that learners must take responsibility for their learning process. If they do that, they will enjoy learning more and that learning becomes more sustainable. Furthermore, if one produces something being fully engaged in it interactively, the product gives better taste. With these assumptions, I wanted to share some principles and ways of leading students towards being autonomous in their learning. The presentation was satisfactory, as the participants said. At the same time, Prof. Jai Raj Awasthi made the third volume of English Language Professionals, the journal of NELTA Palpa, public among the global ELT experts. The journal consists of different articles by local and national authors. Even the Master’s level students have started reading it for their examination and thesis writing. It is a great achievement of NELTA Palpa. Later, when General Secretary posted the Conference report, one of the photos showed me so well that it drew the attention of my five-year-old daughter. These days whenever I set out for Kathmandu she asks me if it is to NELTA.

The year 2012 brought me some other happy moments too. For example, I could present myself as a co-author of Optional English Series, grade 1 – 5 from a private publication. The series is especially for community schools, full of integrated activities. I applied for the Teaching Excellency and Achievement (TEA) program, a one-and-a-half-month course in the US, which is sponsored by the US Government. I got the information of being shortlisted for the interview when I was conducting training for teachers at Rampur RC. When I received a phone call from the US Embassy, all the teachers congratulated me and whished further success. Perhaps due to their good wishes I could answer well in the interview. There was a great storm outside that day. But the storm brought me happy news that I was selected for further competition. It was the TOIL test. Despite two Master’s degrees in English literature and education, I was much worried about the test. Mr Ganga Ram Gautam and Mr Hemanta Dahal were encouraging me to do well. I stepped at the doors of Dillibazaar and Putalisadak, Kathmandu to find the place for verbal test but they didn’t have that service. I gathered all my strength and went to the test. The behavior of the staff at Fulbright Commission helped me to cool down and I could take the four-hour test well. It was really an exciting moment. Despite all confusions and fears, I could enjoy the test and could obtain marks that allowed me for the further competition. It was a global level competition, as I was told. I was quite hopeful that my dream to visit the US would come true. Finally I received a letter from the US Embassy about my selection for the program. This is a great achievement in my life. I’m eagerly waiting for the lessons in the US.

Likewise I fought for a professional development course in MASHAV, Israel. I was selected and I confirmed that I would join the course. I regret to say that I could not enjoy this opportunity, since I couldn’t collect money for transport fare. I was really sorry for missing it. I apologized to the State of Israel and its Mission to Nepal. I realized the pain of being poor. If I had got money for the plane fare, I could have enriched my professionalism. I now feel I should earn some money so that I shouldn’t miss such an opportunity. I went to some doors stretching my hands for help, but I had to drop them down every time. This is one of flows among the ebbs and flows in my life and I cannot excuse myself for this misfortune.

It was in 2012 that I was selected as one of the trainers for ETTE + project. The British Council and NELTA are jointly working for this project in Chitwan. Mr Hemanta Dahal asked me to allocate some more time for NELTA and I dropped my ambition to be the head teacher of my school. I got five-day TOT for ETTE + organized by the British Council. It was really a wonderful time though I had already worked as Super ETTE in 2009 and 2010, and also conducted similar training in Lamjung in 2011. I learnt lots of creative techniques from Adele, Khalil, Christine and Aarish. The peer teaching and the balance between theory and practice for conducting training to teach young learners were really unforgettable. I’m eagerly waiting for the moment to work with teachers in Chitwan.

At the end of 2012, I applied for my professional journey to Dhaka for taking part in the 6^th International Conference of BELTA. My proposal of presentation on teacher education has been accepted and now a team of 8 people, including myself, is preparing for the Dhaka visit scheduled the third week of January 2013.

Finally, in addition to ELT, the year 2012 was satisfactory in the areas of literature. I could write a few poems and critical comments in the Nepali language. Some of my poems in English when shared in different forums drew beautiful comments that encouraged me to write more poems in English. I want to publish an anthology of my English poems. Hopefully, it will be materialized in 2013. I conducted two workshops on creative writing. The Bachelor’s level students in Palpa produced some poems beyond my imagination – a simple guideline could help them so much. In NELTA  Nawalparasi Conference, teachers continued composing poems till evening. I came to the conclusion that everyone could write poems. A very significant program held in Palpa last year was the two-day workshop on Expanding Horizons in English facilitated by Mr Ganga Ram Gautam and Dr Barbara Law. NELTA helped with books to different eight community schools as well as Tribhuvan Campus. Similarly, one-day workshops were organized time and again, and NELTA colleagues presented their papers and conducted workshops. Those programs helped in promoting the sharing culture, developing presentation and communication skills. Because of such fruitful endeavors  NELTA is gaining momentum in the areas of ELT.

                                                Prof  Dr Tirth Raj Khaniya

I would like to begin […] with a statement made by Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize Winner, “We cannot predict the future, but we can prepare it”. To add to what he has said, it is through education, we prepare our future. Putting it another way, our future is largely dependent upon what kind of education with what vision and delivery mechanism we offer today.

It has been seven years since the 21^st century began. Almost all countries widely discussed the beginning of 21^st century, and several preparations were made in the name of preparing for the 21^st century. Some countries started talking about the 21^st century, and making preparations for it almost a decade before 2000. For them, the 21^st century began long before the beginning of 2000. Perhaps, they could have thought that the more they talked about the 21^st century, and got prepared for that, their efforts in the future would be more productive and contributory to the advancement of their society.

When we talk about education in the 21^st century, generally the question that comes in our mind is what it is that makes the 21^st century different from the 20^th century in terms of education. When did it begin? What did the discussions on it entail when people talked about the 21^st century? Was that merely the passing of time or the adoption of new processes of work or the development of new contents and areas of study or the change in the methods of teaching and learning or in life style of the people? One would have wondered what the world would be like in the 21^st century.  What is the demarcation line between the 20^th and the 21^st century? Was that just the end of December 1999 and beginning of January 2000 or was there something more? One would argue that talking about the 21^st century and preparing for it is a visionary way of thinking about our future. As a corollary, when we discuss educational issues in relation to the 21^st century, basically, we are envisioning our future education in light of the education we have at present. In order to support the visioning, we should be prepared to evaluate our existing system of education based on the past efforts and their impacts on what we accomplished so that we could consolidate what we accomplished and continue working on improving it in line the major changes taking place in different parts of the world.

