Reflecting my experience of teaching in community campus in Sindhuli, I realized that very few teachers from community campuses have participated in professional development training or other aspects of teacher professional development. I am not aware if there are any training agencies active in providing professional development training for teachers of community campus. However, University Grants Commission (UGC) provides some grants for training, seminar, course refresher training, training on capacity development, etc. Few campuses apply for UGC grants to conduct small scale research and short-term academic training.
As a lecturer of a community campus of Nepal I feel that there is very important role of teacher professional development to improve teaching and learning activities of our community campuses. Professional development training is an opportunity for teachers to share their knowledge and develop new instructional practices. Teachers’ professional development (TPD) keeps academics up-to-date with the changing world and knowledge. Teacher agency is considered to be a core section of educational institutions, who can bring change in the performance of students as well as institutions. Teachers’ participation in all-round academic activities including their professional development training is expected to transform conventional practices of educational activities and produce dynamic graduates who can explore wider world across the border. Pokhrel and Behera (2016, P. 190) asserted “Teacher professional development is defined as a process of improving both the teacher’s academic standing as well as –acquisition of greater competence and efficiency in discharging her/his professional obligations in and outside the classroom”. Pennington (1990) considered that every teacher needs professional growth throughout their career. Gnawali (2008, P. 220) argues that continuous professional development of teachers is significant to enable them to understand classroom environment and changing pedagogies. Teachers can participate in various professional activities such as training, seminar, workshop, symposium, conference, teacher exchange, reflective practice, peer discussion, blog writing, researching, writing article, publishing, further study, online program, etc. Their participation in such programmes develops professionalism and strengthens their academic skills. Wajnryb (1992) emphasises teachers’ self-motivation in professional development activities increases their learning and becomes highly effective in their academic activities.
Importance of TPD for Teachers
Teachers’ professional development is significant aspect of teaching profession. It helps teachers develop various professional skills and knowledge Continuous professional development activities upgrade teachers’ teaching skills and help teachers survive in the profession. Their learned skills and ideas bring a kind of shift in classroom teaching and learning activities. Teachers’ professional development, which has direct association with students’ learning, improves institutional performance, particularly academic achievement. They become creative as well as energetic through various exposures in TPD programme. They learn to understand the problems of students and they can address and handle students’ needs. TPD programme may encourage teachers to do researches in academic fields.
Teachers’ Expectation of TPD
As I mentioned above, I am unaware of university teacher professional development programmes where I have been teaching for many years. If I were one of them who develops university programmes, I would priorities professional development programmes for university teachers. I would say at least my campus could develop such programmes for faculties and administration staff for upgrading their skills and knowledge and for improving academic activities of the campus. Similar to Western universities, I have observed that my university needs to emphasise conferences, seminars, workshops, orientation and visiting programs. Academic activities particularly research and publication, which promote the university, would develop individual teacher’s professional personality and institution. I wish I would have such opportunities for participating and developing my academic knowledge and skills.
TPD in Community Campus
There is mixed perception about autonomy of institutions for the educational performance. Crossroad conversations in Nepal lead to criticisms against the current system of university management, a single body governance over all universities, which has spoilt educational quality. However, all the community campuses in the country are autonomous in their management as they rely on students’ fees similar to private colleges. Does this matter in educational achievement? Many may argue that autonomous institutions can develop better and perform outstanding like the ones which are totally privately managed. Why are the majority of community campuses not able to perform at the level of private colleges? There is always a strong financial support for community campuses from University Grants Commission although they are autonomous. Does this make any difference in academic performance? If so, why are they unable to demonstrate educational qualities in results and academic activities? These areas can subject to researches in Nepal. Regarding TPD of the teachers of community campuses, I believe that teachers themselves need to understand their professional role and development of their professionalism, and they need to explore learning opportunities for their own career. . They need to be conscious and enthusiastic to take different training for their own professional development. However, there is always a greater role of institution to inspire teachers to find professional opportunities.
Conclusion
Qualification is of course a valid document to join an academy, but it is not all that can work throughout one’s professional life. With the changing context, an academy needs to upgrade own life skills for the place where he has been working and is going to work. An academic tutoring hundreds of students has a great role to change their lives whereas an institution has a greater role to all-round development of many youth generation and the country itself. Therefore, universities have to provide academics with options of professional development so that they can contribute to the development of institution and society.
References
Gnawali, L. (2008). Teacher development: What is it and who is responsible? Bodhi: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2(1), 219-223.
Pennington, M. C. (1990). A professional development focus for the language teaching practicum. In J. C. Richards and D. Nunan (Eds.) Second language teachereducation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pokhrel, T. R., and Behera, S. K. (2016), Expectations of Teachers from Teachers Professional Development Program in Nepal. American Journal of Educational Research, 4 (2), 190-194. doi: 10.12691/education-4-2-6
Wajnryb, R. (1992). Classroom observation tasks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
The author:
Nani Babu Ghimire is a lecturer at Siddha Jyoti Education campus Sindhuli, (TU) Nepal. He is currently an MPhil scholar in English education at Tribhuvan University.
It is the fourth post of its kind aiming to promote the use of photos in English language teaching learning. The photos can serve the multiple purposes in our classes such as writing (paragraph/essay writing, story writing etc.), speaking (conversation, describing photos etc.) and other kinds of group/ peer works. In this part IV, we share the photos of Choutari editor Jeevan Karki taken during his visits in different parts of the country.
Moving forward with ELTChoutari.com rejoicing new years and new tastes of academic curries, here we come with new issue of the online magazine. While saying big bye to 2018 and wishing Happy New Year 2019 to you, the editorial board would like to thank millions of readers and those who have contributed something to the magazine in the past ten years and so. We would like to express our gratitude to the past editors for giving birth to Choutari and their invaluable effort to give it a shape. On this occasion, Dr Sharma, Dr Phyak and Bal Ram Adhikari also share their reflections on the journey, contributions and the future of ELTChoutari.com. We, Karna Rana, Jeevan Karki, Ashok Raj Khati and Praveen Kumar Yadav, the current editors, would like to collectively extend sincere gratitude to millions of readers who have ever supported us and many other writers by reading varieties of articles published on this magazine and by providing feedback to develop our works. Your continuous support has ever made us promising academics and ever inspired to volunteer our time and effort to promote this magazine and we hope you continue your academic activities and share your reflections in the future issues of this magazine.
In the previous ten volumes, ELTChoutari.com has published teachers’ experiences of learning and teaching English, university students’ reflections on their academic writing, researchers’ views, ideas, arguments and suggestions on improving academic productions and teacher trainers’ experiences of training Nepali teachers to teach the English language in public schools. Particularly English as a medium of instruction(EMI) in government schools in Nepal, teachers’ poor English, under-developed research culture in Nepal, learning to research, teaching writing skills, unclear language policy, ICT in the classroom teaching, and reflections on learning and teaching English have attracted the attention of thousands of readers in the past 89 issues of this magazine. We believe that the writings would have positive influence on academic activities of teachers, students and professionals. Also, this magazine would have contributed something positive in policy making, language planning, classroom teaching and research writing.
ELTChoutari.com, an open online magazine, allows professionals, researchers, teachers and students from across the world to share their writings as few issues in the past have published international articles from various countries such as India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Pakistan, Jordon, Ghana, and so on. Many articles published in various issues have received good impact with citations in standard peer-reviewed journals. We hope the magazine will have much brighter days in the future.
This issue includes various reflective writings including instinct responses from the founder editors, teachers, ELT practitioners and workshop participants’ (the participants attending the reflective writing workshop the last month) on-the-spot lived reflections on reflective writing.
While releasing this issue, we take the pleasure of welcoming and introducing two new energetic colleagues Babita Sharma Chapagain and Ganesh Kumar Bastola.
Babita Sharma Chapagain is a Hornby Scholar (University of Warwick, UK, 2014/15) having completed MA in ELT and Master’s degree in ELT from Kathmandu University. She is a freelance teacher educator from Nepal having gained 15 years experience of working as a teacher and teacher trainer. She also brings in experiences of writing and reviewing articles.
Likewise, Ganesh Kumar Bastola is an M. Phil graduate from Kathmandu University in English Language Education. He is a teacher, teacher educator, and researcher and translation practitioner, who also brings writing and reviewing experiences.
They will work together on our editorial team.
Finally we, the current editorial team, would like to thank the contributors in this issue and founding editors for their continuous support. Jeevan Karki, a leading member of our editorial team, deserves special thanks for his overall support in this issue. Thank you Ashok Raj Khati and Praveen Kumar Yadav for your cooperation. We hope we will have brighter days ahead.
On the occasion of our tenth anniversary, the Choutari editor, Jeevan Karki has collected the reflections from our founding/past editors and readers. Their reflections remind the readers the ups and downs in our journey, our contribution (contribution in education in general and ELT in particular), contents and readers perspectives on them, its sustainability, some valuable suggestions and most importantly its recognition around the world. It’s indeed very interesting to hear from them and we believe you will certainly enjoy these excerpts and know more about Choutari.
Bal Ram Adhikari
Think about its sustainability: Bal Ram Adhikari, Former editor
Contribution of Choutari
Choutari for a decade has been a good writing zone for professionals and writing enthusiasts. It has been supporting to promote writing habits. It has been a transition point for formal writing and highly academic writing, where writers can express themselves more casually. Moreover, it has also offered a platform for researchers to share their reflections. Interestingly, it is helping to review the teacher-student dichotomy. In the past, only teachers used to teach or write and students used to study or read but now students are also writing and teachers are able to read their students through the means like ELT Choutari.
Besides, Choutari is helping to generate the content on ELT and teaching-learning and education in general. The content published on Choutarih as been used in the course of B.Ed. third year in critical reading as well.
Contents of Choutari
It’s covering the ELT practices and experiences, ideas for professional development, and discourse on contemporary issues. This writing and discourse revolve around the ELT practitioners from Education faculty mostly. Therefore, now it should also cover and include the ELT practitioners from the stream of Humanities in order to back up and view the ELT practices using critical theories.
Sustainability of Choutari
It may be high sounding but Choutari should think about collecting advertisements from the nation and regional publishers. So that the fund could be utilized for the better design of the site, to conduct writing workshops, interaction, talks and also for some full-time editors/reviewers to value their time and effort. Likewise, it can also be used for paying for well-written articles, which could enhance the quality of writings on the magazine.
Likewise, it should also establish the direct connection with the graduate and postgraduate students through teachers to encourage, guide and mentor them in writing, like the way the theatres in Kathmandu do with the students in the university/campuses.
Shyam Sharma
Choutari, the other child of our community: Shyam Sharma, founding editor
“Several of us NELTA members . . . would like to share with you a few materials related to ELT on a monthly basis,” said an email from Balkrishna Sharma, who signed the email along with Prem Phyak’s name and mine. “Our desire is to prompt some ongoing discussion on issues of interest in ELT,” he added, inviting ELT colleagues in Nepal to discuss, in NELTA’s Yahoo listserv, the texts and ideas we planned to share.
That was exactly ten years ago today. A child who was born a few months earlier just had a robust conversation with me about “social justice” as a theme that he looks for in movies that he considers worth watching.
An excerpt from Paulo Freiere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was one of the three items we had shared for discussion in that first “issue” of [N]ELT[A] Choutari (we were asked to stop using “NELTA,” the acronym of an organization we call our professional home, when its leadership wasn’t, for some time, driven by the positive energy that it used to be). I think that Choutari remains that free spirit, a monkey wrench in a hierarchical socio-epistemic culture.
For me, Choutari is a simple social phenomenon: an additional space born out of the need of younger educators, passed on and changed, and often almost gave up but never stopped using—just to make their voice heard as emerging, passionate scholars.
I’m sure that new generations of our language scholars will continue to use this platform, helping themselves and many more to pursue the profession.
As Bal said in his first announcement, “We wish you a pedagogically productive New Year 20[1]9!”
Choutari articles have been cited around the globe, exciting indeed: Prem Phyak,
Prem Phyak
founding editor
We had started Choutari to connect ELT professionals virtually and engage them in critical and situated discussions on multiple issues related to ELT. In the beginning, we published Choutari as a monthly blog to share NELTA activities, events and thoughts of NELTA colleagues. Mr Ganga Ram Gautam, the then President of NELTA, supported our team. I was Secretary of NELTA during that time. We received passionate support from NELTA central committee to publish Choutari. In 2012, NELTA decided to publish its own blog so we changed the name of blog NELTA Choutari as ELT Choutari. Choutari is now an independent and journal-like space where research articles, personal reflections and thoughts, workshop ideas and other ELT related discussions are published. I am happy to see the growing number of Choutari readers and feel proud that Choutari articles have contributed to expand the existing ELT knowledge by creating space for critical discussions on various issues in the field of ELT. Choutari articles have been cited by the authors from around the globe–this is very exciting indeed. For me, Choutari has become a popular name and a common space for Nepalese ELT community of practice to share personal and professional stories, research and ideas with scholars at the global level.
Netra Lal Pandey
Choutari should organize workshops and interactions: Netra Lal Pandey (from the lens of a reader)
Earlier up to my bachelor level, I was unknown about ELT Choutari but when I came to Kathmandu for my master’s degree, I came to know about it. Since then, I’m enjoying with its contents regularly. As a reader, I found this forum as a good resource bank with fresh ideas regarding the current issues and practices of ELT. Sharing and discussing such practices and experiences have really become beneficial for ELT practitioners and beginners like me to be professionally strong. Because I can find some reflections there, some innovative practices, latest trends of ELT around the world, national and international perspectives, which would keep me abreast in my field. Choutari has brought opportunities to know about the recent trends and practices of ELT staying at home using our own smartphones and other digital devices. For example, the article by Yashoda Bam (October 2018) entitled “My Experiences of Teaching reading in Secondary Level” helps all teachers to deal with problems that they face in the course of teaching in the same level. In the same way, the interactive blog post by Ashok Raj Khatri (July 2018) entitled “Writing Practices in ELE Programs in Nepali Universities” in which the participants (lectures of different universities) have mentioned the fact that research and writing has been an integral part of the curricula in the universities but the practice is different in the universities. The striking point in this post is our degree is unable to develop our writing habits for this or that reasons.
Finally, I feel that Choutari should organize workshops and interaction programmes for the emerging ELT practitioners like us to have more ideas on framing topic and producing publishable writing, which the university degree has never taught us.
Include the videos too: Siddhartha Koirala (from the lens of a reader)
Ekraj Koirala (Siddhartha)
Usually, I go through almost every issue of ELT Choutari since I came to know about its website. I mostly pause to read the contents like the discussion on classroom practices, the novelty in lesson delivery, and interview of different scholars on the issues like language development, aspects of language and use. I also love the articles written by new writers on language issues. I mostly prefer reading the experiences of the teachers from various corner of Nepal. I really enjoy reading them as they brought genuine issues/problems and way forward from their classroom practices. Since their experiences are based on real practices, it offers a wide range of knowledge about the challenges faced in teaching language in the schools of Nepal. Equally, I do love to read scholars’ interviews as they pass the message to the readers about the national and international perspectives of teaching-learning, professional development and so on.