Some people associate the 21^st century with time and some people with excessive use of technology and knowledge (e.g. knowledge economy).  Whatever the case, what is emerging, in fact, is that the 21^st century is going to be more technology and knowledge-based than ever before. Because of this reason the world is going to be more globalized that ever before. Failing to appreciate this fact will lead us to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world. In this context, the first thing that we need to consider in order for us to be able to cope with the needs of the emerging societies is how to bring about changes in education so that our youths become competent enough no matter how competitive the world becomes. We need to understand that education is changing, and the education we received and the skills and abilities we gained some years ago may not be sufficient to enable us to cope with the requirements of the changing world. Today education is not like receiving once and using it for ever. We cannot utilize the knowledge and skills we have gained through education in the past unless we update them in light of the present needs. Therefore, our education has to be examined in light of the changing context of the world.

Education deals with human beings. We should know what skills and abilities we intend to inculcate in our youths in the 21^st century so as to enable them to cope with the needs of the emerging society. At the same time, we should be able to determine what our people need to acquire in order to cope with the time to come. Education binds together the past and the future of our societies. It is through education we sustain our culture, values and beliefs, and inculcate ideas in our youths. If we incorporate the contemporary skills and abilities in our system of education, we can equip our future generation with the necessary skills and abilities to cope comfortably with the emerging societies without causing much harm to our tradition.

One of the reasons for talking about the future is that we are trying to make people aware that we have experienced so many things in the past, and based on those experiences, we can anticipate what the world would look like if the present pattern of development of the world continues. We are also telling people that they should be prepared for the emerging society in a different way than they were prepared in the past. We believe that in the future the world will be more competitive than it was before, there will be more use of technology in many aspects of life than before, and there will be a growing feeling of globalization. The argument is that our people in the future will need to be more competent, more skillful, more knowledgeable, more informed, more flexible, more creative, and more responsive to what is happening around as well as in other parts of the world. It is also our feeling that we have to be prepared to cope with the new way of life with the skills and abilities necessary for the emerging society if we want not to be left far behind the mainstream of world development. One way of addressing this challenge is to bring about necessary changes in our education system which is the main source of human resource development. For that purpose we were trying to visualize the future, in my opinion, when we talked about the preparation for the 21^st century. Putting it another way, talking about the 21^st century is a way to play a proactive role in the preparation for the future. That is why the countries which initiated early preparations stared the 21^st century long before it actually began in other countries. The reason is that doing this helps us prepare ourselves for the future. This is important in order for us to be able to face the emerging societies which are dominated by technology and knowledge.

My understanding is that science and technology have transformed this world so rapidly that our economy and democracy have also been affected by those processes. The result is that future works will require much technical competence and a great deal of flexibility. The dynamics of the society is that one set of skills already acquired which used to be adequate in the past will not be sufficient for the future. Education is becoming not only a package of learning a set of skills; rather it is becoming a process of arousing in the learners a real thirst of learning.

The way the world is becoming open for access and communication, it becomes clear that the 21^st century will invite every individual irrespective of place and citizenship to come forward and compete with the rest of the world for opportunities. For that purpose, every individual is expected to develop necessary skills and intellectual ability. In addition to necessary skills, a person, therefore, is expected to be able to analyze problems and issues, examine the component parts, and reintegrate them into either a solution or into a new way of stating the problem or issue. In this way, it is necessary to develop thinking skills. An individual should be able to express and understand others’ expressions through diverse media. These skills of self-expression and hearing include writing, articulating verbal expressions, and familiarity with symbols and basic vocabularies of arts, mathematics and the sciences. These skills are necessary for an individual when the world becomes a global village. To have a meaningful life in the global village, our future generation will have to accept work as both the means of economic survival and an important source of one’s identity. Because of interaction with the rest of the world, our people will be careful with career and occupation options, not feeling bound by restrictions of race, gender, language, color, ethnicity, etc. Each individual will have to understand the fact that education is a prerequisite for becoming competitive in the adult workforce. This thinking certainly puts pressure on each country to bring about changes in the system of education by incorporating the elements of education necessary for the contemporary society. It becomes, therefore, obvious that we must make our education system competent enough to enable our future citizens to possess the skills, abilities and competence needed to cope with the emerging needs of the 21^st century.

In the field of education, like many countries in this region, Nepal faces challenges in two ways: on the one hand it has not been able to make a good progress in education in the past (e.g. low pass rate, high drop out rate, low participation of girls, low rate of enrolment, under-achievement of the learning outcomes by the students, irrelevant education, no collaboration between education and service and productive sectors, etc.) despite mobilizing adequate external and internal resources, and on the other hand, now it has to use information technology in education, and upgrade the overall contents and processes of educational delivery.

Education has always been associated with social advancement, economic prosperity and employment. The relationship between education and these factors is going to be even stronger in the future. For making a system of education work better, it is necessary to have a clear picture of what we want from the system as an outcome of the process. Nepal, therefore, will have to be clear about what kind of people with what skills and abilities for what purposes are needed for its overall development. Once we make our priorities and choices clear, the system of education should be directed towards accomplishing them. This is what we need to do first. Therefore, we need to revisit our system of education in order to make it serve our present and future needs.

It has been quite some time since some changes were made in the present system of education. It is believed that it is only through education Nepal can equip its youths with necessary skills and abilities to cope with the emerging societies.

Source:  New Horizons in Education in Nepal, 2007

Let us welcome the New Team!

Praveen Kumar Yadav is a Development Coordinator at the Child Rights and Youth Promotion Projects in Community. A near-graduate from Tribhuvan University’s M.Ed program (plus MA in Rural Development), Praveen is a self-motivated, enthusiastic, creative scholar in English language education, a subject that he creatively combines in his work in community development and social mobilization. Praveen is working on his M.Ed thesis which happens to be on the subject of “professional development in Nepalese ELT through blogging” and he focuses on this blog, Nelta Choutari. Praveen has organized a variety of events in both fields of ELT and community development. He is a technologically savvy worker and scholar in both fields. Some of the many other experiences that Praveen was involved in during his highly productive professional career include teaching at the Institute of Community Health and Technology, grade schools, and the Consular Office of India. Praveen has a number of publications to his credit.