To sum up, I would like to suggest the editorial team to involve a wide range of contents like teaching English/Nepali and other languages in primary grades, review of curriculum, practices of the directions and provision of the curriculum in the actual classroom teaching-learning. Equally, I love to see the editorial team starting discussion programmes among the teachers to share their experiences. Finally, it should start uploading real classroom delivery videos too.
Generally, pedagogical capital is the capability of teaching effectively to the learners by applying various methods and techniques such as pair work, project work, group work, power-point presentation, etc. In this reflective narrative, I will share my journey of gaining pedagogical capital as an English teacher while also aligning my reflection with the available literature.
Prologue
It is very hard for me to visualise how teachers would come to my classroom when I was schooling but when I joined higher education (+2), I found my English teacher having an attractive outlook. Perhaps, I thought, a very impressionistic ideology he had. He would immediately start delivering his lectures. The classroom would be pin-drop silent, he was only the all-in-all inside the classroom. There was no autonomy of questioning in the classroom. After my +2 graduation, I became a private school English teacher. Since I was guided by my teacher’s philosophy, my prior focus remained on how I could be the best kind of teacher as my teacher was. I practised the same practice I learned from my mentor. My classroom would also be silent because I wanted to be as strict as my teacher was. Later on, when I was called by the school principal to report the student progress and achievements, I had no words to explain. I tried my best to know how to teach but I never tried to know how they would learn better. Then, I realised that I did not facilitate them to put forward their views and also I did not encourage them to practise in a pair or in groups.
Recollecting Experiences
I became quite aware of the philosophical construct of Lovat (2003) who quotes pedagogy as ”a highly complex blend of theoretical understanding and practical skill” (p. 1). More specifically, I envisaged theoretical ideas into my classroom to reflect my own practice blending different assets of language teaching in the context of Nepal.
Finally, I realised that the conventional practices of teaching and learning were counterproductive in my classroom because my teaching hardly transferred knowledge, rarely practised innovative thoughts and didn’t use internet sources and electronic devices to facilitate learners in the digital era of 21st century. I knew technology facilities to my learners would increase their learning habits. Moreover, it is primarily expected to use power-point presentation, bring online mode of learning and practise technology blended teaching-learning activities in the 21st-century classroom. Enriching teachers’ experiences and shaping the way we do is always embarking on behalf of the learners. I experienced there must be mutual understanding, positive attitudes, pedagogical reasoning for every teacher, thereby; they can offer various effective strategies in their classroom.
As I already confessed that I didn’t allow my students to make noise in the classroom. I either facilitated them to practice in group/pair or encouraged them to work in projects. I hardly paid proper attention to the sitting arrangement of the students in the classroom. Time passed by, I happened to consult various e-sources and learned various activities to empower my students. I made them work in groups. Every weekend I organised cyclical sitting arrangement. I realised cyclical sitting arrangement would really foster positive vibrant in lower level. I also tried to bring innovative ideas of language games and strategies. More specifically, I facilitated them with ‘Chaining Stories’, ‘Word Linkage’, ‘Essay writing’ and ‘Storing Vocabulary’ etc. to improve their language learning proficiency in lower level. I consulted different websites and pages such as ‘Coursera’, Learn on Demand’, etc. to practice in the higher level classroom. I realised blending the philosophical notions and the theoretical praxis could be the innovative ways of empowering learners. I also realised that I had not gained much pedagogical capital during those days.
I experienced that the philosophical constructs of teaching have not only been the notion of bread and butter rather it has been the aesthetic part of human life. Teaching, in some point of time in history, was taken as absolute phenomena. The teacher would be all-in-all. The teachers were treated as the great persons who deserve to know everything and their every advocacy would be correct in spite of the fact that they were wrong. But unfortunately, it does not currently exist.
Teachers’ Pedagogical Capital
In course of my learning as a teacher I linked the two terms Pedagogy (comes from education) and Capital (comes from the economy) to recapitulate its cognitive layer and the educational intelligibility. More specifically, I explored as to how I gained the greater amount of exposure to contribute to my storehouse. I began theorising any asset an individual owns is capital since there are different forms of capital such as economic, human, educational, pedagogical, professional, materialistic, cultural and symbolic, etc. Bourdieu (1998) claims that economically any property an individual owns is economic capital and any educational asset which an individual owns is educational capital. Therefore, for me, pedagogical capital refers to the profound knowledge that a teacher gains in his/her subject. Thus, I envisaged that the teaching and learning activities are always grounded on the belief system of teachers where their perceptions, knowledge, and realisation become the key components to impart knowledge in favour of the students. So, I questioned myself about my own profound knowledge about subject matter.
I also experienced different types of problem and employed some strategies to overcome students’ problems in the classroom such as guidance and counselling, focusing on practical activities, motivation, and encouragement, raising awareness, and telling success stories, etc. I also developed sharing culture among and between students. In doing so, the students at the lower level had to share their diaries and students at the higher level had to share their experiences or success stories or other events. Realising the classroom culture, I developed classroom planning. I designed communicative activities to improve their communication skills in lower level and games to teach content effectively. Moreover, in case of a higher level, I began teaching using power-point slides. I stopped my lecture method and initiated student-centred approaches in which students freely put forward their views and understanding. I divided the whole course content among students and asked them to prepare and present themselves, which resulted in the main benefits for them. The first is to know about the content in detail and the second is to learn presentation skills in a standard format at the higher level. I began guidance and counselling as positive tools at the higher level. For adult learners in higher level, I very often motivated them towards their study. I provided plenty of reference materials for my students collecting from different sources.
Munro (2007) emphasises that the pedagogical knowledge base of teachers includes all the required cognitive knowledge for creating effective teaching and learning environments. I realised if I needed cognitive skills to teach my lessons. Following Yousif and Aasen (2015), I considered teachers as the analytical thinkers and realised that they have a crucial role in their professional life. Eventually, I got opportunities to teach at university campuses and I learned teachings from professional forums, conferences, seminars, workshops, etc. to develop the proficiency of my students. I not only followed what my mentors did but also I practised innovative styles to contextualise in our Nepali classrooms. I gradually joined several online groups such as Facebook group, internet channel, skyping, twitter, blogs, etc. I integrated cell phone in the classroom teaching at a private institution. It was a great challenge for me, however, I was able to convince the campus administration. It really helped me empower my students and self to grow professionally.
Moreover, there were some issues left to address. Ahmad et al. (2012) argue that classroom teaching has issues not due to the learners alone but due to the lack of the teachers’ competency to create the setting, to decorate the classroom appropriately and to speak to the children clearly and to respond to their questions. Due to teachers’ pedagogical richness, they very often address the issues in the classroom but sometimes they fail to address those issues because of different circumstances. Of course, I realised students had different problems such as psychological, linguistic, physical, disciplinary, academic, etc. Additionally, I confronted with different issues such as classroom setting arrangement, students’ disruptive behaviours, teachers’ lack of planning and preparation, etc. in the classroom. For addressing classroom issues, I repeatedly used guidance, counselling, motivation, threat/treat, encouragement, focusing on different practical activities, technology-oriented teaching, student-centred approach, sharing success stories and experiences, etc. Thus, I understood a pedagogically enriched teacher is to have content, confidence, continuation, collaboration, coordination and technological awareness to grow professionally.
Therefore, I earned my pedagogical capital rationalising the huge evidence of my own learning as a student and a practitioner teacher. I implemented my own pedagogies succinctly, for example, preparing proper lesson planning before going to the classroom, consulting my seniors and various sources and being updated and upgraded in my own repertoire. I fundamentally valued teachers’ pedagogical knowledge which includes teaching, learning, curriculum, and assessment, etc. Thus, I didn’t impose my vested interest on students because I knew my increasing experiential knowledge would help me disseminate content better day by day.
Conclusion
In course of my teaching journey, I gained actual knowledge of English language and how to teach the language.
Moreover, I perceived the use of different methods/ strategies enable teachers to be determined, rigorous and professional. I am with those teachers who consider the internet as a good source of learning. Teachers’ technological awareness and experiences help them apply modern pedagogies in the classroom. It is believed that experience contributes to one’s pedagogical storehouse. Teacher’s self-reflection develops their pedagogical capital.
*Ganesh Kumar Bastola is an M. Phil graduate of Kathmandu University in English Language Education. He is a teacher, teacher educator, and researcher and translation practitioner.
References
Ahmad-Shaari, M. Z., Jamil, H., & Razak, N.A. (2012). Exploring the classroom practices of productive pedagogies of the Malaysian secondary school geography teacher. Review of International Geographical Education Online, 2, 2.
Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical reason: On the theory of action. California, CA: Stanford University Press.
Lovat, T. J. (2003). The role of the teacher coming of age. Australian Council Deans of Education. Discussion Paper, 2003.
Munro, J. (2007). Pedagogical capital: An essential concept (and tool) for effective school leaders. Seminar paper. Jolimont, Vic.: Centre for Strategic Education.
Yousif, A. H., & Aasen, S. F. (2015.). Ways of making teachers’ pedagogical capital visible and useful. Journal of Workplace Learning, 27(5), 332-344.
The main purpose of most language courses today is to facilitate communication in the target language, formulating a successful and effective lesson plan becomes indispensable. The idea of how to prepare a successful and effective lesson plan fundamentally depends on the alignment of assessment activity with the objective(s) of a lesson plan. This piece of writing deliberates on the different parts of effective lesson design and assessment and keeping the discussion into consideration, a sample of lesson design and assessment has been provided. Even though the current discussion focuses on the classroom teaching activities at the tertiary level, the same lesson plan and assessment can be applied in other classrooms at different levels with minor adaptation.
Firstly, an ELT (English Language Teaching) professional needs to have a clear picture of putting those actions words/verbs that would fit his or her in the portion of the lesson objective(s). In addition, he or she needs to know that his or her lesson plan objective encompasses a clear statement of measurable outcomes which can be achieved by providing action words, such as ‘identify’, ‘state’, or ‘demonstrate’, not words like ‘comprehend’, ‘feel’, ‘learn’, etc. since the latter cannot be measured or evaluated.
Furthermore, an ELT practitioner needs to have knowledge of an effective warm-up activity and its objectives. Then, he or she needs to investigate whether his or her warm-up activity makes an attempt to get students’ attention, recall of prior learning, and introduce new ideas and connect these ideas to the past learning. Likewise, an English teacher (ESL/EFL) also requires to include objectives, which consist specific aims of the lesson.
Moreover, an EFL/ESL teacher needs to have knowledge of “instruct and model” while formulating his or her lesson plan; under “instruct and model”, he or she needs to apply the use of teacher talk, to know how to keep things conversational, and to employ activities that would make the instruction sticky (memorable, usable, durable). He or she necessitates having the knowledge of either using traditional modelling (teach, model, question) or inductive reasoning (model, infer, elaborate).
In addition, we as English teachers require to understand the importance of “guided practice” and “independent practice” that would be included in our lesson design. Under “independent practice”, English teachers (EFL/ESL) should check and allow students to show that they have understood the instruction provided by the teachers. Finally, under “assessment” activity, an ELT practitioner needs to check that his or her assessment activity is aligned with the objective, and the assessment activity is authentic (The situations, where the students are placed in during the assessment, are as similar as possible, to situations they may encounter outside the classroom).
Now, here is a sample of such a lesson design and assessment to have a better understanding of the ways that could be employed while formulating a lesson design and assessment.
A sample of a lesson design and assessment
Basic
Intermediate
√ Advanced
Theme: travel
Objective: Students will be able to use the simple past tense to describe and write a paragraph describing their travelling experiences in Bangladesh.
Business/Materials: Pictures, videos and question prompts and model paragraph
A warm-up activity: I would place some pictures of attractive and historical visiting places of Bangladesh on the whiteboard E.g. the pictures of St. Martin Island of Bangladesh and the Red Fort of Mughal Empire in Dhaka city. Then, I would show the video clip of “beautiful Bangladesh”, prepared by the government of Bangladesh.
I would mention the pictures of other places we discussed in our previous class to relate to the previous lesson. Then, I would ask my students whether they can recognize the pictures and places of Bangladesh and provide positive feedback to those willing to speak.
Asking questions is one of the ways of triggering the recall of prior knowledge; thus, it would bridge old to new information.
I would also draw students’ attention to the written prompt on the whiteboard by offering a quote from St. Agustine:
“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page”.
An example of prompt:
Level
Theme
Prompt (Statement)
Advanced
Travel
The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. Agree or Disagree?
I would ask them whether they agree or disagree with the statement. In addition, as my students are in the advanced level, I would ask them “What do you think this quote has to do with what we talk about today?”
I would ask them to write their agreement or disagreement in their notebooks. Then, I would record their answers on the whiteboard and provide them feedback (mostly encouraging ones)
I would write a phrase ‘travelling experiences in Bangladesh” and ask them (by getting their feedback) to relate the discussion of some beautiful places of the previous class. After that, I would ask them whether their experiences were pleasant or bitter. I would mention the probable reasons for having mixed experiences and concerning issues, like safety, accommodation, food problems and so on. I would make some groups and ask them to discuss various points among themselves and come up with answers by brainstorming. Likewise, I would record their answers on the whiteboard and offer them feedback.
I would mention that we were going to discuss more on the travelling experiences in Bangladesh and write in a paragraph ensuring there is the topic sentence, supporting details and concluding the sentence.
Objective Discussion
I would ask my students whether they would like to go abroad for their further study. If they would like to, they need to sit for international language testing systems (e.g. IELTS, TOEFL) or any other competitive tests for the job search in Bangladesh. In these tests, they need to write some paragraphs. Then I would motivate them my writing class would be helpful for them to learn the structure of paragraphs (*this is important for the objective) and practice developing good paragraphs.
I would tell my students that they are going to learn the basic structure of paragraph writing and provide them with a model of a narrative paragraph with topic sentence and three supporting details with the use of transition words, and finally, tell them about the concluding sentences. The model would help them to internalise the structure of the paragraph. (*This is for specific details/instructional objectives). I would ask them whether they can relate or differentiate the structure of the previous lessons and the present one.
I would mention here about the structure of other types (for example, descriptive or cause-effect type of paragraph writing) of a paragraph in from the previous lessons. Then, I would ask them if they would be able to differentiate between or among the types of structures of paragraph writing (*this is for the check for understanding).
I would ask them to get ready for the next class whether they would be asked for a paragraph writing impromptu in the class. Similarly, the evaluation of their wring will lead to their final grading. (*This is for stating the objective)
Instruct and Model
Even though I would prefer using the inductive reasoning (model, infer, and elaborate), I would wait for quite some time to see whether my students would be able to grasp (wait for an opportune time) before providing the models of the paragraphs.
First, I would tell them a very popular folk story about a king and his four daughters (narration of a story is to keep things conversational). I would ask them whether they could come up with any structure of the story. I would note the responses on the (teacher talk: using board work to introduce the topic). I would clarify that a story generally has a beginning, middle, and ending; so does a paragraph have (use of analogy). I would repeat those key sentences and check their understanding (teacher talk: repetition). I have chosen the story keeping the objective of the lesson plan in mind. The story uses the past tense; as I am going to focus on the use of past tense in the paragraph writing.
After that, I would show my students some of the models of paragraphs using multimedia and I would also give them hard copies (photocopies) of the models of paragraphs (more than one) from the Book by John Langan (part of teacher modelling) to my students, and also my prepared samples of paragraphs (‘Sharing your own work so that students can see what you have done’ is a part of teacher modelling) for suiting the learning of past tense and a structure of a paragraph. I would ask my students whether they can see any beginning, middle, and a concluding part of a paragraph (the analogy is a part of teacher talk). I would provide them copies the model of paragraphs and form some pairs or groups (‘Giving students a problem to solve in pairs or groups’ is an example of inductive reasoning) to do the brainstorming to figure out the structure of the paragraph.
After getting my students’ feedback (‘Getting feedback’ is a part of keeping classes conversational), I would write the main concept on the whiteboard; ‘topic sentence’, ‘supporting points’, and ‘concluding sentence’. Then I would emphasise the following:
Topic sentence of a paragraph: the main idea of a paragraph is known as a topic sentence. The two parts of a topic sentence is called subject and the controlling idea.
Supporting point/details: when we provide the main idea of a paragraph, it must be supported by three main points. Each supporting point needs to have an idea that supports the topic sentence
Concluding sentence: the paragraph is summarized with a concluding sentence. In this part of the paragraph, a new concept or idea is not introduced but the idea the topic sentence is rephrased using the transition words.
I would also mention or elicit the importance of using transition words, such as using ‘firstly’ with first supporting point and ‘secondly’ with second supporting point and ‘finally’ with concluding sentence (sign post expressions).
I would ask my students (‘asking questions’ is a part of teacher talk) whether they can compare and relate the three things mentioned in the story and in the models provided. By asking questions, I would check whether they have understood my elicitation (‘Elicit reactions and responses from your students’ is a part of keeping classes conversational); even sometimes students say that they have understood, I would repeat (‘clarifying and elaborating when students don’t understand’ is part of teacher talk). My experience shows that repeating the same concept more than once help students remember the concept better and use for a long time (As the learning sticks, it becomes usable and durable). All through my lecture, I would use warm language and speak clearly if any of my students fail to understand.
Guided Practice
Since I would be working on a paragraph writing unlike an essay writing, I would pick up the three parts (topic sentence, supporting points and a concluding sentence) of a paragraph writing as a whole under my guided practice in the class.
Firstly, I would mention “A topic sentence is”, and ask one from one group of my students to complete the required information of the sentence, and then I would inform “there are three supporting points in a paragraph”, and invite others from other groups of students to complete the three supporting points. The same goes for “the concluding sentence” (A teacher-led activity includes responses from a variety of students; it also encompasses starting a sentence and inviting students to complete the sentence). For each correct response, I would give them “thumbs up” and encourage them to speak more if they would be able to add up more information.
Less Guided Practice
After that, I would divide my students into different groups, and I would provide some samples of topic sentences (without three supporting points and concluding sentence-‘backwards fading’) to one group (group 1) and some samples of paragraphs with topic sentence and three supporting points without concluding sentence to other three groups (group 2, 3 and 4). Under the instruction and model section of lesson template, I have already provided the models of a structured paragraph to all my students. As the strength of my class is around 30, I would make 5 groups. I would ask my group 1 to deal with a topic sentence (to discuss the two parts of a topic sentence; the subject and the controlling idea). Then the other three groups; 2, 3, and 4 would deal with each of three supporting points (the use of transition word and the idea that supports the topic sentence), and the group 5 to discuss on the concluding sentence of a paragraph (to come up with the idea of rephrasing the topic sentence and use of transition words, and not to introduce new concept or idea again). I would give low-performing students the most difficult task under each group and ensure that groups are of mixed levels and abilities. While my students are working on their assigned task, I would go round the class, observe, and ask them to see if they needed any support. (‘Walking around the room, checking work and answering questions’ are known as facilitators of independent practices).
I would make sure that each group would have a scribe to jot down the summary of their discussion, a spokesperson to present the summary of the group work and a controller to ensure that everybody is taking active participation in the group activity. I would give 10 minutes for each group to discuss and prepare for the presentation and give three minutes to present their work.
Independent Practice
I would ask each group to present their work in the class (students give a presentation relating new information to the class’- an example of independent practice activity). After finding that they are able to get the fundamentals of the structure of a paragraph, I would ask each student to write a paragraph on their travelling experiences abroad (or different places of Bangladesh or similar topics) as home task, and they would make sure that their experiences and writing would be different from one another. Then I would ask them to submit their home tasks in my pigeon hole one day before the next class (Generally, in my institution, students get one or two days break before the next class). I would check all the home tasks before going to my next class.
I would provide feedback on the written tasks and discuss any improvements required for them (with positive and motivating words). In addition, I would ask them to submit their write- up again at the end of the class.
Assessment
From the objective of my above lesson, it can be gauged that the lesson assessment would relate to knowledge learning, not memory learning (recalling). The objective of my lesson plan is to teach my students how to write a paragraph, so I would provide them the actual model of a paragraph in my assessment before the final examination; as a result, this task would be authentic and require them to apply their learning of writing the paragraph. By doing this, I would be able to assess that students should be able to transfer classroom knowledge to the real world; for example, at the time when they would go for different examinations in writing paragraphs in English.
After finishing the independent practice (which is a part of formative assessment-given below) [in my class] mentioned above, I would take a test (which would be upgraded; and the reason for that is that in order to get the best idea of performance of the students, a teacher does not need to grade everything that students do in the class) on a paragraph writing, providing the outline of a paragraph. A sample of such a test is given below:
Instructions: Write a paragraph within 150 words on the basis of the outlines provided. You will have 15 minutes to complete the task.
I had experienced some wonderful memories while travelling the picturesque island of Saint Martin in Bangladesh. (Topic sentence). Firstly, (the first reason) —————————————————————————————————————————————————. Secondly, (the second reason) ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————. Finally, (the third reason) ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-. Moreover, (concluding sentence) ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————–.
This type of assessment would help us understand that the students would have higher order thinking (analyse, evaluate and create) since such as assessment requires them to talk what they know about a topic, and what the structure and organisation of a paragraph, and combine the two into a coherent product.
I would also provide them with a scoring rubric for a paragraph writing; as a result, they would be able to have a clear picture of how their work would be evaluated in their final examination.
Name: …………………………………………… Score: ……….. /10
Criteria
Excellent
Good
Fair
Poor
Formatting
The paragraph has proper indentation ½ inch
Mechanics
Use of Tense
Uniformity of the tense
Spelling
No spelling errors
Content
Task Fulfilment
Clearly demonstrates the use of past tense and his or her experiences
Quality
Carefully written
Body paragraph
Provided all the three supporting points in details
Cohesion and coherence
Ideas are connected to each other
Summary
Restates the main idea (the topic sentence); no new ideas are introduced again
Errors
Very few errors that do not interfere with the meaning of the sentence
Total: ……/10
*Dr. Hasan is the assistant professor, English, English Language Institute, in the United International University, Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh. You can reach him at: md_kamrul_hasan@ahsgs.uum.edu.my
I grew up in a democratic, open-minded, middle-class Kirati (also known as Kirat; one of the indigenous ethnic groups of Nepal) family. Despite being a member of middle-class family, I never had to confront difficulties regarding my education. I was a curious and a talkative girl in my school and college days. I loved talking and interacting with seniors. My father was a primary level school teacher, so I got opportunities to visit school early. I used to go to school with my father and sat with other school children. Such kind of environment and opportunity truly supported me to enhance my curiosity explicitly and perhaps that led me grow personally. After completing my basic education, I left my home for secondary education. Leaving home for my further study was really difficult (moment) for me. I was very young and not much familiar with the outer world. I felt sad and I always missed my family and friends specially my Aapa (father) and going school with him
Time passed by, I changed my school and went to the district headquarter to continue my study because of Nepali Civil War (10 years internal conflict between the Government of Nepal and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).When I started my new educational journey in a new place, I had no friends with whom I could share my feelings and emotions. I experienced different facets of life .I had an old radio bought by my Kokpa (Grandfather) as a means to spend time with. I started tuning radio regularly and soon felt that the radio had become my best friend. I came to know about different innovative ideas such as child rights, child marriage, and mensuration hygiene from the radio. I tuned in radio from the morning to the late night in order to collect information. I became huge fan of Radio Kantipur during those years because I liked the ways the Radio Jockey (RJ) presented programmes. More specifically, I was impressed by their commanding voices. However, the English programmes attracted me more because I enjoyed the English speaking style of the RJs. I especially liked their pronunciation, speaking styles, confidence etc. Then I started dreaming of being able to speak like them and started tuning English programmes even if I did not fully understand what they were /talking about. However, I loved and entertained all the programmes believing that if I tune in English programmes regularly, one day I would be able to understand fully and be able to speak English fluently .So, I thought that at first I should learn vocabulary to speak or understand English. My Aapa (father) used to tell me that good command on vocabulary of any language is essential for language learning. Then, I started making note of some English words and expressions and consulted dictionary for the meaning. Similarly, I started consulting the seniors and school teachers for the new words and expressions. They suggested me that regular writing and learning new words can be a good way of learning. As a result, I attempted writing my thoughts and feeling in English as simple as I love my family, I like to watch TV/ Movies. This is my favorite color, place…etc. But I didn’t try speaking because I thought, first writing would be easier than speaking.
My eagerness of learning English became stronger even if I was very young, I used to think that if I speak fluent English I will get good respect and love in our society. It was because people having confidence in English were treated respectfully in our society. I felt English teacher was one of the most respected and prestigious persons for students and parents rather than the subject teachers of Nepali, Social, and Population.
By the time being, , I decided to study English as a major subject in college dreaming of being fluent English teacher because I understood being English teacher is to get reward respect and love (However, now I think, that I was too much inclined towards English because of the perception of the society. Now I feel that, all languages and teachers are equally important.). In the thought of excelling in English, I used to ask a lot of questions to my elder brother in English at home, which would annoy him sometimes. At night, I used to keep radio nearby me and tuned in in low volume and to my surprise; it used to go talking the whole night!
In this way, Radio had been my friend and coach which not only supported me to learn English but also taught different life skills. I learned new words and pronunciation via radio. Most importantly, the loveliest thing, I learnt is listening to others speaking fluently in English. I sometimes understood nothing as they used to speak very fast and used some informal words like guys, what’s up, rocking… etc. I found myself confused several times but it provided me a kind of opportunity of ear training. I used to open dictionary or ask to my teachers for those words, sounds and phrases.
To sum up, radio is my first inspiring coach for English language learning. Not only that, it encouraged me to choose English as a major subject. Now, people get diverse access to the means of learning such as YouTube videos, social media (Facebook, Messenger, and Imo), online courses, etc. Popularity of the radio has been sharply decreased as it has been replaced by new technologies. I think these new technologies have brought massive opportunities and exposures for learning English and many other things around the globe. Therefore, we should seize the offers and make the full ultilisation of them.
However, I still believe that there are places in Nepal where people have to still rely on radio for learning, information and entertainment the way I did during my school life.
*Sreejana Chamling is the student of M.Ed fourth semester in the Central Department, TU. Her area of interests includes research in education and teaching.
I received the information about reflective writing workshop in the messenger a few days before the event through Jeevan Karki. We were asked to be there with our laptops. Finally, the day came. I and my friend headed towards the program venue. Before we reached there, many of the participants had already been there. Mr Jeevan Karki and Dr Karna Rana were busy arranging furniture and other stuff in the hall. We exchanged our greetings. We were approximately 20 participants there.
The first activity was the opening session. One of the facilitators welcomed us and talked very briefly about the topic and its objectives and the benefits for the participants using power points. Then in the next activity was the introductory session and scene setting, led by the next facilitator. We all became excited when the facilitator came along with some pieces of paper on his hands. He told us to pick one piece of paper each and find our pair. Everybody became busy to find their pair. I happened to pick the digit 9 and began to search my pair but I couldn’t find anyone. When none of them in the hall had the digit 9. Then the facilitator asked me to pause as someone was on the way. I waited for a while. I could see all the participants were seated with their pairs. After a few minutes, a young gentleman with a shiny beard appeared at the door. I guessed he was my pair. Fortunately, he was placed next to me as my pair. The climate setting was over. One by one the peer began to introduce their partner. We did the same.
After that, the facilitator asked us to reflect on ‘self’ and select the best wearing of our own. We were provided one minute to reflect on. The facilitator threw some questions: What do you like the most? Why do you like it most? How do you feel on that particular wearing? We had to answer those questions. Everybody began to reflect, and so did I. The facilitator asked us to share the idea we had on our mind. At that point, the environment remained quiet. No one spoke. Later the facilitator himself reflected on his wearing. On his reflection, he found the muffler the best on his body. He described it and he focused on its colour and comfy quality. After the demo, many voices came aloud. Many hands were raised to share their ideas. I listened to them attentively. Their choices were varied as jackets, shoes, scarfs and so on. It sounded really interesting.
The next session was the discussion on ‘why to write?’ The facilitator raised the same question for the audience. Everybody started thinking about the question. Suddenly, the facilitator asked me “Why do you write, Muna?” I simply answered, “To express myself, my ideas…” He took more responses from other participants too. There was a variety inside varieties. Some of the responses were like to express ideas, to connect with others, to improve writing and many more. Finally, the facilitator presented some ideas that were taken from other renowned scholars. Their thoughts were stimulating for us to make habit of writing. Then the other facilitator discussed on the difference between academic writing and reflective (non-academic) writing. He discussed the differences between the two terms regarding its structure, language and flexibility. Then we had a short tea break.
After the break, the other facilitator distributed a sample of reflective writing. It was about the ways of improving children reading habits in early grades. We were asked to read and find a few strengths and areas of improvement in it. Everyone started reading it. The text was so long that I couldn’t catch it. I was unable to understand it though I read it twice. Perhaps, my eyes just ran over the unintelligible text. After some time, the facilitator started collecting responses. I completely remained silent as I didn’t have to say anything. The fact was that I didn’t understand the whole text. Likewise, the second sample was given to us. It was about the author’s experience of learning the English language. That text was clearer and easier than the previous one. I enjoyed while reading it. I also noted the strengths and areas of improvement regarding the text.