Madhav Kafle is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Applied Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University in the United States. He was quite fascinated with the previous issues of Choutari as they cater to multiple tastes that he wishes to rejoice to. The quality of the scholarship and the commitment of the current editors to the profession has amazed and encouraged him to join the ongoing conversation. He thinks that building on what has been already established is quite crucial. He has been on both local and international ELT rivers for at least 10 years. He is a member of Penn TESOL East, Big TESOL, IAWE, AAAL, & NCTE. His major professional interests include globalization and ELT, academic literacies, and critical pedagogy.  He is also interested in language policy and education, and advocacy for minority students. Currently he is exploring how international students in the US negotiate vernacular and academic literacies. When not doing academic work, he loves to go trekking and interact with the people in the rural areas of Nepal. Although he is currently studying abroad and might not be quite familiar with the contemporary state of ELT knowledge in Nepal, he still believes that we can come together in Choutari to show the rest of the ELT world that we DO exist. He hopes that despite various challenges, people across different regions of Nepal as well beyond will exchange their tales and travails so that we can, as Shyam sir says, grow collectively.

Lal Bahadur Rana is a lecturer of English language education at Surkhet Campus (Education), Birendranagar, Surkhet. He has been teaching English at the campus over the last seven years. Besides teaching, he is interested in trekking. He was involved in NELTA from 1996, the time when he was studying at campus in Surkhet as a general member and from 2004 he has become the life member of NELTA. Mr. Rana is also a life member of Goreto Nepal and CT Society Nepal, both of which have been established in Nepal with a view to imparting quality education through critical thinking.

Suresh Kumar Shrestha is From Birgunj, Parsa. He has been a language instructor for over 18 years and is currently teaching at Birgunj Public College, Birgunj as an English teacher and at Birgunj Access Center as an Access teacher, too. He is a B.Sc. (Maths), B.Ed.(English), and doing an M.Ed.(English/ thesis in process). He has done two online English courses from UMBC and attended different training courses, local, regional and international conferences held by NELTA. He is an executive member of NELTA Birgunj , as well as a member of the editors’ team of ‘ELT Today’, an annual journal by NELTA Birgunj He has written several articles for ELT Today and Nelta Choutari and presented a paper in NELTA’s 17th International Conference in Kathmandu.

Ushakiran Wagle is a graduate of Kathmandu University. She is teaching English at National School of Sciences (NIST) Lainchour.  She has the experience of teaching English—and of being a member of NELTA—for three years. She loves to apply new ideas to her teaching, especially by finding out new ideas and issues from her students. Teacher development and the issues related to it professionally attract her to the field of teaching. She has published one article in Nelta Choutari and conducted research studies for her academic work, including an action research whose result was highly beneficial to the students and teachers of a school where the study was conducted. She has also been presenting at NELTA Conferences, as well as working as a volunteer during this conference. Beside the NELTA she is also a member of IATEFL. Usha was drawn to Nelta Choutari because she not only found a lot of useful information about NELTA and issues about ELT on this site, she could also use materials in it for her academic work. She observes a lack of sufficient venues for students and scholars to share their ideas with broad communities in Nepal; so she finds Choutari a place where younger scholars can share their ideas. She looks forward to stimulating the conversation on the blog as she takes on the responsibility as one of the editors.

Bal Ram Adhikari teaches at Mahendra Ratna Campus, Tribhuvan University where he has been teaching for the last seven years. He is a graduate with MA and MEd from Tribhuvan University. He joined NELTA as a life member in 2000. To his credit, there are a dozen publications in English grammar for students and teachers, and translations in English and Nepali. He has contributed to textbooks prescribed by the University for its B Ed and MEd students. His research-based articles have appeared in Nepalese Linguistics, Journal of NELTA and Nepalese Art, Literature and Cultures published by Nepal Academy. His areas of interest include teacher training, translation and editing and creative writing. Chautari has been a locus of his interest, especially because of its role in providing a forum for Nepalese ELT practitioners in sharing their experiences and knowledge. How we can bind varied Nepalese ELT experience and knowledge with theoretical strands will be his prime concern. He thinks that we need more readers and critical observation from them to make the Choutari initiation more relevant and success.

(compiled and edited by Shyam Sharma)

by Sajan Kumar

Vishnu S.  Rai is a well-known name in Nepalese ELT. An Associate Professor of English, Department of English Education, TU, Rai has been involved in teaching, training and research for more than two decades. To his credit, he has published a number of books and articles on linguistics and ELT. More importantly, he has designed present secondary level courses and written textbooks.

Besides, he loves creative writing and his stories poems and dramas are taught in Tribhuvan University, and other universities. He is one of the members of Asian English Teachers Creative writing Group which runs workshops and conferences and also publishes poems and stories for Asian students. The Group has already held conferences twice once in Kirtipur (2008) and in Dhulikhel (2010) in Nepaland this March the group is all set to meet in Birgunj for the workshop and conference. With reference to the objectives, activities and rationales behind those activities, I tendered some questions to my guru, Vishnu Singh Rai. Below are the answers in his own words.

1.       You are involved in Asian English language creative writing project? Could you please inform us about the rationales behind formation of such a group? What activities does the group do and what are the substantial achievements?

Thank you Sajan ji. I am delighted that you want to know about Asian English Teachers Creative Writing Group, and intend to inform the ELT practitioners of Nepal about it.

The Asian English Teachers Creative Writing Group was formed in 2003 by Prof. Alan Maley and Dr. Tan Bee Tin. I am pretty sure that those who are interested in language and literature interface know Alan Maley who was honored with the life time achievement award in ELT by IATEFL in 2011.

About the group: A small group of Asian teachers meets once a year in a different country to write original stories and poems in English.  These are then published and made available for use as teaching input to classes in the Asia region.

So far, the group has met in Bangkok, Thailand (2003), Melaka, Malaysia (2004), Fuzhou, China (2005),  Hanoi, Vietnam (2006), Salatiga, Indonesia (2007), Kirtipur, Nepal (2008.), Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2009), Jakarta, Indonesia (2010),  Dhulikhel, Nepal (2010), Jember, Indonesia (2011) and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (2012)  Participants to date have been drawn from Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Nepal, Pakistan, Australia and the UK.

Rationale and Objectives: The group operates in the belief that teachers whose first language is not English are not only capable of but are also uniquely well-placed to write literary materials for use by their own and other students in the Asia region.  By virtue of the fact that they share their students’ background and contexts, they have an intuitive understanding of what will be culturally and topically relevant and attractive for them.  What they all too often lack is the confidence in their own ability to write interesting material.  The group operates to dispel this misconception.

The following rationale underpins the activities of the group:

• A belief in the value of creative writing in English both for teachers and for students.(see below)
• A belief in the ability of teachers in the region to produce their own English teaching materials.
• A belief that these materials will provide useful input for promoting reading (and other activities) in English.
• A belief in the value for professional and personal development of forming a closely-knit, Asia-wide, mutually-supportive learning community of teacher/writers.

The objectives are:

• To produce poetry and stories appropriate in level and content for use by Asian students of English at secondary level.
• To publish and promote these as widely as possible, thus creating a wider awareness of the value of CW.
• To develop materials and activities for the teaching of creative writing.
• To run creative writing conferences and workshops for the wider teaching community wherever possible.
• In this way, to boost the self-esteem and confidence of teachers of English in Asia.

The intended outcomes are:

• A set of stories for extensive reading and related language work.
• A set of poems intended for language work, and to stimulate creative writing by students.
• A set of teacher-generated creative writing activities.
• Publications, website and conferences for teachers in the region to raise awareness of the value of creative writing activities.

In other words, the project aims at three main audiences:

• A small group of writers who produce the materials, and in so doing develop professionally and personally.
• English teachers in the region at large who will use the materials and hopefully go onto develop their own in due course.
• Students of English in the region who will use the materials, and will themselves produce texts which can be fed back as input to other students.

2.       Do creative writing activities help to develop language skills of the students in anyway? You know that poetry often makes use of distorted language, i.e. poetry often breaches the code? Could you please specify the possible ways creative writing helps students to learn language?

Yes, I do believe that creative writing activities help students to develop their English in a more interesting way. This is the reason creative writing activities in ELT has been introduced in many countries. It is sad that it has not yet reserved its place in ELT courses and syllabuses. However, the teachers have realized its importance and usefulness in ELT, and they have started using it as an effective tool in ELT. The members of the group have introduced it with great success. I, too carried out a small scale research with M.Ed. Students (Major English) on creative writing activities and its usefulness in classroom teaching and findings were as expected. The students (the prospective teachers) found it very interesting although they had never done any creative writing in English. The research report was published in the NELTA Journal 2009.

I agree that most people believe that the language of poetry is archaic, that it cannot and is not used in daily communication. They are mistaken. If we observe people talking and communicating we notice that they use all kinds of figures of speech (what we call literary language) in their daily communication. We all use simile, metaphor, irony, paradox and what not in our “daily” language. And what’s interesting as an eye-opener is the fact that those who use more figurative language in their day to day conversation are liked by the hearers. The more we use figurative language the more we liked  and appreciated by the listeners.  Poetry ‘breaches’, I would use the term stretches the code of a language, but so does the spoken language in daily conversation. Creative writing helps students to equip them with the literary devices to make their language more beautiful and appreciable.

3.       The conventional belief has been that writers are born? Do not you think the group that you are involved in aims to deconstruct this established belief with the aim of teaching creative writing? Some people still questions if creative writing can be taught.

Firstly, conventional belief and truths might be wrong. We must keep our mind open and do not believe what is carried over as tradition. The tradition of Sati Pratha, for example was considered to be pious by Hindus but it has been discarded because it was based on false belief. The Earth was thought to be flat until 19^th century. Had we blindly believed on that, mankind would have never achieved what he has achieved today. Let us not go fat –how about teaching. Traditionally, it was considered good to be caned by guru  -knowledge can gained only by hard work and the ‘hard work’ meant physical punishment by teacher. I still remember my childhood when my friends were slapped, caned and even kicked by gurus (thank god I escaped those punishments because I was somehow better than them). Today physical or mental punishment in schools is completely unacceptable. Our group don’t believe on the belief that creative writing cannot be taught.

I agree that some people have some special talents right from their birth –this is what you call ‘writers are born’. That might be true. But it is also true that creative writing is an art that can be taught or more suitably people can be helped to learn the creative writing art in the same way as they are helped to learn other arts and crafts such as painting, drawing or music.

Another thing which I would like to emphasize is the fact that there are two aspects of creative writing, (a) to be a creative writer and get published, etc., and (b) to use creative writing in the classroom. Our group tries to do both. But when we do creative writing in a classroom, the primary purpose is to help the learners develop their language skills without stress and with fun. It gives me great pleasure to say that some of our members started writing poems and story first time when they joined the group and most of them are published now.  So far, 11 volumes by Pearson Malaysia, 2 volumes by Bhundipuran Prakashan, Kathmandu, and 1 volume by LINCOM EUROPA, Germany have been published.

4.      I came to know that the group is formed with the belief that all too much of what is available on the international market is culturally or otherwise unsuitable in Asian contexts. Why do you think that the available literature is not appropriate for Asian students?

This question is related to the question –Who is a better teacher –native speaker of English or non-native speaker of English? Both have their strengths and weaknesses but teaching English as a second or foreign language, a non-native teacher (I mean local non-native teacher) is better because s/he knows their students and their culture and background far better than a non-native speaker.

Similarly, I believe that the textbooks and teaching materials developed and written by native speakers might be very good in themselves, but they might not be appropriate the students of our region. Although there are individual differences in them, there are many things which are common among Asian students (e.g. their second or foreign language learning style is different from those of the Europeans or Americans). It is quite natural that Asian teachers know more about their students than a native speaker teacher. Naturally then, the materials developed by Asian teachers or stories and poems written by Asian teachers are more appropriate, relevant and ‘larger than life’ for Asian students.

5.       What do you think are the implications of the activities of creative writing group  in ELT in Nepal and elsewhere?

Creative writing is fun. Creative writing breaks the monotony of the class. It brings fresh air in the classroom. It helps students to learn language with fun. The most important thing is that it boosts their morale. It gives them confidence that they can write poems and stories in English. The same is true with the teachers. Once they are exposed to creative writing activities, their self-confidence soars up.

6.      The group holds conferences in Asian countries to demonstrate that creative writing is feasible in a foreign or second language. This is what Braj Kachru said when he coined the phrase ‘Bilingual’s creativity’. How far have you (group)  been successful in unveiling the creativity of Nepalese? How many poets and story writers has the group produced in Nepal?

Well, as I said earlier, the group does not claim to produce Shakespeare, Keats or Yeats. It helps them to find and believe on their own capability. All the group members are published by different publishers in and outside Nepal.

7.       What are the reasons the group has limited its scope only to Asian EFL/ESL classrooms? Do not you think the works can go beyond? Do not you think the works can form a part of Asian literature?

Yes, we would like to see it grow. But you know growth without purpose and direction is like Kathmandu city which is growing in all directions resulting into a polluted city of cement concrete. The group has deliberately kept it small. Too big a group doesn’t work. This group has no president, no secretary, no election and no obvious material benefit as in other organization. All the members are dedicated: they attend the workshop in different countries on their own (they seek for funding on their own and if they cannot find it they do not attend or spend their own good money). So, it is not like NELTA which is big and being its member by paying some membership fee, you can have some material benefit (e.g. attend a conference in London or get a chance to further your study). Asian English Teachers Creative Writing Group is open for all who can look after themselves –the only requirement is that you can write.