Then, the facilitator presented the context setting for writing. He talked about the possible context i.e. striking moments, habits, college, and profession to reflect in writing. He told us that our lived experiences in those contexts can be turned into a good piece of writing. The context can be created around what, when, who, where, how and why structure. Further, another facilitator talked about the frame of the reflective writing. He mentioned it into three facets: action, reaction and reflection. The framework was figurative and expressive which I liked a lot. Further, he also talked about how to write a reflective essay. He said that a good piece of writing requires a rigorous furnishing. According to him, good writing possesses several steps: write, self-review, peer-review, review and finalise the writing. I came to know that writing is an art which is possible through devotion. He also shed light on the three major aspects that the writer should be aware of viz, issue, language and style. He said that before writing any piece of text we need to choose the issue/area on which we are going to write. The issue should be unique and draw the attention of readers. Then we need to make a framework of writing and read the related literature to collect ideas. At that moment I thought that a good writer is a good reader; a reader who can make of the writing and sees a frame in writing so that she can develop a piece of writing herself. Then it was the time for a short break. We had some snacks during the period.
After the break, the facilitators highlighted the eight habits of a good writer. A good writer is also a good reader and a good listener is the striking one for me. A writer can write effectively after reading enough, listening carefully to others and observing the context. Then he asked us to transform the theory into practice by writing a reflective essay in the workshop itself. They asked us to reflect our own past and remember the most influential event that had happened in our lives and turn it into writing. Everyone opened their laptops and began writing something. I was still busy to recall the past and choosing an issue to write. Many things came in my mind, but one incident drew my attention. The incident was about saving a mother cow from sinking. I began to write, ‘last year…’ After forty-five minutes, we were asked to submit the writing. Then facilitator taught us how to make comment on others’ writing in an electronic copy. He displayed that on the projector and we were asked to follow the process and practice. I became happy to learn about the practical knowledge which I was wondering before. Finally, the facilitators collected the feedback from us and the event was formally closed.
Finally, I concluded my day as a productive one. The best part of the workshop for me was the introductory part. In this part, we had a pair to introduce each other. It sounds simple but that thrilled me a lot that day. Next is the graphics. I really liked the design of power points. The power points were full of pictures and drawings that caught my attention. Likewise, I also liked the feedback collection method. That was really wonderful. Most of all the workshop stimulated me to write something and hence, you are reading this piece now.
To sum with some feedback for the workshop, it would be more effective if it could start on time. We were in a sort of rush towards the end, which could have been avoided had it been started in time. We were many participants in the program. It would be more interesting if different activities like pair work and group were organised. For example, the session ‘sample of reflective writing’ was so pressurising for every participant, I think. I could see that all the participants were feeling hard to find the ideas. I myself was feeling empty. Had that work been done in a group, it would have been easier to discover many more things. In the same way, it would have been better if the writing of the participants was exchanged among the participants to get constructive comments. Critical comments and exchanging ideas are essential parts of good writing. As a whole, the motive of the event was praiseworthy. It brought ELT students and ELT practitioners together to equip them with some skills of writing and motivate them to reflect and write.
*Raiis the Master’s student at the central department of education, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. She is also a life member of NELTA since 2015.
These days, teaching has been my passion though I was not clear about my profession when I initially joined this job. Now I have been striving for the improvements in my profession so that I can update myself of the latest. I can experience a lot of changes taking place in the field of teaching and learning globally. So, I’m interested in exploring the modern trends in English Language Teaching (ELT). While talking about modern trends, I’m focusing on the techno-friendly. My experience says that students are more curious about techno-based learning. Students are found more curious and attentive in digital-based teaching-learning compared to the traditional lecture or book-based teaching method. Hence, these circumstances drive my mind for exploring modern trends in ELT.
I always focused my interest on teaching and practised it in a normal way, but it was the day when I brought a poem from YouTube entitled, “I Wandered Lonely as Cloud” by William Wordsworth for High School students particularly for Class 10 compulsory English. My teaching took a new turn. I made my students listen to the poem through YouTube in the classroom. It was a nice video with clear audio backed by thematic pictures to help the students catch the theme easily. Here, students learned speaking skills such as pronunciation, enjoyed the rhythm and also practised English reading by following the records. This made the students excited to tell the summary of the poem and then do the exercises given in it. More than that the interesting part was finding the students humming the lines from that poem. Students who were often engaged in math-science work were humming the poem with perfect music. So, this particular event touched me a lot and made me realise the importance of technology in class and further motivated me to explore the other ways using technology in the classroom.
For instance, I commonly use British Council website and app as the supportive digital education materials, which are convenient for achieving learning outcomes. Here I used British Council learn English site, which is for all level, Kids to University, here I used Learn English Teens level with exercise sheet for dialogue and equally I used British Council Podcast which is an app and could be used at any time without internet after we download it. While teaching a dialogue, tuning audio record of the dialogue was more productive than just my lecture as the high school students started speaking naturally. Then I started bringing audio clips of dialogues in the classroom, they started learning the conversation in a real sense with the use of figurative language, gesture, mood and many more. Hence, they not only participated in conversation but also developed writing competency than before.
Nowadays, I have been searching for and adopting the technology in my class to yield more learning outcome than before. Technology has been a part of my teaching which eases my teaching and plays a supportive role for students using technology in my class.
*Ram Chandra Pokhrel, is a high school teacher of English language at Him Rashmi High School, Dandagoun, Tarakeshwor – 9, Kathmandu.
First Let’s Talk About Reading Skills Then Only the Habit
Source: Richard_Rivera
Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics defines reading as the process of “perceiving a written text in order to understand its contents.” The written text here indicates written symbols of languages. Therefore, reading is making meaning from written symbols. Reading can be both aloud or silent. When you are reading this paragraph, perhaps you are reading silently and making the sense of what I’m trying to convey. Now, please read this statement aloud, yes please start reading aloud and feel the difference yourself. Have you read? That’s great. You read aloud so easily and subconsciously at the moment but I bet it took a great deal for your teacher to make you able to correlate each written symbol and their corresponding sounds and pronounce words accurately, which you just did without much effort and feeling that. Ok, just a moment for you to think, can we read silently without first being able to read aloud? Umm, generally not. Reading experts urge that a reader reads silently once s/he is fluent enough and to be fluent, one should have a considerable practice. And the practice comes from reading aloud. Therefore, the sub-skill of being aware of symbols and their corresponding sounds is a basic skill for reading.
In order to explain the process of reading more clearly, researchers have identified five components required for reading success. They are Phonemic awareness (sound- symbols relationship), phonics (name of the symbol and its sound), sight-word recognition, and fluency (NICHD, 2000), as well as vocabulary (Stahl & Bravo, 2010) and comprehension (Snow, 2002). Once we teach our children these five components of reading effectively, the children become independent readers and being an independent reader is the foundation for being successful in all areas of education. Check yourself now. You are reading this editorial independently because of these five components. Yes, our reading skill is based on these components and all other reading strategies we learn as we grow are also based on them. Similarly, our reading habit comes from these basic reading skills. Until and unless we children master these basic reading skills, we cannot expect a good reading habit in them. The ultimate goal of reading is to comprehend the text or grasp the meaning, which is equally important for any early grader to any university graduate.
Now as a teacher, future teacher, teacher educator or policy maker, we need to ask ourselves, in our reading lesson, do we really teach reading skills in our classes (like phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, reading fluency and comprehension)? When we remark our children do not have a reading habit, have we assessed whether they have a proper reading skill? How do we assess the reading skills of children? Mostly in written? Isn’t that somehow funny that we assess oral reading skill in written? These are some questions I leave up to you to reflect on our teaching reading practices.
Presenting you a special issue on reading skills and reading habits, we have opened up a discussion on developing reading skills- reading skills required for an early grader to the skills required for a university graduate. Moreover, we also have tried to capture some of the practices of promoting reading habits in this issue. We have covered six posts in this issue, which all are based on the experience of the authors. Some of the posts explore the challenges in developing reading skills and reading habit followed by some ways out. Likewise, other offer wonderful strategies and tips for accelerating reading skills at school level and also in research level. Moreover, some post views reading as the means of exploration and experience. Interestingly, this issue brings up the writing from three ladies and three gentlemen, gender equality, isn’t it? It is so good to see them coming up with academic discourse here at Choutari.
Read our posts to explore more about reading. Please follow the link below, read, drop your comments for the writers, share the posts among your circle and most importantly, write your experiences, reflections, best practices, challenges and so on in your profession and email us at 2eltchoutari@gmail.com. We will take your writing in the process.
Finally, wish you all a joyous, colourful and brightest Tihar and Chhat festival. Have a good time. Here is the list of the posts for this issue:
Before leaving, I would like to thank all the contributors to this issue. Likewise, I would like to offer special thanks to Ashok Raj Khati and Karna Rana for their rigorous reading and review of the articles.
I worked as an English language teacher, then worked as a teacher trainer. Now I have taken the new role of basic reading skills development expert in the Nepali language! Actually, it has been an interesting experience for me to work in the teaching-learning of both languages. Now, I am now trying to see how English language teaching can help Nepali and vice-versa. With the recent development of the five component- based reading approach around the world, the focus of reading skill development in native language has been shifted. And the latest approach is giving better results. In this post, I am trying to explore the trends and gaps in reading skills teaching in English language and share some encouraging changes in the reading skills in the early graders in the Nepali language. Finally, I propose to borrow the five component- based reading approach from the Nepali language classrooms into the English classrooms.
Reading skills in English language classroom
Though the curriculum states English as the second language in the classroom, there are students from many different backgrounds, which makes Nepali the second language for them and English after that. In a way, it is taught and practised as the foreign language. One of the general objectives of primary level English curriculum (Primary Education Curriculum, 2063) is “…to help them develop enthusiasm for reading so that they will be responsive and knowledgeable readers” On the other hand, one of the objectives of reading in early grades (1 to 3) is to “put sounds together to read words and sentences and read words and simple sentences, and understand them.” English teaching as a subject in early grade aims of developing students’ ability to use English effectively in real life situation as per the national curriculum framework of Nepal.
As the curriculum suggests teaching-learning activity is to be based on oral-situation-approach. However, during my time of working closely with teachers and students as well as the close observation of teaching-learning in classrooms, I found only a handful of teachers using target language i.e. oral situational approach in the classrooms and most of them use the grammar-translation method to deliver the lessons. Mostly, teachers are active and take more talking time in the learning process, while students are passive receivers and get no or insufficient time to use or practice the language in the classroom. As a result, students learn about the language only not the language itself. During the lessons, for instance in alphabet teaching, teachers ask students to follow him/her like, a… for apple, b… for ball, c… for cat… The early graders are provided with the Nepali translations of new words from the teachers and they are also supposed to mug up the meaning of a particular word in Nepali. Even teaching chant is done in a very unsystematic way where students read chant like reading any other text. Yes, read not sing! Students are seen decoding the letters but cannot decode (read) words or utter them at once. On the other hand, those who decode do not understand the meaning. In my observation, a very few numbers of teachers engage students inchild-centredd activities as prescribed by the curriculum. Group work, pair work and other learning strategies with specific learning tasks are very rare in the classroom activities. As the most popular strategies the teacher uses are; explain unfamiliar words and text in Nepali, read aloud, choral reading, reading by a few students, and answers the comprehension questions using the grammar-translation method. During my observation, I found few measurable gaps in teaching English in early grades (1-3) such as;
Less exposure of English language: Not only the students get less exposure to use the target language in the classroom but teachers themselves use handful expressions of English. Few short expressions of English is used such as stand up, come in, ok, you read, did you understand, now read, your turn, turn page no are the most common expressions as the classroom language.
Focus only on teaching items rather than skills: The teachers only cover the teaching items of the textbook where they focus only on the contents. They are less aware of the basic reading skills such as phonological awareness, concepts of print, letter-sound association and blending of sounds, syllable reading, vocabulary building, comprehension and fluency.
Comprehension teaching is less focused: The main emphasis of teaching is mostly based on the drills and deliver the meaning of the whole text in Nepali. Although reading comprehension is regarded as the essential part of reading, it is mostly neglected during the lesson. Actually, teachers read the text and write the answers on the board and students are asked to copy that. Now the question is who is learning here- teacher or students? Students are not prepared to strengthen their reading comprehension.
Nevertheless, a few good examples of letter recognition is seen in English learning. Few teachers were seen using readymade domino game to link relationship with sound and letter. Students were able to utter correct pronunciation of English letters after the domino practice. They were able to decode the letters in words. When it comes to the matter of word reading, a few students were able to decode words with proper pronunciation. Generally, they were able to decode the monosyllabic words such as bus, high, red etc. but had difficulty in multi-syllabic words. In my observations, I found most of the teachers struggling in making students read words at once. In addition, teachers are struggling to develop vocabulary, reading fluency, and reading comprehension in students.
Reading skills in Nepali language classroom
While working closely with teachers and students and closely observing the Nepali language classes, I found some changes in teaching the Nepali language. First, there is an extension of time for the Nepali language in schools. With the emphasis of giving more inputs and exposure of Nepali language to students, two periods a day is allocated for it. Second, a new approach called five components based learning approach is used in teaching the Nepali language. And third, a new strategy called gradual release of responsibility is used in teaching learning process.
Now let me basically share about the five component based reading with a short account of classroom activities and the gradual release of responsibility strategy. The five component- based reading includes phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, reading fluency and reading comprehension.
Teachers start his/her ninety-minute class with the everyday lesson with Phonemic Awareness activities like sound recognition, blending syllables into words and segmenting words into syllables. Then they gradually move to Phonics activities like introducing letter, its corresponding sound and possible words that it comes with. In addition, they involve students in stroke writing, syllables (Brahakhari) reading, word reading and reading a short decodable text. Moving onto the next component of Vocabulary, teachers introduce the vocabulary before presenting a decodable text/story. They introduce three new words with proper pronunciation, meaning and use in a sentence. Then the students are asked to read the text/story to improve their reading Fluency followed by necessary support and model reading from the teacher. Then to assess the reading Comprehension, teachers use factual and inferential questions. Finally, to test the students reading and writing skill, teachers use dictation technique.
In order to teach these components, teachers use the Gradual Release Responsibility strategy. There is basically three phase of presenting a learning item according to this strategy. At first, the teacher demonstrates the new skill of language for a few times, which is known as “I do”. During this time, students are only supposed to watch and listen to the teachers. Then the teacher and students practice the skill together, which is known as “We do”. Finally, the students are given the responsibility to demonstrate the new language skills, while the teacher observes closely and supports them. This phase is known as “You do”. This concept is developed to transfer the new skills of language from teacher to student in a non- threatening way. After all, the ultimate goal of teaching is to enable students to demonstrate knowledge and skills themselves. Gradual release of responsibility believes that students should be presented with a good demonstration of what the teachers expect from them. Then the teacher should slowly engage students in the activity. This phase is mostly teacher guided but both teacher and students are involved. Finally, the students are asked to practice and demonstrate the skill. This concept can be illustrated in the following figure:
Gradual Release of Responsibility- Pearson & Gallagher (1983)
Student learning in the class
I was surprised to see that most of the students in classrooms were able to decode the taught letters and bring themselves into storybooks of different genres from classroom corner library. Teachers, on the other hand, were seen feeling comfortable in doing the lesson in a structured way. They shared that they had never ever experienced such a learning environment in the classroom since they begin to teach the Nepali language. And they believe that this approach is significantly supporting even the students from non- Nepali background to learn Nepali in a better way.