8.      How do you compare the literary works by bilinguals such as Nepalese or Indians with native writers of English? Do not you think that the literary works produced by native writers are superior to those by bilinguals’?

Language is not a property of its native speakers. Their millions of native speakers of English but all of them are not creative writer. As to the second part of your question, I would say that there are many non-native writers of English who have won such prestigious prize as Booker Prize. Indian and African writers of English are world known for their creative works. Recently, Nepalis have also started writing in English and I am sure in the coming years, some of them will receive international prizes (some of them have already received prizes (e.g. Samrat Upadhyay for his fiction and D.B. Gurung for his poems) .

So, no. I do not think that non-native writers’ works in English are in inferior in any way to the works of the native speaker of English.

9.      Could you please let the readers know about next conference in details?  Who are the presenters and what are the programs?

The next workshop plus conference is going to be held in Birgunj from 8-13 of March. It has two parts. In the first part, we organize a three days workshop in which the members of the group meet and write poems and stories. Their works are peer edited. They also go to a writing trip to a local place and spend whole day there in their creative work. The products of the workshop are collected and published. The members who are coming from abroad are:

Alan Maley (UK)

Jaikaran Mukundan (Malaysia)

Mallika Vasugi (Malaysia)

An Thyu Nyugen (Vietnam)

Handoyo F (Indonesia)

Teng Minag (China)

Li wei (China)

Kanakon (Thailand)

Gillian (Maynmar)

Khaing Tin (Maynmar)

Iqubal (Pakistan)

In the course of inviting an acclaimed creative writer from Nepal, Professor Dr. Govinda Raj Bhattarai has been requested to be the judge of poetry recitation program to be hosted on the third day and also as a plenary speaker in the conference.

One person is coming from the US as a support from the US Embassy, Nepal. Besides these members from abroad from Kathmandu following persons will participate.

Tapasi Bhattacharya

Maya Rai

Motikala subba Dewan

Vishnu S Rai

In addition to these members, since the conference is being organized in Birgunj generously supported by Birgunj colleagues such as Mr. Kedar Prasad Shah and Sajan Kumar Karn, some enthusiast from Birgung will also participate in the workshop. They are: Sajan Kumar Karn, Suresh Shrestha, Pravin Kumar Yadava  and Ram Awadhesh  Ray. 

In the second part, we organize a two day conference for the local English teachers to expose them on various aspects of creative writing and its use in the classroom. All the members will present papers and run workshops on the various aspects of creative writing in the proposed two days conference. The member from the US will run workshops also in other NELTA branches after the conference is over. I am sure the teachers and ELT practioners in and around Birgunj will benefit from it. I would like to take this opportunity to invite all ELTers and others to participate and make the conference successful.

Thank you very much indeed for your co-operation! 

Maheshwor Rijal

Kathmandu University 

“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed” (Wilkins as cited in Thornbury, 2006, p. 13). Undoubtedly, vocabulary has immense value in teaching and learning as it is one aspect or element that links all the four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In this article, I reflect up on the strategies I used while learning vocabulary in schools and colleges and my current research interest. I hope my story relates with many of you and will help us in uncovering the hidden realities and revisiting our pedagogical practices.

I was born in a remote area and got my schooling from a rural public school. I still remember the bitter pain I used to have in English classes.  The class was totally controlled by the teacher. Most of the teaching approaches that teacher used were traditional and boring and there was a little chance of flourishing creativity from my side. “Look and remember” with the help of bilingual dictionary, as I see now, seemed to be not very effective for the learners of English language like me. I was unable to show my creativity in spite of being eager in learning procedure.  My ELT class was totally authoritative and was only focused on examination, not on practical and real life situations.  Every set of words was taught according to bilingual translation and every student was compelled to follow the same method and I was also the part of same tradition. It was, of course, my compulsion that I had to follow the same tradition and had to apply what my teachers said. The teacher made us buy a dictionary and assigned all students to recite and memorize the words from the respective chapters. The classroom strategies were threatening, full of stress and pressure. My teacher used to come to the class with stick and beat students when they were unable to produce or say the meaning of the vocabulary items. I have had many ideas to express but due lack of exposure of English language I couldn’t express. It was due to lack of vocabularies when I needed. I used to go to school with a fear and challenge. So, when teacher came near to me I used to be scared. One of the recent articles “Beat the Teacher” by Khila Sharma in IATEFL journal nicely sums up my feelings: “vocabulary building is one of the biggest challenges English teacher in rural communities face. Even students who have studied English for ten years cannot give a simple narrative or express their thoughts and feelings. They have hard time when writing essays and resort to rote-memorization from their teacher’s note or commercial guide-books” (p.5). This is the reality of our schooling, even now.

After completing   my School Leaving Certificate (SLC) seven years back, I came to Kathmandu with a hope to pursue higher education. In my intermediate and Bachelor’s degree, despite my weak English background, I worked very hard on English and got the reward. I was also fortunate enough to have very encouraging teachers. Now, as a third semester student at Kathmandu University, I am on the verge of completing my master’s degree and busy in conducting academic research. So, my proposed academic research is finding out perceptions and practices regarding vocabulary teaching/learning in the EFL context of Nepal. Carrying out research on such area, as in other areas, is challenging as many terms and conditions specified by the concerned faculty and the supervisor need to be fulfilled.  Although I understand how to carry out research, I was never taught how to write a good research paper in my school life. I don’t have the expertise of producing a research article even after my undergraduate and graduate level of studies. Many of my fellow learners, I am sure,   may have the same catastrophic realization as they embark into the sophisticated arena of education research.

The educational standards of Kathmandu University (KU) have broadened my horizons of thinking. I have become aware of more useful strategies of learning vocabulary such as self defining context, pictures, synonyms, gestures, realia, audio visual aids, games etc. Reflecting on my own experience, most of the students are themselves in search of a new way of learning vocabulary. Now as a teacher (and a student), I have a real platform to develop new horizons for developing academic proficiency in my students using the strategies I just mentioned.

In the context of EFL setting, vocabulary should be taught interestingly, and to do so we can apply   different ways proposed by new teaching methods such as by Communicative Language Teaching. Despite the similar bitter experiences and the awareness of new methods and approaches, most of the techniques used by many of us in teaching vocabulary are still traditional. During my ongoing education in Kathmandu University, I have come to realize that teachers have a huge role in increasing students’ vocabulary as there is not much exposure from elsewhere. For better learning and better communication in English, one should assist the students in selecting the words appropriately as related to their goals, situation, and context.  Since vocabulary teaching/learning is a milestone to be reached in language teaching and learning, I think that it is our duty and responsibility to minimize such unpleasant experiences for the new generation of learners.

References:

Harmer, J. (1991). The practice of English language teaching. London: Longman.

Thornbury, S. (2006). How to teach vocabulary. Pearson Education Limited.

Sharma, S.P. (2012). Beat the teacher. IATEFL Journal September-October Issue -228.

Binod Kumar Yadav

Executive Member

NELTA Siraha

The behavior of the teacher influences the behavior of the student, subsequently affecting learning outcomes. Student motivation is affected by a variety of factors, some of which are directly influenced by what a teacher does (how he structures the course and how he /she behaves in class) and some of which are largely beyond the teacher’s control (expectancy and attitudes students bring with them to the class).

Gorhan and Millette(1997)

Introduction

The term “rapport” lexically refers to “a friendly relationship in which people understand each other very well”, and in the context of teaching and learning, it means the relationship that the students have among themselves on the one hand and between teachers and students on the other hand. That is to say, the maintenance of a positive, enjoyable, respectful and socio-cultural relationship among the students themselves and with their teacher is the subject of good rapport – in the lack of which our expectation in teaching and learning realm ever remains as a wild goose chase. Human life takes its inception in society and ashes there too, where multiple actions are performed but are supposed to get successfully completed only if they are done in proper harmony with one another. It means a social action is effectively performed by understanding the desire or minds of one another that we call a social relation or an example of good rapport in society. Similarly, communicative activities in the target language (English) inside or outside the classroom are social actions wherein each participant should read the minds of others and develop a sense of social relationship among themselves and particularly between the teacher and students learners. This shows how socially they are participating in an activity; the good family behavior or the friendly one. So having a trustful relation between a teacher and students is what we call a good rapport. ‘A significant feature in the intrinsic motivation of the students depend on their perception of what a teacher thinks of them, and how they are treated’ (Harmer, 2008:25).

 Why a good rapport?

Teachers need to find creative ways to teach the language and increase the students’ motivation to learn the language and eventually appreciate language .It has been claimed that the more learners are intrinsically or extrinsically motivated the more they are independent , active, participating, autonomous and successful. One of teacher’s main aims, therefore, should be to help students to sustain their motivation using different activities or making them remind a variety of factors that can create a desire to learn. It means there are a number methods that English instructors can use to motivate students in class and outside and they (instructors) should flexibly imply the most suitable methods for the class. Kabilan (2000) stated “Teacher should develop mutual relationship with their learners”.  Thus, building good relation with learner by the teacher for learning and teaching process is a practical/ natural way of arousing curiosity in them to learn more and better. Motivation of the students also depend largely on their perception of what the teacher thinks of them and how they have treated. His/her behavior influences the behavior of the students and directly affects learning outcomes. It is also a fact that teaching and learning style or process with good rapport improves attitudes, behavior, motivation and learning.

Richard Amato (2003) states: “In classroom in which mutual respect is lacking, differing values can lead to conflict between student and teacher and between student and peer”.  Students are psychologically dominated by the teacher and they feel hesitation to participate in any activities; because they find much distance between them and their teacher; they lack mutual understanding and good relationship with one another. This is one of the major ever-failing factors for language learners. Unless there is a good social relation between them and teacher, they never enjoy their learning. It is only through good rapport, they can have the feeling of asking questions to the teacher, sharing their ideas with themselves inside or outside the classroom. A good teacher always welcomes/invites their learners to discuss what they need as an outcome anywhere. Such a teacher enjoys their company and treats students as friends- allowing them to talk to him/her frankly, face to face, on mobile, on public place, outside/inside the classroom, and on computer based technologies. Once I asked a question (in one of my class of ELT, 2^nd year B. Ed) to my students ‘what kind of teacher do you prefer?’, and received the following answers which I think are worthwhile to mention:

-A teacher who knows how to deal with students.

-Teachers who don’t push their thoughts to the students.

-A teacher who has sympathy for us.

– The Teacher who keeps a smile on the face, funny, kind and caring.

-A teacher who never ignores students’ problems.

-Very friendly and active.

– The teacher who is always ready to  help us.

-A teacher who can read students’ minds and understand their need.

-A teacher who spends his time with students and work with them.

From many of them, the fact reveals itself that the learners want to be close to the teacher and share their problems with him/her. What occurs in the language classrooms must be extended beyond the walls of the classroom so that a link is created between what is learned in the classroom and what occurs outside of the classroom. But the problem is that the learners can’t share their knowledge with family members in general case. They need either their friends or their teacher, but they keep their touching on with them only if there is a good rapport between / among them. There is a cultural problem among the learners especially in Terai region regarding sound relationship between boy and girl students of the same or similar level/class. They are living in the same locality, encountering one-another very often, outside the school/campus areas, they hesitate to conduct any social discourse because they are still lacking a mutual relationship due to which they can’t create any link between what they have learned in the classroom with their real life contexts. Not only can’t this but they cannot share their feelings among themselves even inside the classroom.

Let me share one more experience that I have had currently from my campus to residence. Almost all my colleagues (even the most experienced ones in this field) blame me as a lenient and liberal teacher, not maintaining a good distance from my students (as they deliberately talk to me very friendlily, teasing me inside/outside the classroom). One day while we were having a little rest after our first class and about to leave for the second one, one student from B.Ed. 1^st year whispered, indicating me from the door of the teachers’ room “Sir, it is your class” and  I signaled “I am coming “. Other teacher laughed at me simply because their students don’t have any dare to call them but mine did so. I didn’t take any care of their laughing at because I got an appropriate expression from my students in a different scenario. I have also found that the students talk to me more and better than any other teachers. I also find myself very pleased where I meet them in the market places and talk to them using very informal and broken English. All these seem to have taught me a lesson “It is the sound rapport between learners and teacher that determines the success and failure in teaching and learning process”. Children are good learners in the family because of sound support with their parents. Thus, if diagnosis of the right problem is said to be the half healing, building good rapport between teacher and learners and among learners is said to enhance natural way of learning, in which they also to take charge of their own learning.