In the follow-up discussion, the teachers expressed that a majority of students have been dropping out from schools when they reach the upper grades. They also revealed that the majority of droppers could not read the text properly and comprehend the meaning. Consequently, they feel ashamed, disheartened, ignored and are punished in many cases and leave the school. Those who continue their education struggle to achieve better.
Researches have shown that students who do not learn to read in the early grades are more likely to repeat the grade. Those who are upgraded are more likely to drop out of school. In Nepal, if 100 students enroll in grade one, only 30% of them stay in school till the end of their school education. About 70% of students drop out of the school system. It is believed that this horrible situation will lessen once they get competency over the language during their early grades and achieve overall academic success.
Achieving the objectives of the English language curriculum primarily in early grade is inevitable in order to retain the students in upper grades. If students cannot achieve competency over the English language in early grades, their academic success in upper grades cannot be ensured. To address the lacking part in English learning and make the students competent reader in English, Nepal government should introduce five components based reading approach as the core approach to teaching language in early grades. As discussed with cases of Nepali language above, students in this approach get good opportunity to practice reading skills in a carefully guided environment. Moreover, it controls teachers from being active every time and gradually releases the responsibility of learning from teacher to students.
References:
Curriculum Development Centre (2007). Primary Education Curriculum (in Nepali). Curriculum Development Centre, Ministry of Education.
Pearson, P. D. and M. C. Gallagher, (1983).The Instruction of Reading Comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, (8), 317-344.
* Mr Koirala is an MA from Tribhuvan University. He has been working in the capacity of literacy officer in an organization. His area of interest also includes writing, theatre performance and art.
It is always important for the teachers and parents to read children’s literature themselves, understand the effectiveness of extensive reading and create an appropriate environment for children to read books. This article presents the existing teaching reading culture to young learners in Nepal and ideas for teachers and parents to provide opportunities to read and support their children’s learning.
The Context
Several studies have been done globally in the field of language teaching regarding the importance of the use of children’s literature for their learning. However, in the context of Nepal’s public primary schools, this is a very rare practice. (Koirala & Bird, 2004: 128). Koirala and Bird (2004) mentioned that the culture of reading for pleasure is very limited in the context of Nepal. It does not mean that people do not read books or other publications.
The government has invested a large amount of money in primary education and showed a willingness to reform the education system. However, the education system is conventional, and it needs to be transformed to meet contemporary global education. For instance, the government provides textbooks for the school children and the children follow the texts and instructions of the textbooks which they have to do for getting promoted to the upper grade every year. There is a rare access to the library of reference books and additional reading materials for the children in schools, and neither the schools (excluding few schools, having managed fund for the library), have managed resources to develop a library in their schools. Although some international organizations such as Room to Read and Nepal Library Foundation have been working to enhance educational opportunities through public libraries by donating English as well as Nepali story books in rural communities, their work in limited areas is unlikely to reach every corner of the country and most of the children in Nepal are still far away from such opportunities. Unless the government invests massively in education particularly in providing learning resources, the current support for the schools by a limited number of non-governmental organisations may not result in the immediate change in the traditional culture of reading. In addition to this, a lack of awareness among teachers and parents is another obstacle to foster a reading culture of children. For instance, when a question is raised about reading culture at home and at school, the majority of Nepali people consider reading means reading prescribed textbooks and understanding a text refers to enabling children to answer the questions based on the text. Moreover, it is a general tendency of the people that they tend to treat their children in the same way once they were treated.
In addition to this, the education system in Nepal lacks a holistic approach to teaching and learning a language and it is focused on teaching one aspect of language at a time in isolation entirely based on textbooks in general. For instance, the students are taught Nepali or English alphabet in preschool which can take over a year as it has no meaning for the children. Similarly, the students may know prepositions, but they have no idea of presenting it in context and it takes many years for them to internalize and use language in their everyday life. Beard’s (1991) study in children developing literacy found that a fundamental support of parents and teachers can help children set up their learning goals. Therefore, parents and teachers need to feel that young learners need exposure to develop their reading habit which serves as a vehicle to make a tremendous difference in their language development, intercultural understanding.
My Experience as a Teacher Trainer
When I was a teacher trainer at one of the organizations at Kathmandu, I worked in a training project ‘Bringing English to Classrooms’. During that training period, I conducted some story-based activities to provide the teachers with hands-on knowledge regarding the effectiveness of using literature throughout the curriculum. Teachers also wrote stories themselves for their students and made books using the local materials available. The teachers enjoyed a lot in my sessions and seemed to believe that stories can play a powerful role in language learning. However, in the beginning, many of them were not sure if they could take what they learned in the training centre. They came up with questions such as ‘how is extra reading possible while both teachers and students are busy completing the course syllabus fixed by the school administration and preparing for exams?’ So, it was still challenging to persuade the teachers that reading widely does not mean it has to be separated from their everyday task based on the syllabus but the two can be integrated. During our monitoring phase, I found some of my trainee teachers who implemented what they had learned and some of them were still not sure how it would exactly work in their school where they still lacked enough books, time and concrete ideas. From the training programme, I learned that some teachers could not transfer the skills they had learned from the training to their classrooms. And the limited time the project had did not allow me to go for regular mentoring. Had I got further opportunities to follow those teachers, the result would have been far better than what our project really achieved. On the other hand, the teachers who were aware and who could internalize the process succeeded in implementing what they learned. It made me believe that it is possible for the teachers to establish a new culture if the teachers are aware, self-motivated and are mentored carefully.
Why is child literature important?
Literature not only helps children learn to read but also helps them develop an appreciation for reading as a pleasurable aesthetic experience. Likewise, a team of researchers (as cited in Pantaleo, 2002) claimed that “literature entertains, stretches imagination, elicits a wealth of emotions, and develops compassion.” (pp. 211). A piece of story stimulates readers to generate questions, can give new knowledge and provides encounters with different beliefs and values. Good stories can work as a powerful device to show children right direction, help them make decisions, learn to empathize and become good humans. It can change their perception and attitude towards certain things. For instance, from the story ‘The Grouchy Ladybug’ written by Eric Carle, children learn the importance of being friendly and interacting politely with others in the community. Literature also opens the springboard for discussions. For instance, after reading ‘The Giving Tree’ children can discuss for hours regarding human development, their behaviour, selfishness and so many other issues. Thus, using literature is a natural medium of teaching children a second language, developing a love for literature in the learners and motivating them to read and grow as a ‘human’.
Why extensive reading across the curriculum and what teachers can do?
An act of reading extensively is likely to produce positive attitudes and interest towards reading. Materials, which are interesting at the appropriate linguistic level, always motivate students positively. Such materials give pleasure and generate interest in reading and support language learners to develop their overall language skills and progress academically. Day (1997) compares the pleasure and achievement the students get from extensive reading with a garden where it is always spring. Children’s literature or real books used in language classrooms and across the curriculum also contributes to foster their lifelong reading habits, good problem solving as well as decision-making skills (Ghosn, 2013). The more children get to read books, the better speaking and writing competence they acquire. In this regard, Harmer (2001:251) argues that “what we write often depend upon what we read” and so do the children as they draw attention to the structure of written language and begin to internalize its distinctive features of language when they read or listen to stories. Thus, they also learn to speak simultaneously when they get to participate in the activities where they require speaking skills such as dramatization and making predictions. Therefore, it is very important for the teachers to read books, promote reading and give children enough opportunity to interact with books by surrounding them with good texts in the school.
It becomes easier for the students to understand the concept of the curriculum content and it broadens the horizon of their understanding if they get to participate in such activities based on stories. For instance, children have fun by listening to the story; ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and simultaneously they get the concept of the lifecycle of a butterfly. Thus, through the practice of reading extensively across the curriculum, teachers can encourage young learners to read and have the love for literature. This way, the teachers can scaffold them to acquire competence in language as well as the subject content.
Conclusion
Teachers can start collecting reading materials through various sources or develop stories themselves working collaboratively in co-ordination with the headteacher despite the difficult circumstances with lack of resources. Most importantly they should be aware and make themselves familiar with child literature. Teachers can make a difference in the language classrooms for young learners if they have a good selection of stories with beautiful pictures, various sentence structures and repetitive patterns and stories that represent a various culture of Nepal. Therefore, the teachers need to realize it is important to maximize reading opportunities in school and encourage parents to read to and/or with their children at home.
*Ms Chapagain is working as a freelancer teacher educator. She earned her Master’s degree in English Language Teaching (ELT) from Kathmandu University. She has also completed MA in ELT (with specialization in Young Learners) from the University of Warwick, the UK as a Hornby Scholar 2014/2015.
References
Beard, R. (1991). International perspectives on children’s developing literacy. In C. Brumfit, J. Moon and R. Tongue (Eds.), Teaching English to Children: From Practice to Principle. Collins ELT.
Day, R.R., & Bamford, J. (1997). Extensive reading in the second language classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ghosn, I. (2013). Humanizing teaching English to young learners with children’s literature. CLELE journal, Volume 1, Issue 1, 39-57
Harmer, J. (2001). The Practice of English Language Teaching. (3rd Ed.) Longman: Pearson Education Limited. Longman: Essex England.
Koirala, N. & Bird, P. (2004). Library Development in Nepal: Problems and prospects. EBHR-38, 128
Pantaleo, S. ( 2002). Children’s literature across the curriculum: An Ontario survey. Canadian Journal Of Education, 27, 2 & 3: 211–230
In my experience reading through the existing documents and reviewing relevant literature is a challenging job in the research process. The process of reviewing literature continues from the beginning of thinking about research to finalising a research paper or thesis. I believe that a researcher begins a research right from the beginning to think about what the research problem is and explores relevant information to the research problem. A researcher uses own bank of knowledge and various documents as a reference to define the research problem. However, it is not an easy job for anyone to explore resources and to find relevant information in the resources. Here, the researcher needs to have skills in reading documents and reviewing the literature and most importantly select the right resources from a vast ocean of resources such as the physical library, digital library and websites.
Let me share my experience of exploring resources, finding right documents, reading through lines and picking relevant information from the documents. When I started my second Masters in Education at the University of Bedfordshire in England in 2009, I struggled a lot to understand and learn the way of searching documents in both physical and digital libraries and had to wriggle when I was unable to recognise right information in the available resources. I cannot remember how often the library liaisons and tutors helped me explore digital books, journals and website information. It took a while to recognise the right information in journals, book chapters, newspapers and websites. I believe the way I learnt to read documents and review information relevant to research problems, questions or purposes is a generic skill needed for researchers to review literature. As you read a document, remember what to review.
In the beginning days of my Master’s research, I used to randomly pick information from documents, but gradually my tutors’ support and guidance, and the seminars I attended helped me to improve my way of reading skills and develop skills of reviewing literature. As a result, I was able to review the literature for my research more comfortably and systematically. Moreover, I was able to reflect the skills in my doctoral research activities from the beginning of developing a research proposal to the end of finalising thesis at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. The following diagram provides a guideline:
The above diagram (Presented by Professor Janinka Greenwood in the Creativity & Change Lab at the University of Canterbury) provides a fundamental guideline for reading documents and reviewing literature. The circles are interconnected in a literature and having the diagram on their mind can help a researcher to explore the right information in the documents and review literature systematically. The Topic in the diagram refers to the research topic. As a researcher or writer one needs to have a clear topic or the area to explore the right documents and the information within the documents. Moreover, the key aspects in the documents need to be relevant to the researcher’s own research area to relate the literature of the document. On the other hand, the Context in the diagram refers to the context of the research that the researcher has focused. When reviewing literature from journal articles, book chapters or other resources, a researcher needs to locate the context of the research information in the documents and provide the context in own review of the literature. The information becomes meaningful only in the contexts, the researcher must consider the context as an important aspect of the literature review process. The next important aspect of the literature review process is the Intention of the researcher which helps to read a wide range of texts in a document and explore the right content s/he wants to draw from the document. Another important aspect is the Criticality. The researcher needs to analyse how the information of the document relates to the topic and interpret it. It is a very important aspect in the process of reviewing information and interpreting in the body of literature because there is always a chance of biases. The researcher needs to reduce prejudices in the reviewed information.
When I started my doctoral research in education at the university, I got a good platform to learn reading skills and the skills of reviewing literature. Regular seminars in our research lab provided me with more opportunities for learning the strict discipline of reviewing literature such as exploring archived documents in a digital repository and printed materials, selecting right documents, scanning and skimming information in the documents. A researcher can use keywords and phrases to explore relevant materials available online from google, google scholar, EBSCOhost, digital library, etc. Similarly, the key terms and ideas of research can be helpful to select relevant books, journals and previous theses in the physical library. Moreover, the key ideas (specific topics) of the research can lead to reading through journal articles, specific chapters of bulky books and other documents. When reviewing literature, the researcher needs to have specific ideas to pick information from the resources such as journal article, book chapter, newspaper or other web pages and to interpret the information without any prejudices. The above diagram gives an idea to follow reading documents and what information to be reviewed from the resources. While reviewing any literature or a journal article, the researcher needs to bear in mind: who the researcher is, when the research was published, what the research is about (topic/ area), where the research took place (context), how the research was conducted (methodology) and what the results are. I believe that these key ideas help the researcher explore relevant information from documents, note key information when reading, interpret the information systematically and save valuable time.
Many formal and informal discussions emphasize that developing EFL reading at public schools of Nepal is challenging. In this narrative writing, I am therefore trying to investigate the existing scenario of EFL reading in our public school, its impact on developing reading habits and some hints for promoting it.
Let me share an incident that took place in my class. I asked a student to read a simple reading text. In the beginning, he was ready but he tried a little and stopped. I asked him why he stopped but he had no answer to it. He felt insulted in front of the class and flushed in anxiety. At first, he thought he could but as he tried he couldn’t because his reading skill did not support him. Majority of the students who belonged to public school had a similar story (perhaps, still have), a sad story of having difficulty in reading an English textbook fluently. This story reminded me to recall my first stumbling days where I put my full effort, mind and heart to memorize those individual letters ABC…XYZ without knowing what reading actually means. So, till the date, I remember the interesting way of our reading. We were taught to read word meaning in such a way, h-o-u-s-e- house mane (means) ‘ghar’ and gradually started to read sentences.
Reflecting back to those days, what I feel now is that our reading in my time was probably focused on developing the ability to read English alphabets. Later, it was associated with the production of words and sentences than context, meaning and many more. So based on my experience as an ELT practitioner, I do not find any significant difference between past and today. No doubt that reading is definitely a skill, an active skill along with other three fundamental skills of language. Some studies (e.g Dabarera et.al, 2014; Ismail, 2015& Lee, 2012) related to reading skill reported that reading is one of the significant skills foreign language students need to learn for academic success in English. . .
Firstly, we were taught in Nepali even in English language class. Our teacher translated English text into learners’ native language (Nepali) as far as possible. As a result, we are compelled to think in Nepali and literally translated the language into English. This process involved the use of grammar-translation method in language learning and we are still practising it (nani dekhi lageko bani). In our English class, our English teachers used to explain the text into Nepali and asked us to memorize the difficult word meaning. When he taught a lesson, he followed the ethics of grammar-translation method. He read the text and translated into Nepali language, so did the students. Thus, we never felt that it was our English class and we were reading in English. On the other hand, we felt bored like my SEE students when their teacher starts giving a lecture in English class. The interesting thing happened in both classes (classes of my time and now) were similar where students requested their teacher to tell the text into Nepali. In this respect, I would like to add a statement of my SEE student.
She shared, “Miss, can you please explain it in Nepali? We did not get you?” (Translated)
This is only the very common example. As we are using the Nepali language in most of the English class, it automatically creates a problem in reading. Throughout the observation, we experienced the same and even understood that students might have felt difficulty in reading due to the deep impact of the dominant method. There is a lack of concern and exposure of English inside the class. The contexts are also limited. It is my experience that the teaching and learning English in public schools is oriented to how to pass the exam.
The students of public schools did not have exposure in reading from English teacher, parents and elders for developing reading skill since the past till now. So, reading becomes a complex process for them. The students do not know what makes them a good reader and what the right way of practice developing reading skills is.
Another reason behind the lack of students’ motivation in reading is due to the lack of additional reading materials. Most of the public schools of Nepal do not have the access to reading room i.e. library in schools. Even though there is a library, students are not trained how to find appropriate books and read fluently. Moreover, lack of trained English teachers, lack of enough teaching aids students of the public school are poor in reading. If we could provide reading related book like English magazine, storybook, poem, drama and so on to our students from the early grades, there might not be seen such problems in the field of English language teaching. So, establishing a resourceful library is essential for the development of students’ better-reading habit.
Similarly, the reason behind our students’ demotivation in reading (mostly in public school) is the teachers’ own reading habit. Therefore, teacher and their reading habit can be one of the sources of inspirations for the learners. I, thus, think that to improve the quality of present government aided education system and more importantly to develop the reading habit to the student, every school should establish a teaching community of practice. McLaughlin and Mitra (2000) emphasize that teachers’ community of practice is an important vehicle for sharing ideas and getting help from each other in their educational practice. I hope schools can be the best model for teachers along with their students for developing reading skill. In my view, only establishing a library is not sufficient to promote reading habit, but there should be an environment for reading community to enhance the better reading of their young learners. It means there should be a practice of taking children to the library, choose appropriate books and read, then share what they read with their friends and others.
Finally, motivation is one of the key strategies a teacher can use to make his/her students sound in reading. Motivation has positive power for transforming individuals towards wellbeing, Therefore, I felt that at the beginning, mostly the students require a great deal of support and guidance from their ELT teachers. If they get the proper guidance and motivation, they can enhance their reading.
Ms Roka is a recent graduate from the Department of English, TU. Her master’s thesis explores identity construction of female EFL teachers in Nepal.
References
Dabarera, C., Renandya, W., & Zhang, L.J. (2014). The impact of meta -cognitive Scaffolding and monitoring on reading comprehension. System, 42,462-473.
Fairbairn, J., & S. (2001). Reading at university. A guide for student. Philadelphia: Open University Press. USA
Harmer, J. (2001). The practice of English language teaching. London: Longman.
Harmer, J. (2007). How to teach English. London: Pearson Longman.
McLaughlin, M. & Mitra, D. (2000). Theory based change and change based theory: going broader. Journal of Educational change, 1(2), 1-24.
Middleton, E (2011). Reading Motivation and Reading Comprehension. An unpublished thesis of Master of Science in Graduate School, Ohio State University.
Richards, J.C., Rodgers, T.S. (1999). Approaches and methods in language teaching. Original (1986), Third Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wyatt, M. (2012). Issues in supporting the teaching of reading in English as a second language to Arabic speaking children. The reading Matrix.vol. 12, 2.
I began teaching English some eight years ago in a way that I could not help commencing it as the profession. One of my friends requested me to take classes on her behalf when she was not able to continue teaching in the middle of the academic session. When I recall the first day, I was really nervous standing in front of the staring eyes of several students, though it was my luck that I was appreciated by them. The appreciation from the students and my own rewarding experience during this period motivated and encouraged me to take teaching as the career. In the beginning, I found many reading texts quite difficult to interpret to the students. I had had many sleepless nights to prepare those texts. In this short blog post, I share my experience of teaching reading texts in post-secondary level in far-western part of Nepal.
Experience
During these eight years, I taught English in a few community and private English medium schools from secondary to university levels. I mainly collected experiences at the post-secondary level i.e. grade 11 and 12. I facilitated both compulsory and major courses of English which contain various genres of literature such as poem, story, essay, drama, novel and so on. While teaching these genres, I have gained some inspiring experiences.
When I was teaching reading an essay “Look At A Teacup’, the girls of grade 11 hid their heads. Furthermore, they were seen absent the next day. I learned that the reason of their absence was the sexual context in the text. They did not feel comfortable with the content. I consoled them separately and made them feel comfortable. And I also adopted a rapid reading strategy for that particular text. However, I have had quite contradictory experience of teaching a story i.e. “About love” to the students of grade 12. The students were too curious to listen to me. I observed that they were found excited to listen to the story. They paid full attention with no hesitation and wanted me to translate the story in the Nepali language. I realized that the content about love attracts those teenagers.
Another different experience was teaching a dramatic story “The Three Day Blow”. Students became quite passive and felt bored while reading the text thoroughly as it is too lengthy. They reported me that it has some unnecessary conversations. I made a summary of this particular reading. Then I realized that they made meaning in a way that love is like ‘The Three Day Blow’ at the present-day world.
One different situation that I had gone through was while teaching a poem entitled “My Heart Leaps Up When I behold”. Even though it was simple and short, students became quite confused with this paradoxical line: The child is the father of Man. Later on, I changed the strategy to impart the meaning showing a chart to make the meaning clear and they received the hidden meaning of the paradox. I felt quite happy when they comprehend the figurative meaning and internalized it.
I love reading poems but it is hard to deliver the underlying meaning of those poems to students in some cases. Most of the students prefer reading stories and novels to other readings as it has denotative meaning, whereas poem has connotative meaning. One of the girls from grade 11 said, “reading novels and stories interest me because it is easy to grasp the meaning of reading and provide us pleasure.” And a boy also said, “Novels are real-life based, and the stories reflect our characters and lives.”
Challenges and my Strategies
Like other teachers in this region, I also faced a lot of challenges to teach reading texts regarding the contents, students’ behaviour, learning environment and teaching techniques. At first, I used to apply the lecture method. Later students’ progress and my deep engagement motivated me to use student-centred techniques to make students more active and engaged in their classroom and improve their reading ability.
While teaching reading in one of the government schools of a remote area in the region, I had to face a lot of challenges because students were very weak in reading and writing in English. So, I used the Nepali language for every English words and sentence. When I read in English, they were startled and had no responses in the beginning. However, while I was reading something in Nepali, they were quite happy as they found the texts easier to comprehend and grasp the meaning of them. In that situation, I had to take extra (out of office hours) classes to facilitate reading and focus on simple grammar rules, structures, vocabularies and pronunciation of the new words.
As English is a foreign language in my context, there is no doubt that everybody feels some difficulty to master over it. Children in the school coming from different linguistic and social background also feel hesitation and difficulty to speak English. Practice makes man perfect. In earlier days, I used to stay the whole night for reading, underlining the words and write down their meaning. I constantly scanned my own comprehension. This is not something happens at the end of every page but this happens at the end of every sentence. I was scared of thinking that what I should do if I do not understand what I am reading. So reading helped me to deliver the content confidently. I was particularly inspired to see my students’ progress in reading and I think, reading never ends.
Therefore,
I feel that students need to be engaged in reading books of their interests, magazines, newspapers, stories, novels, comics and so on in Nepali, English and the languages they feel comfortable to enrich their reading habit. During these eight years, I find that reading allowed me to expand my knowledge, explore and understand my own identity and made my mind creative and critical.
Ms. Yashoda Bam is a post graduate teacher (PGT) at Sainik Awasiya Mahavidyalaya, Teghari Kailali.
This paper recounts my professional journey as a university teacher that I started nearly one and a half decade ago. In this narrative account, by exploration I mean textual exploration, experience stands for direct contact with language, working in and through language, and expression has to do with communicating ideas through writing.
Underlying assumptions: i) learning ceases with over-repetition; exploration gives continuity and safeguards against fossilization; ii) language has to enter into and move through the experiential zone; iii) expression is vital for communication; communication failure leads to professional alienation.
First two years and repetition of sickness
When I started teaching at the university, the entry requirement I possessed was the Masters degree. It was the only professional competence I possessed to teach Masters course. I had some level of confidence because I was going to teach the same course I had studied. The campus where I started my university career was like my home. However, I did not have extensive reading and writing experience apart from coursework, particularly the Masters thesis. My knowledge in the subject was limited. I was confined to the given course, but the subject I thought, for example, Translation Studies demanded interdisciplinary readings in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics, contemporary critical theories like post-structuralism. Apart from reading across these different subject courses, the courses also required me to have experience of translation.
When I recall those early days, particularly the first two years or so, I was a course-teller rather than a teacher. Gradually, I felt more comfortable with the course content, since I had repeated the same course. Also, I felt more secure in the class. However, the lack of job satisfaction led to the devoid of academic charm. I was suffering from what Nietzsche has called “repetition sickness” (Myerson, 2001).
My key professional responsibility
What lies at the heart of my profession is teaching the prescribed courses to prospective English teachers. That is, my first and foremost duty is to stand in front of the class and deliver lectures to the students in the classroom. Other professional responsibilities include supervising researchers, training teachers, designing courses, compiling and editing course materials. Again, all these revolve around the key responsibility i.e. teaching.
Classroom teaching has limited reaching
After some years when I started attending the conferences and visiting the academic forums and creative writing workshops, I began to realize that classroom teaching has limited reaching. I was alienated from the broader academic community. It often struck me that only by confining myself to classroom activities, I might not be able to expand my professional presence beyond university premises. Only by teaching one cannot grow professionally. This feeling would often strike me.
I often asked myself:
To what extent can I call myself a professional teacher?
Do I only teach or do I also READ?
Do I only teach and read or do I also WRITE?
Do I only teach, read and write or do I also SHARE?
Do I only teach, read, write and share or do I also CARE the emerging writers?
These questions were in fact inspired by Penny Ur’s (1991) notion of professionalism. The questions like these urged me to set on the journey of exploration, experience and expression by means of reading, writing and translating documents.
Desire for expanding my professional presence
I prefer not to limit myself to the reading and writing within my profession. I love plunging into the open space of reading and writing beyond the given profession so that I can traverse neighbouring disciplines, and bring back insights and information to expand and strengthen my profession. I have sensed that it has helped me expand my core identity as an English teacher. Apart from a teacher, now I can also call myself a writer and translator. Translation and creative writing have connected me to the broader audience.
Reading for exploration and experience
Reading is a process of exploring texts as well as information. I normally explore three zones of texts. I often begin with the core zone i.e. the texts prescribed in the course. It’s vital for my professional survival and success of my students in the examinations. However, reading the course texts is not enough. Then, I explore additional texts related to the core zone. I call them the texts from the peripheral zone. I need to deepen and widen my reading experience. To this end, I site the prescribed topic or text in the neighbouring disciplines like linguistics, literature, philosophy, and also refer students to such disciplines to broaden their understanding. Whenever I have time, I choose one of the areas and take to independent reading. I call this the texts from the outer zone. Let me give an example, poststructuralism and translation, a topic from the course. The course requires me to deal with the topic from the linguistic perspective only. Apart from linguistics, I move to peripheral texts that shed light on the topic from the literary and philosophical perspectives. Later I suggest students to carry out an independent study of poststructuralism when they have time. Thus, as an advanced academic reader, I encourage my students to move to the outer zone from the core.
This exploration helps the reader experience the content and language from different disciplinary perspectives, with varying degrees of intensity. Moreover, it is the process of reading across the disciplines. With such exploration, we become the members of broader academic and creative communities. However, there is a risk involved in such a reading. The reader should not forget to return home i.e. his/her own discipline, say ELT in our case. The only aim of reading beyond the home profession is to enrich one’s professionalism in terms of language and content, not just to become a textual wanderlust.
Writing for exploration, experience and expression
I realized, very late though, that writing is equally intensive and hard to reading, but it is also a source of self-satisfaction. This exploration needs more physical and mental preparedness, more commitment and more motivation than reading. While writing this article, I am exploring my inner and outer worlds simultaneously. Writing requires me to explore my own consciousness by reflecting on professionallywho I am, what I am doing, what my expectations are, what my students expect from me, and how I can contribute to my professional community. In a similar vein, I need to explore relevant information available in the textual world to such questions. Writing is the combination of information that I collect from various sources.
Writing is an event. It is the event that engages the writer in language, in content and in context. For example, I, while writing this article, am experiencing English directly. I am not just thinking about English but thinkingin and doing through English. I am face-to-face with its components ranging from spelling at the lowest level to discourse at the highest.
I always find myself in crisis while writing because every time I am unsure of spelling. I look for suitable words, proper structures, natural flow in the texture, effective rhetorical devices, relevant information and striking insights. Moreover, by writing I am linked with my students beyond the classroom. It has extended my presence beyond the classroom and multiplied the number of my audience. It has also helped me become a producer of knowledge rather than a mere consumer.
Translation for exploration, experience and expression
Translation has been instrumental in shaping and expanding my profession in terms of language, content and my identity. My early inclination to translation was due to my desire to improve my English. Later this inclination morphed into a life-long passion and profession. When I start translating a piece of work, I find my English inadequate. So, I need to search English dictionaries for better words, suitable expressions, natural sentence constructions and effective rhetorical devices. It has compelled me to be a tenacious language learner. Moreover, supplementary reading is a must in translation. In order to translate a Nepali book in English, I need to read peripheral English books. For example, when translating Yasodhara, a poetic play in Nepali by Sharada Subba, I had to explore several books and even movies in Buddhism. That led me to the path to Buddhist literature. Old Path White Clouds is one of them. Apart from being helpful in translation, insights from reading of the books like this have broadened my understanding about life and my relationship with students. This book has changed my attitude to teaching as service rather than merely a means of livelihood.