The unanimous view from teaching professionals is diagnosis of the right problem is said to be half only healing” that can be appropriately obtained only through a friendship relation between students and teacher. Lack of students’ participants in classroom activities was the major encumbering factor for low performance level of English. We generally assume that teachers are just consumers who should adopt the new approaches, methods and techniques generated by the researchers or experts no matter how relevant they are to the needs of the students and classroom context .Sometimes the so called new techniques do not work in the classroom. So the first thing for the teachers is to find out what the real problem(s) is /is with his/her students. For this professional task of any teacher, only action research helps to find out the problems and ways to their solution which ultimately brings change in their teaching because it is directly concerned with a local problem and is conducted in new local setting but conducting an action research, teachers urge the learners to participate in new activities and solve the problems collaboratively as an ideal social group. This can possibly develop a sense of good relationship among learners and their relation with teachers. Therefore, the sense of good relationship can create the drive and energy to acquire the targeted language, enjoys the learning process, and experiences a real communication.

Ways to promote rapport

‘It is clear that teachers need to do everything possible to create a good rapport with their students, partly this happens  by providing interesting and motivating classes; partly this comes from such things as treating all the students the same” Harmer (2006). In order to develop a mental relationship between teachers need to understand the students who are from different backgrounds, have different interests, future goals, aims for English learning and most importantly, different personalities. Once the relationship develops, the classroom will become comfortable and enjoyable enough for students to learn positively from the teacher without any hesitation.

In my view, only a positive teacher can build a good rapport with his/her students because  such  a teacher is more interested in his students and his subject, learn all of the students names, allows for question and discussion in class, is available for conferences and encourages students see him/her if they need help. This is how the good rapport can also be developed. We can apply the following activities for building good rapport:

• Teacher should maximally be guided with CLT approach, TBLT approach and other learner-centered approaches during teaching and learning process.
• Group activities should be his/her preferred strategy
• Articulating the name of his students while asking question or discussing.
• Teachers need to acquire what students look for in teachers in order for -students to be motivated and activated in language learning.
• Creating the classroom environment similar to a family one.
• Presenting the lesson friendly, actively, and in funny styles.
• Giving chances to students for discussion, frankly with teachers.
• Teaching should be carried out more by doing and displaying than by saying.
• All students are taken care equally.
• Students are allowed to ask and talk to their teacher even outside the classroom.
• Different programs should be organized: education tours, picnic, social visit etc.
• Teachers should be tolerant and responsible for learner responses.
• Lesson presentation should be  carried out with the involvement of the student.
• Student’s actions should be praised.
• Teacher should talk, stay, sit, watch TV, listen to radio and walk in the market with learners if possible.
• Teacher should accept he/she also learner from students.
• While working with students homework/class work teacher should call them one by one.
• Teacher should conduct different language games inside/outside the classroom with students.

References

Brown,D.(1991) Principles of language learning and teaching . London: Prentice Hall.

Gorham ,J. and Millette, D.M.(1997).  A Comparative analysis of teacher and student perceptions of courses of motivation and demotivation in college classes.

Harmer, J. (2008). The practice of English language teaching. New York: Longman

Harmer, J. (2008). How to teach English. London: Pearson Longman.

Kabilan, M.K. (2000). Creative and critical thinking in Language classroom. The Internet TESL Journal

Richards, J.C. and Rodgers, T.S. (2005) Approaches and methods in language teaching .New York: CUP

Dipesh Kumar Sah

dipeshsah76@yahoo.com

“Motivation- do we need it for effective language teaching?” has become common talk among the teachers worldwide. But potential ways for motivating English language learners vary in the perspectives of the teachers. However, effective strategies and local EFL contexts are also responsible for determining the potential ways of motivation

Motivation in second or additional language (L2) learning is generally defined as learners’ cumulative interests, feelings, and desires which dynamically keep changing throughout the teaching/learning process in relation with a multitude or internal and external factors.Such cumulative trait not only initiates and coordinates the cognitive and motor processes but also assesses, reshapes, and prioritizes initial wishes and desires that drive learners to acquire an L2. In other words, motivation is comprised of the thoughts and feelings that make us to do something, continue and turn our wishes into action as an influence.

Now I would like to share with ELT community how I have used the warming up strategy for teaching English language to my students.I encourage my students to regularly contribute to maintain the display board with some latest events, news, welcome-notes, birthday wishes, humors, short stories and so on. Additionally, I make use of web-based resources to get them concentrated on the content that we deal with in the classroom. For example, I let my students watch class related Ted’s inspirational videos (see www.ted.com)which they find much more inspiring and that way they are finally motivated for learning the lesson I planned to teach.

In our context, motivation needs to be created and once created needs to be continued too. If not, the learners become silent and show no interests to learn a particular language. But they may feel so interested when the classes are held in the language of their interest. The circumstances of higher classes in some remote areas of Nepal show that the learners completely abide by strict rules set by their instructors. Besides, the teachers are involved in practicing lecture method and developing the note taking system where students have to listen to them and write the notes as if in dictation. Students often feel frightened to learn English, for they argue that they cannot practice autonomy in the English classroom in comparison with other subjects.Besides, the lack of purpose and thus motivation is one of the reasons. Hence, proper motivation and promotion of learners’ autonomy could be the solution to the hesitation for learning English.

Learners’ motivation is affected by numerous endogenous and exogenous factors. Endogenous factors bring pleasure and satisfaction to students and can be the internal inspiration for them. On the other hand, exogenous factors relate to the tangible benefits of an activity such as the role of knowledge gained by learning a language that is required for the communication and for higher education in national and international universities, as well as professional and socio-cultural circumstances. I believe in making learners enjoy the classroom, for which learners’ motivation is crucial. To promote learners autonomy, interactive activities like role-play, pair work, and group work can become good icebreakers to overcome the classroom drudgery. It is also important to appreciate learners’ effort and the feeling. The abstract nature of motivation makes difficulties for classroom practitioners to gauge learner motivation by using a measurable instrument; therefore, practitioners/teachers can rely on their critical observations about learners’ motivational patterns during the course of an academic program. It is the fact about language teaching that motivation of language learners fluctuates and practitioners need to factor awareness of this reality into all curricular stages.

Learners’ autonomy, an intriguing phenomenon for the motivational part and one’s ability to decide the laws for oneself, is inevitable in all stages of learning. The learners really need a motivational strategy that lets them play with English in the environment.

Here comes the question: who is responsible for learners’ motivation? You may have different answers that may not concur with mine. I strongly argue that it is the teacher who is solely responsible for creating motivation in the classroom. I think that the work of a teacher is complete only if the students are able to acquire knowledge that is applicable in the real contexts. And it is only possible when the learners are interested to learn and teachers are successful in motivating them.