Moreover, while translating, I am engaged in the double helix of reading and writing. My reading is directed to writing. I need to read the text in the deepest possible level and (re)write it in the most accurate way. In both the cases, I am in intimate contact with language. Drawing on my experience, I agree with Sujeet Mukherjee’s (1981) revelation – Reading for translation is the highest form of reading. This acute process of reading has given me a means of expression. I have been expressing myself through translation for many years by now. I believe that I can contribute to the disciple by translating and writing about translation.
Benefits I have reaped from this triune journey
I have reaped a lot of benefits from this triune journey. Some of them are as follows:
Contribution to university courses: Selecting texts for such courses as Interdisciplinary Readings is next to impossible without wide reading. With this, I have been able to contribute to university reading courses, particularly in the text selection from literature, philosophy and critical theories.
Exposure to language and content across disciplines: I find myself shuttling back and forth across different reading zones. It gives me a sense that I am studying about language, content and its style. This makes my reading interesting and exciting. I can directly experience English used in other disciplines. Such reading exposes me to a variety of language and content. It has helped me guide students, earn their trust. This has improved my English and given me content to contemplate, to teach and to write.
Safeguard againstprofessional lethargy: Constant reading, writing and translating has freed me from professional lethargy.
Knowledge contributor: My role as a teacher is not only the consumer of knowledge but also the producer of knowledge.
Sharing beyond the classroom. I have been able to share my ideas beyond the classroom by means of print and electronic media.
Self-humility: Finally, the journey has taught me self-humility i.e. I don’t know but I try to know.
References:
Mukherjee. S (1981). Translation as discovery. India: Allied Publishers.
Ur. P (1991). A course in language teaching. Cambridge: CUP.
*Mr Adhikari is a lecturer of English Education at Tribhuvan University. Moreover, He is also a translator, editor, poet, and essayist. You can follow him on Twitter @balaramadhika14/bal ram adhikari
A teacher providing feedback on her students’ writing (www.alamy.com)
Editorial
We are delighted to present the third quarterly issue (July- September) of ELT Choutari of 2018, the 88th issue. The issue focuses on writing education in Nepali schools and universities.
We, the teachers of English in schools and universities teach about writing not writing itself. For instance, students are made to memorise what a paragraph means rather than making them write a paragraph on different topics. In the university, many students strive to create original pieces of writing. To meet the dates for submitting assignments, students ‘copy and paste’ in rush. They do not receive enough opportunity to practice writing in the classrooms. On the other hand, in schools, teachers generally write paragraphs, letters and essays on the board and students just copy them. They even memorise those notes including essays for the examination. Furthermore, there are ‘ready-made’ paragraphs, letters, job applications and essays in the markets; the “Bazaar Notes”. In a way, these notes make the teachers’ lives go easy. Of course, there are few teachers and students who invest their sufficient effort to practice writing processes in schools and universities. Interestingly, it has also been observed that the teachers and university faculties who have never produced a single piece of original writing in their career grade the students’ papers for their creativity and originality in writing. I mean, do we have experience of the process of writing? We need to rethink and revise the practice of teaching writing in our academic institutions.
In this connection, this 88th issue of ELT Choutari offers a wide range of writing practices, experiences and analysis of scholars. I believe that teachers, students and researchers will be benefited from reading these writings.
I would like to thank Choutari editors Dr. Karna Rana, Jeevan Karki, Praveen Kumar Yadav and a learning editor Narendra Airi for their reviews to release this issue. Finally, if you enjoy reading the blog posts, please feel free to share in your circle and of course, drop your comments in the boxes below. Likewise, please write your teaching-learning experiences and send us. We will give a space at Choutari. Our email is 2elt.choutari@gmail.com.
“Thesis” this word always had been a matter of mystery for me since I started master level because every senior I talked
Nabina Roka
said that the toughest part of the study was thesis writing. They shared their success, failure, complexities and challenges they faced in terms of writing a thesis. When I approached that level, I was at a loss because I could not find myself more confident. However, I have always been prepared and concerned about this matter and became curious from very beginning. More, I often remembered my sister who used to share her experiences of writing a master thesis and energized me as thesis is ‘something especial’ which requires a lot of patience and handwork. Before approaching this level, I might not be more serious about this matter meanwhile a kind of feeling came in my mind like, oh my god, “it is a tough writing”. Keeping those things in mind, I prepared for it .As a result, I reached at its final result. During this journey of writing a thesis I experienced most suffering and stressful time, I feel like that a woman suffered during in labour pain. It was in the sense that I had no option escaping from it because I spent about a year for preparing this thesis and face several problems, challenges, dilemmas and fear since the early days of preparing proposal to facing thesis viva. These several painful moments during the process however made me strong and leads towards its successful completion.
Early Preparation for Conducting Research
I could visualize my classmates and found the same inherent problem like me in terms of writing a master thesis. At that time our concern was on thesis ‘topic’. Though initially, I have no idea about thesis writing, yes! Of course, I have a desire to carryout out research quite differently than other (to be honest, till that time, I had no vision to carry out the research on totally new area and design, I don’t know why but it can from my inner heart my …..).Therefore, I have always been concerned about this matter with little knowledge about thesis writing since the very beginning of master level. Times flies very fast eventually, I approached to the first rehearsal stage of preparing research proposal for the partial fulfillment of assignment of research methodology subject. For preparing this proposal, like other friends of mine, I visited CRC and read out some theses and prepared proposal without knowing the real essence of writing well proposal. Actually, it was in third semester, without having proper knowledge on it I submitted to the Department. I was curious to know the feedback of my work. It is all because I was thinking that this work would be helpful for my further process of thesis writing. On the contrary, it did not happen to me. I neither got feedback from my teacher (initially he promised to return back with feedback) nor he returned checked copy. Feeling little depressed, immediately, after the completion of this project, I went to one of my senior teacher of our faculty and expressed my research interest. I shared my interest on doing research in new topic. Then, he advised me as, “sounds interesting! I wonder if you find the literature of that topic in our own ELT context.” He further added that he however might not be sure either I can …. Being confused, I remained silent because I had no more option instead of quitting it .Thus, I just quitted it and thinking on doing research in quite easier topic than earlier. Eventually, I appeared final exam and worried thinking about thesis topic. After the completion of exam, I immediately visited CRC and brought some theses and decided to carry out survey design research as others.
The Moment Somewhat I understood Area and Topic
The Department of English Education published the notice of thesis supervisor. I saw my name under the supervision of respected guru Dr. Prem Bahadur Phyak. I heard his name and his contribution in English language teaching. But, before that time, I had no formal visit to him. Some days later, he called a first meeting for a discussion. On that particular day, we gathered and discussed on general matters. My friends were sharing their ideas one by one after introducing themselves. When my turn came, I was really confused whether I could tell. Feeling little comforted I tried, but it went difficult for me to speak over there because before that time I never became serious about “area” and “topic”. Though I became nervous, I successed to speak something about topics, I brought. Meanwhile, he understood my intention, made me feel comforted. After discussing with him, somewhat I understood and got little idea on area and topic. I knew the area ‘gender’ but became confused how to carry out the research on it. I returned back home and laid down restlessly continuously thinking on it. But the question “how to carry” had drawn my attention. After a long debate within, I decided to do it and immediately requested to my supervisor for providing some materials related to gender. He immediately sent me a pile of reviewed works. Next day, I downloaded and printed out all, I had. Then, I started to read. I read and underlined the words which I considered most important. I read each article several times but became tired and frustrated when I understood nothing. However, I kept on reading.
Gradually, we were called for second and third meeting for a discussion. In those productive meeting, I learnt many things but felt little uneasy because I was still in dilemma and not sure how to start and what to do later? Meanwhile, I saw some of my friends were confidently sharing their ideas .On the other hand, I found some of them were in dilemma (still) like me. Although I was in dilemma, I observed them and I felt little comforted. But till that time, I could not dare to speak. To be frank, finally, I tried to express my inner intention with my facilitator, ‘Sir, I went through all but understood nothing’. He simply replied, Nabina, “You show your interest on gender. Your issue is great. So, don’t be afraid. Be positive and just spend some more time on it”. This time, probably I felt little more comforted than earlier meetings. In such way, our last group meeting before preparing proposal was end with the discussion of choosing area, population and selecting research design particularly.
Experience of Preparing the First Draft of Proposal
Once I decided my area typically gender, having little knowledge about that field, I started working on it. As I mentioned earlier section, ‘I read but understood nothing’ later appeared as a milestone for me as it motivated me to do the work quite impressively. Keeping the quotation ‘understood nothing’ in my mind, I started to read. I spent about two and half months for reading and generalizing the ideas in my proposal writing. I had done it with paying full attention. Meanwhile, I found, it was as tougher as I thought. At that time, I encountered with several challenges. So, I had frequent visit with my facilitator and getting constructive suggestions for further improvement.
Finally, I prepared the first draft of proposal and visited to my supervisor with little excitement. I handed this draft piece to him to observe my first attempt of writing a proposal. On the other hand, I noticed that my facilitator focus was on my writing ability than the particular topic (It is because, in our earlier meeting, he used to say that not to worry about topic. It may change according to the demand of the study during any of the phase of working). He spent sometimes observing it and commented on my writing skill. As I remembered his first question as, ‘why did you start with definition in your writing, Nabina….?” however, I did not have answer of it. I was really surprised and suddenly said to him, ‘Sir I found the same writing culture when I observed some theses and I did the same here’. (He laughs).Later, he had kindly awoken me. I got an exposure. During this discussion, I started getting more and more ideas related to language, content, related literature review, organization skill and methodology. It was the time he opened my eyes quite widely. On the other hand, I was embarrassed in front of him it is because I found myself in the very beginning stage of writing. As a result, I had to change my concept paper i.e. proposal for next time.
On that day, our discussion summarized with introducing new word ‘identity’. Though, I fascinated by the word became worried thinking on my investment in preparing earlier proposal. Again I returned back home and stayed restlessly. I was really in dilemma what to do again. I immediately emailed him. He provided pile of articles related to teacher identity. During that time, I faced the same problem as earlier (but not exactly it was) as I did not have many ideas on teacher identity because it was totally new area than earlier for me. Meanwhile, I tried to read quite widely. I spent some weeks, losing my sleep, hunger and ignoring many more. Then, after reading some complex articles (In the sense that, I have not such habit of reading such article by heart, instead I read some just for reading, assignment purpose) about teacher identity, I consulted several times with my facilitator as it was really hard for me to make even a general concept on it. Having discussion with facilitator about the issues related to female English teachers’ professional development and more importantly as being a female ELTpractioners, exposure to the difficulties other working female(teacher) have in their personal and professional life, I started fascinated more by the term “identity”. This time, reading turned out quite enjoyable. But on the way to working, I felt bored and became somewhat redundant as I could not frame my ideas properly. During this phase, I had a several visit with him and expressed my problems as, ‘Sir I went through all articles but could not organize my ideas properly? He kindly advised me ‘you can’ but please does it passionately.
I then determined and followed his suggestion, continuing my job of preparing proposal. Since that day, the word “identity” sounded in my mind (is still). After all, I spent another one and half month for preparing next proposal. During this phase, I worked hard despites the difficulties I faced. As a result, I successed to write all the parts except introduction. Again, I spent some more days for preparing the introduction part. During the whole proposal writing, I found that writing introduction was most challenging and time consuming in comparison to other parts. Finally, after a several draft, it was submitted to proposal defense. After the successful completion of proposal defense I did required correction by following the suggestion provided by the research proposal evaluation committee for further improvement. Since the days of submitting research proposal to the department even today I feel that starting writing had impacted in my several writing draft so it can be appeared as strong basis for writing present proposal for me furthermore, it extends my horizon of knowledge in the interested area and got the chance to be familiar with the recent practices and trends in researching and academic writing.
Journey of Data Collection and Interpretation
My journey of data collection started after the phase of facing proposal viva. Regarding data collection, I was worried thinking on how it would be going on and whether I could find the expected participants. During the phase of proposal writing, I talked with some female ELT teachers whom I knew but later I found them being confused and trying to escape by remarking time limitation. So, I became worried and went to Pokhara .In order to fulfill the requirement for my research, I visited several public schools of valley. I asked help from my family and head of visited school to provide information. After the several days’ attempt, I met participants who were willingly taken part in my study.
After a phase of planning. I provided them a written consent letter for getting ethical approval. Then after having agreement with them, I conducted my first interview in August 2017. I met with my participants individually for narrative session. The interview was conducted in different places, time and context according to their own comfort than mine. At the very beginning, I started the first interview session by asking more open ended questions, to make them feel free with me. So, I started the conversation with more general questions like what are you doing now? How do you feel right now? etc. I was inquiring in such a way for exploring their present experiences and more importantly, I did it for rapport building. Gradually, I entered into their personal and professional life. At the same time, I audio- recorded their each interviews.
A month later, to explore more about them, I again needed their help. So, I had a telephone call with each participant for our second meeting. We again fixed our meeting for follow- up interviews. Gradually, this happened in first week of September 2017. In this session, our visit was on different places like their own home, school’s premise, coffee station and so on. At that time, we largely discussed about their personal and professional life. I mainly focused on the hindering and supporting aspects of their personal and professional life as it was the major objective of this research study. This time, we became more close to each other. So, without hesitation, they openly shared their stories though I noticed, they repeated the past events and even shared the events which they remembered during our ongoing conversation. (Feeling more comforted) In the same way, they even added new stories which they never shared to others. Listening to their unique lived voices, I lost myself with their lived stories and became nervous. At the same time we laughed and cried together. In this way, they not only shared their lived experiences, I also shared my growing interest on carryout out research on this area and growing journey of becoming a teacher. We talked for hours as there were no certain boundaries and fixed time. So, after having the interviews, I provided the question for written narrative. Despite their interviews and written narrative, I have a frequent visit to them on social sites. Furthermore, I observed their activities, facial expression as they were significant factors to explore their hidden reality of becoming an English language teacher. In such way, I collected pile of raw data.
Data Interpretation Stage
Data analysis started after translating (Nepali interview into English) and transcribing lengthy narratives. After two months rigorous hard work, I had prepared myself for data analysis and interpretation. When I stared to analyze raw data, I faced the same problem whether I would go further or escaped from it. Finally, despite the difficulties, I determined and did it. I collected data without having sufficient ideas on how to analyze and interpret them. I again glanced my eyes into the pages of narrative researches which I already have. I turned the pages of these books but could not find anything I needed and again consulted with my supervisor. He suggested me to follow the framework for analyzing narrative data. (To be frank) I actually didn’t know what would be the framework. I consulted several researches and become frustrated. Later, I went through the work of Riesman (2008) for a discussion of thematic approach to narrative analysis and adopted her ideas which I thought more significant for my research study.