The concept of motivation derived from ‘movere’, a Latin word,means‘to move’. Therefore, the idea of movement is reflected in different commonsense ideas about motivation as something that keeps us working, gets us going, and helps us complete tasks. It is a process rather than a product. Therefore, we cannot observe it directly but we can infer it from actions and verbalization  The interactive methodology gives the students a supportive environment for effective learning.The purpose of sharing this blog entry is to suggest teachers like me to focus on the learners’ motivations and feelings as well as the course contents together so that students’engagement gets better. We should respect the feeling of the learners and try to know their psyche before they are given any tasks in the classroom. This provides untrue insights to learn the ways to motivate the learners.

The author, an M. Ed. in English from TU, Nepal is working at Tinpatan Education Campus, Sindhuli. Besides being a member of NELTA, he is currently involved in carrying out a research on Inclusive Education under the guidance of University Grant Commission.

Bharat Babu Khanal

 Access Teacher

“Tell me, I forget; show me, I may remember and involve me, I learn.’’

Collaboratively run by the American Embassy/U.S. Department of State and NELTA, English Access Microscholarship Program has a short history in Nepal but it has become a truly effective means in the field of language learning as well as personality development. I feel proud to be a part of Access Program which has enhanced my own professional career as an English language teacher. Now I realize myself to be a modern teacher. It is obliviously an appropriate platform for my professional development. We teachers get various opportunities to E-Teacher Online Course Programs from the various American universities, participating different national and international teacher conferences.  Last year I successfully completed the course Teaching English to Teenagers (TET) from the University of Maryland which has provided me extra stamina to do better in the Access class. Currently, I have applied for another E-teacher Online Course named “Teacher’s Professional Development on Critical Thinking”. Likewise the Access Program provides us with various trainings from ELT experts. We instantly apply the ideas, activities and techniques in our classroom. Immediately after every end semester result, we have meeting with the parents. It helps them get actual information about their children’s performance in the class and achievement in the exam.

The Access Program officially started in Nepal in 2011 with 120 students and 12 teachers. Now it has expanded to 280 students and 28 teachers. The program is limited only in four districts with five different sites in Nepal but it has an ample horizon to be extended throughout the country. As it is a micro scholarship program for two years, students get free opportunity to develop English language, Nepalese and American culture and leadership development in a group of twenty. The prime objective of this program is to empower under privileged children studying in community schools of Nepal. Wherever the program is launched the particular NELTA branch of that district is responsible for making the program successful with regular monitoring and supervision. NELTA central office gives full ownership to that particular branch.

Within a short span of time, Access class has proved to be the appropriate avenue for the students to develop their English in a real life situation. Unlike their regular school English class, students feel distinct in the Access class as they practically learn things here in group and pair activities. As an Access teacher, I feel proud to work with young and enthusiastic learners in the class. There is no rigorous teaching of a language but the program focuses on creating a suitable environment to flourish their talent through English language. As community school students in Nepal do not have enough exposures to develop their English language, Access Program has taken a genuine step to quench their thirst. In the Access class, what we teach is not prominent but what students achieve is paramount. Students learn English language through various language games. They develop their communication skills doing works and working on computers. Similarly, they watch movies or play outdoor games. They also visit some interesting places like American Embassy, USEF, zoo, temples, mosques and other historically significant places. They participate in public awareness program like Human Rights Day rally, Clean Nepal Campaign, traffic management, etc. This sort of program obviously gives positive message to the locals of the concerned areas. Simultaneously, students become more responsible to the society rather than only to individual life.

The success of Access has to do with the fact that the American Embassy and NELTA work closely together. The prominent aspect of this program is that distinguished guests from the Embassy visit our program and share their feelings with teachers and students. NELTA central committee members and English Language Fellows visit our classes and inspire us to successfully achieve our goals. The Access Country Coordinator’s role is vital to implement to program smoothly in Nepal including receiving and submitting reports by the due dates. The attraction of the program is the participation of guests in American and Nepalese festivities. Students celebrate Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, Independence Day, Teej, Teachers’ Day and other important days in both cultures. It has proved that language learning takes place in natural settings. Book review is the regular activity of this class which encourages students to read new books purposefully. Drawing, painting and designing cards have developed our students’ art skills. Report writing is an inevitable part of Access class after participation in new programs.  It has helped them to present their report confidently on particular topic. I realize our students are getting better opportunity to experience a disciplined and responsible life through this program. A true education brings about a child’s behavioral change; also learning is for all round development of a child.

Indeed Access Program has become very effective medium to open a new horizon to Nepalese students for learning English language in real life situation. I hope it will be promoted and extended in more districts of the country. As our students have got this language learning opportunity, they will be able to grab various opportunities in future. In the globalized context, undoubtedly, they will be able to proceed confidently to meet their academic and personal goals in life.

Dear All
In this issue, we have six articles. Although these entries are different in terms of issues, all contributors focus on bottom-up and personalized teaching/learning experience. While Madhav Kafle, reflecting on his own teaching, shares his ambivalent situation by showing the gap between what he preaches about critical pedagogy and how he teaches, Madhu Neupane shares key aspects of effectively running teachers’ associations that she learned from the seminar on strengthening teachers’ associations in Dhaka, Bangaladesh. Focusing on importance of active reading process, Dinesh Dahal discusses how SQPRRS and note taking techniques can help teachers engage students while teaching reading. Likewise, Tara Sapkota describes the ways of teaching listening skills and Sharmila Sitaula analyses whether learning a second language, especially English, is need or preference. Both articles draw on authors’ own lived experiences and provide a critical insight to the respective field. Atma Ram Bhattarai and Praveen Kumar Yadav analyse increasing trend of public schools shifting from Nepali to English medium of instruction in terms of access, quality and governance.

Table of contents
1. Do I teach what I preach? Teacher’s ambivalence, Madhav Kafle
2. Sharing Best Practices:Strengthening teachers’ association in South Asia, Madhu Neupane
3. Making students read in teaching reading: A reflection, Dinesh Dahal
4. … listening then…? Tara Sapkota
5. Learning second language: Need or preference? Sharmila Sitaula
6. At the crossroads: Community schools in Nepal, Atma Ram Bhattarai & Praveen Kumar Yadav

We hope you enjoy reading the articles in this issue.

Cheers!
Prem Phyak
Praveen Kumar Yadava
Editors, Choutari, November Issue, 2012

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