Few months later, I informed about my work to my supervisor. Until that time, I just completed fourth chapter of my thesis and visited with him. Few days later, he informed me about my work. On that day, he provided me more valuable suggestions as how to organize the narratives of participants effectively and how to put relevant literature in this part to make the research sound. Although I got the amount of exposure, while preparing this part, I encountered exactly the same condition as I faced during first proposal draft. I know, I am in the journey of research but I become really confused whether I would ‘go’ further or ‘leave’ it. Then, I remained silent for some days and looking for another simple way. However, I could not. I had no more option to quit it because I already spent half year working on it (faced proposal viva before 5 months). I tried numerous times and finally decided to continue. During this phase, I faced several challenges and lived through stressful time. Since interpretation to submission for thesis viva, I had numerous visits with him. Finally, through trial and error, I successed to arrive it’s completion and got its present shape.
Challenging Aspects of My Study in Terms of Preparing Thesis Writing
I discussed about my struggles, dilemmas and challenges I had been facing during this research project in the aforementioned section. More importantly, here I have presented these points as some consideration of my thesis journey. I decided to carry out this research entitled Identity Construction in Female English Language Teachers Professional Development: A Narrative Inquiry without having knowledge on this area, even I did not think that I might to carry out the research on this very topic. However whole thesis journey energized me and finally I arrived to my destination. Though I have no idea originally to this topic, later it went well. As a result, I found the work much more manageable than I thought it would be. However, throughout this thesis journey, I was spending most of my time working on this research project without having proper sleep, hunger, laugh and many more. It was therefore a very challenging (still is) stage and kept me going on and on.
First, I felt quite easy to carry out the research related to female teacher because this research project was partly inspired by my own personal experience as being ELT practioners however researching on female teacher identity construction particularly is challenging issue for me. It was because “identity” itself is a new area and has not been researched in the context of Nepalese ELT scenario. Furthermore, I did not find the large amount of researches on this matter around the world teacher education.Infact, there were comparatively less number of researches, have given due emphasis on female teacher identity construction. So, selecting the area and carrying out research related to identity construction is challenging task.
Second, we know reviewing literature play a significant role to make every research sound and fruitful. However, we did not pay due respect on it. People might say, ‘Once we prepared literature in proposal writing we might think that we need not to review it again’. Even, I heard such argument time and again from my friends and seniors. To be frank, not only them, I was not exceptional in this matter. Before approaching that stage, I have an ideology that it might be true. On the contrary, later, I know the value and its impact throughout whole writing. So, I realized that it is an ongoing process. Meanwhile, another concern of my study was related to proper organization of ideas. It was not only the problem I faced in thesis writing, I am still suffering, writing this reflection.
Third, challenge I faced when I simply could not find the respondents for my research Though I talked earlier( when I was writing proposal)with some female ELT teachers later trying to escape from this research project by pretending for not having time. Then, I became little frustrated and again was searching for required participant for my study. Finally, after my one week hard work, I met some female teachers who were searching a place for sharing their stories. Again, I need to consider other factors like rapport building, conducting interviews, time management, selection of language used for interview and so on.
Fourth idea which I considered is the relationship between researcher and participants throughout the whole thesis process. Throughout this journey, I noticed that in narrative research, the role of researcher is different from other such studies because of the relationship between researcher and participant. As I mentioned in third point, building rapport is the most difficult one in my early days and more concerned with whether I could build better relation to explore their hidden reality. So, I need to view myself both from insider and outsider perspectives. However, I did not forget my role in this thesis writing.
Last but not least, another concern of my study was accurate representation of meaning in terms of what was expressed in Nepali and what resulted from translation into English. Maintaining core meaning and ideas of participants was a central issue for me. Therefore, I was always afraid of possible effect of misleading the interpretation of gathered data. During the whole thesis process, transcribing (took more than 2 month) and translating were most difficult tasks.
In this way, despite the difficulties I encountered, my interactions with participants provided huge insights on exploring female teacher identity construction, their everyday experiences, contradiction, dilemmas, frustration they experienced in their personal and social life. More importantly, I understood the value of shared story in ELT teaching and learning and its impact in educational change throughout this thesis journey.
My Final Thought, Suggestions and Acknowledgement
After all, the final result made me more energetic as I had been working with ignoring many obstacles, challenges and complexities. To be honest, it was not my earlier goal to submit my thesis on this very topic. But, later due to my strong desire and more importantly the part of motivation which I had from my supervisor, I started my journey of the research in May 2017 within four female teachers who are teaching in basic level at different public school of Pokhara Lekhnath-Metropolitan city. Starting from first stage of selecting area, preparing first research proposal draft, facing proposal viva, conducting interviews, analyzing and interpreting data with finding out conclusion, I passed several joyful and painful moments which sometimes motivated and frustrated during the whole process of working. To be honest, most of the time, I experienced the painful situation and no doubt that I was writing from the level of ‘fear and dilemma’. In fact these dilemmas and fear later made me strong and confident. Most importantly, throughout my educational journey, this firsthand experience enabled me to understand the real value of study from school days to graduation.
Next, during my working days, I observed some of mine friends carried out their theses within limited time and even I heard the thesis, “selling and buying” culture. Yes! Honestly, I am not sure about this rumor but was afraid of it. Instead, I want to say to you all that definitely you have to tackle with many ups and down moments like me during thesis process and you may deserve the result of your hardworking. So, I advised to all prospective researchers not to scare about word “thesis”. You must understand the essence of writing thesis before started writing further. If you do that it will be easier for your further steps.
Further, people I met often told that everyone writes thesis but it does not matter how you write, the goal of writing a thesis is just for getting marks than nothing else. Instead, my stressful time provided me an insights on what is thesis writing in real sense, what is my role as a researcher? Somewhat I got the chance to be familiar with little about thesis writing. Thus, I would like to suggest to all fellow students, you must grab thesis writing as a learning opportunity as you will get the chance to enlighten you and your knowledge on your interested area.
Now, I am at the end of this reflection writing, at this journey I highly indebted to those generous souls whose collaboration makes this journey of knowing mine and others’ possible. Most importantly, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to my respected guru and thesis supervisor Dr.Prem Bahadur Phyak, for his sound professional guidance, full attention, timely advice, expertise and encouragement throughout the whole thesis process in spite of his busy schedules and over whelming responsibilities. I am really grateful to him for everything. More, I have a due respect to all research proposal evaluation and thesis approval evaluation committee for their support and encouragement in completing this research study. I have a due respect to Prof.Dr. Tara Datta Bhatta for his encouragement and enlightening ideas on language .Similarly,I would like to offer my sincere gratitude to Prof. Dr. Bal Mukunda Bhandari for his invaluable suggestion. I would equally offer my sincere gratitude to Mr. Laxmi. Pd Ojha for being there and provided suggestion for further improvement. Further, my entire research would not have been accomplished without the help and support of my participants. So, I have a due respect to them who believed me and enthusiastically taking part in this study.
Ms. Nabina Roka is a recent graduate from the Department of English, TU. Her master’s thesis explores identity construction of female EFL teachers in Nepal.
British Council has recently published a book titled “English Language Teaching in Nepal: Research, Reflection and Practice” (2018). This volume is edited by Dr David Hayes. He is an associate professor at Brock University, Canada and an independent education consultant.
This volume is a collection of 14 research papers including a majority of voices of Nepalese ELT practitioners focusing on ELT and critical analysis of the role of English in Nepal. On his remarks on its publication, Dr Lava D Awasthi, the chairperson of the Language Commission of Nepal states, “…it will serve as a resource kit for language planners, policymakers, practitioners and stakeholders.” He further adds, “…it is groundbreaking… drawing on national and international perspectives and practices, theorizing the issues generated from practical experiences and research-based empirical evidence.” On his foreword, Alison Barrett, the director, Education and society, East Asia (British Council) mentions, “…this volume will stimulate considered debate around the role and position of English within the education system in Nepal, and will enable agents of change… to make informed choices… on the quality of English language teaching, learning and assessment in Nepal…”
This book is divided into three sections. First, international perspectives (on ELT), which includes the papers of Rhona Brown, Pritivi N. Shrestha and Amol Padwad. Second, Sponsored research studies, which covers the other three papers of Min Bahadur Ranabhat and Subodh Babu Chiluwal, with Richard Thompson. Finally, the third section- Case studies includes the eight case studies of Ushakiran Wagle, Eak Prasad Duwadi, Laxmi Prasad Ojha, Jeevan Karki, Gopal Prasad Bashyal, Ashok Raj Khati, Laxman Gnawali and Vaishali Pradhan.
Karki with Dr Hayes
As the volume is out in the market, we thought of sharing the thoughts and reflection of the editor in editing the valuable volume. I managed to briefly talk with Dr. Hayes.
Jeevan: Dr. Hayes, you have recently edited a volume “English Language Teaching in Nepal: Research, Reflection and Practice”, which includes 14 chapters. Based on this valuable experience, what is your reflection on the writing of Nepalese ELT practitioners? What are the strengths in their writing and what could be done to make their writing even stronger and better?
Dr. Hayes: Nepalese practitioners are experts in their contexts and my job was just to help them to clarify their ideas and put everything together in a way which allowed them to make their contributions to the book the best that they could be. The strength in the writing generally was in bringing the Nepali school contexts to life so that readers elsewhere could see what was positive about teaching and learning English in Nepal, what the challenges were and where improvements could be made. Good writing is really all about practice and knowing the requirements of the publication you are writing for and its readership. Nepalese practitioners just need opportunities to be given- opportunities to write and to publish for both local and international audience. The more they write, and the more editors (of journals and, I hope, more books like ‘English Language Teaching in Nepal: Research, Reflection and Practice’) help them, the more proficient they will become.
Jeevan: Having gone through the research and practices in Nepalese ELT, where do you locate the ELT practices in Nepal in relation to the trends and practices in the world?
Dr Hayes: I think it’s always best to look at ELT practice in terms of how appropriate it is to the local context. However, there are clear trends which are present in Nepal just as in other countries worldwide. The most obvious of these is the expansion of English-medium education, even at the primary level. Personally, I don’t think this serves the interests of the majority of children well. International research shows that children are most successful educationally when they are taught in their first language and become literate in that language in the early years of schooling. Of course, this is a challenge for multilingual societies like Nepal but experience elsewhere shows that primary education in the first language can be achieved and, not only that, children are often more successful at learning another language such as English in later years too. The danger of English-medium education when the language is not available and regularly used in the local environment is that children often end up not learning anything very well. The work of the Language Commission in Nepal is extremely important in this respect. There is, of course, still a place for English language teaching but I think there needs to be some serious reflection about its place in the overall education system in Nepal. The educational interests of the children must come first.
Writing is a rigorous process. A good writing needs enough practice on the part of the writer. Moreover, academic writing is well organized and needs good effort. As a part of the academic course, I carried out a research on “Feedback in English Language Learning: Teachers’ Practices and Students’ Perceptions”. I went through several hard times during this research. The problem began from the very starting day of the writing process. The foremost problem I faced was to find out the way out for finding out the topic that I was interested in. It was not that easy for me to find out the area of my interest on which I was about to carry out the research. Hardly, I decided to do my research on a given topic. The topic suddenly came in my mind when I reviewed many available literatures related to language teaching and learning. Going through several literatures, I came to know that the role of feedback cannot be neglected, especially, in the process of second language learning. As being a student of semester, I was thinking of the feedback practice at the university. I wanted to find out whether the students are receiving effective feedback in the classroom or not, whether they are satisfied with it or not. What different ways are there to provide feedback to the students? These all led me to choose this topic.
Literature review is the most important aspect in any research. You can guide your research very well if you have good review of literature. Review helps to find out the gap in any area. Moreover, you can come up with the contrasting idea after the review of the literature. Finding out the appropriate area of interest in any research is challenging to any researcher. In the same way, I also went through several sleepless and stressed nights thinking over the area of my interest in carrying out the research. Several nights, I wandered in dream of finding out the suitable topic for my research. I used to dream of the same thing-research topic but forgot after I woke up. I myself didn’t know in which area I was interested in. It took me a couple of weeks to think about the topic. At some point, I thought that I could not do. But then, I gathered the courage to do it. And finally, I decided the topic. The journey of carrying out research did not stop there. It was just the beginning and a lot more was to come.
When the topic suddenly came into my mind, I became so happy. But the happiness did not last for long as I thought of the whole process of writing it. I was like…(कुहिरोको काग). Sometimes, I thought that I took it more seriously than it needed to be. But the other times, I thought that it was ok! At some point, I thought that it was not of my reach.
I thought like I was lost in the ocean. Sometimes, I thought of changing the area of research. But when the whole struggle of coming up to that level came into my mind, I forgot the idea of doing so.
I had my own kind of mental map when I planned for doing my research. I wanted to do it on my own way. But the turmoil came when I asked my supervisor about the topic and he led me to other way. This made me sad again-so sad that I stopped working on it for several days. But ultimately, it was my work and I had to do it at any cost. I started working with the proposal again. I worked to first, second and third draft giving it to the final shape.
During the process of writing these all the drafts, I took support and guidance from my supervisor, teachers and my dear friends. When my proposal got the final shape, I felt like achieving a great victory over the enemies. It was the day I took a step forward. It was half done but there was a long way forward to go. And the paths were not that easy. The paths were not pitched-graveled, sloppy and spiky. I stepped back many times and it took me several weeks to move forward.
Collecting the required data is the next challenge in any research. I wanted to do my research through the questionnaire and classroom observation of the teachers. Collecting the data taught me the next lesson-the lesson of sketching all the possible future before the task begins. A single prediction may not work as a whole. So, what a researcher needs to think is that there are many alternatives way forward and these all should be kept in mind before conducting any research. I wanted to do my research based on the classroom practice of the teachers and simply through the perceptions of the students. But, I failed many times in getting the right idea of doing so as I lacked the prerequisites necessary to it. So, I learnt the lesson of looking out for the multiple possibilities of any result. A single lens does not suffice a good research work. I also thought of changing the whole research work as I was quite unable to collect the required data from the sample. The problem added when I could not collect the data from the respondents. Hardly, the respondents returned back the filled up questionnaire. So, good rapport with the respondents is also a part of survey research. I myself was not satisfied with my work. But then, hardly, I collected the required data from the respondents and the observation of the classes. The data were not of good quality though.
After the collection of the data, I met my supervisor time and again for guidance. I was lost for almost more than a month for the analysis and the interpretation of the data. Looking out the ideas from the teachers and friends, finally, I came up with the first draft. It was very rough and incomplete. With the help of regular guidance and support of the supervisor, I did it. Working with the first, second and third draft, I came to the final version. Even after the final version, I thought that I was missing somewhere.
Doing good research itself is challenging and the tag of good student added more challenge to me. So, what I feel sometimes is being good is always challenging. Everyone has their eyes on you. It adds to your stress-stress not only in your research but in every step of your academic journey, eventually personal! Sorry! Being somebody is always dangerous!
Ms. Tara Rai is a recent graduate from the Department of English Education, TU. Her master’s thesis explores the practices of providing feedback in ELT.
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