Shifting Paradigm in the 21st Century and Plans to Reorient Indian
School Level English Language Teachers and Teacher
Educators in Rural Areas
By
Dr.Pratap Kumar Dash
Associate Professor
Dept. of English, Rajendra University, Balangir, Odisha
[email protected]
Abstract
This paper aims at presenting some of the additions and modifications in bridging the gap
between the earlier planning and policies and the emerging challenges in English language
education in rural India and suggests reorienting Indian English language teachers basically
at primary and secondary levels keeping in view the national and international requirements.
Firstly, it reviews the teacher education in English and current practices of English language
teaching and learning systems both in vernacular and English medium schools in India.
Secondly, it critically examines the national policy documents such as Position Papers and
curricula for English. Thirdly, it focuses on the drawbacks in the existing practices of English
language education and the emerging global challenges of communication and interpersonal
skills. Then, it chalks out a plan for redesigning the basic teaching-learning systems which
includes psychological, socio-cultural, pedagogic and professional factors to be considered
in the inter-related domains. It also envisages the typical Indian multilingual and
multicultural contexts and redefines rural area English language teachers’ responsibility in
strategy and skill-based classroom orientation; learner autonomy; assessment of both the
teachers and learners in terms of attitude, personality, multiple intelligence factors; teacher
knowledge of global societies and cultures; modern technology of language teaching and
learning; proficiency factors, etc.; smart board management; knowledge of error analysis;
bilingual/multilingual competence; knowledge of testing and evaluation; ability to analyse
the learning style of the learners; and finally, it focuses on the validity of post-method
pedagogy in Indian context and its current relevance.
Key words: English language education, rural, global challenges, multilingual and
multicultural contexts, bilingual/multilingual competence, learner autonomy, post-method
pedagogy
1. Introduction
With the changing face of Indian language education, Indian English language teachers and
stake holders are required to brainstorm and prepare very effective long-term plans and
programmes for the best provisions in English language teaching and learning systems both
for primary and secondary levels. The schools in rural India have become at par with schools
in urban areas. But, right now there is no uniformity of English language teaching in the
schools in India. It accounts for a number of factors. There are both government as well as
private schools. Further, such schools are either English medium or vernacular. In vernacular
schools, both at private and government levels except English as a compulsory subject, all
other subjects are taught in the respective regional languages. In general, the level of
competence in English language varies from one group of students to the other. In most of the
schools, students are made exam- oriented. Additionally, they may participate in co-curricular
activities and competitive activities on their own interest or because of encouragement of
their respective environments. In the meantime, the importance of English in India has
reached at the top. The responsibility is almost like the native speakers of English.
Irrespective of rural or urban background, Indian students, business people and different
varieties of Indian professionals are spread across the world. Similarly, multinational
companies are already present in India in which the corporate culture is widespread and
challenging. All these mostly use English language for their communication purposes at an
advanced level of proficiency. So, the teachers as well as teacher trainers of English language
in India should be well equipped with all the advanced and befitting systems available.
2. Statement of problem
The teaching, learning and training systems of English language in rural India is not
substantially adopting the up-to-date changes and developments so far taken place world-
wide. Along with multilingual competence, the emerging patterns of learner autonomy,
learner specific language pedagogy, learner-centred methods and materials, cultural
constructs and use of technology are still at a stage of experimentation. The schools are still
adopting the methods of making the students memorise the answers and reproduce them in
the Exams. In most of the schools, usage-based teaching, group work and projects, use of
technology for English language learning is still a myth. Most of the schools do not have a
system for systematic error analysis; and analysis of learning strategies and measuring
proficiency in language skills. Apart from the prescribed textbooks, they do not use relevant
extra language materials in the class. The teachers in vernacular medium state level
government as well as private schools find it convenient to explain English in the respective
regional languages. Although the tribal population in rural area is substantial, no specific
materials and methods have been adopted in the states as per the local requirement. The
developed or developing countries across the world support a lot to the students with less IQ
in order to make up the loss but in countries like India, no such activities are there. As a
result, average Indian students of rural schools are found unsuccessful in achieving the target
in English. Even though they have exposure to their surrounding and social systems; their
degree of learning language in their respective mother tongues is not hopeless, they fail when
it comes to English language learning and usage.
3. Research questions
i. Can we bridge the gap between the existing practices of ELT and the new
methods, techniques and approaches in rural schools?
ii. Will it be viable to make our learners bilingually/multilingually competent and
make use of the cultural contexts effectively for English language learning?
iii. Can we create a uniform system of learner autonomy both rural and urban areas
throughout the nation?
4. Research Objectives
i. To focus on the age-old lingering problems of ELT in India and find out solutions
irrespective of rural and urban schools.
ii. To review the existing practices and suggest suitable plans to bridge the gap
iii. Methods of implementing strategies of developing learner autonomy
iv. Implementing multilingual and multicultural competence
v. Major policy level steps to update teacher education and training in English
5. Literature review
5.1 Language Policy of India
The language policy of India has a strong impact on the language pedagogy throughout the
country. In 1961, the three language formula got implemented in India. According to
Krishnaswamy and Sriraman (1995) this meant that three languages could be used like
English or any other European languages. That is to say, English language, the mother tongue
(of states) and the Official language, Hindi, were to be taught. If the mother tongue was Hindi
itself, then English and Hindi were to be taught in schools. The three- language formula was
reiterated by the Khotari-Commission (1966). Politically, states have also the provision of
deciding their own language policies. Mostly, they emphasize primarily on the use of the
languages of their own states or regions by providing second language status to English.
5.2 Review of Position Paper: NFC on the Teaching of English 2006
It has been rightly mentioned that English in India today is ‘a symbol of people’s aspirations
for quality in education and a fuller participation in national and international life.’ Its
colonial origins are now forgotten or irrelevant…. the current status of English stems from its
overwhelming presence on the world stage… Quoting Das (2005), it mentions that ‘the
opening up of the Indian economy in the 1990s has coincided with an explosion in the
demand for English in our schools because English is perceived to open up opportunities.’
5.3 Review of “Position Paper on the Teaching of English in D. Ed Course”
In this, it is viewed that the curriculum for preparation of teachers of English should
essentially keep in mind not only the objectives of teaching English in schools but also the
need to facilitate professional development. English is taught as a language for
communication. Teachers are expected to develop more of interactive activities on the four
basic skills among students who study English at the school level. The focus, then, is to
make the student-teachers achieve competence over these skills in the first place. The
curriculum should have both aspects, i.e., acquisition of English Language and the classroom
methodology to facilitate its acquisition. It adds that English has come to occupy a pivotal
role in acquiring knowledge. However, strong base in one's mother tongue is expected to
make learning of English easy. That is why English Language Teaching has to be thought of
in the multi-lingual context of Indian students. Teachers need to have rigourous training in
spoken English as well as teaching English. Speech practice should be made compulsory on
the course. It emphasises to prepare teachers to work with multiple texts in a non-
examination system. The focus has to be more on practical aspects than the theoretical
component.
5.4 Review of NCF 2005
According to NCF (2005), the teaching and learning of English today is characterised by, on
the one hand, a diversity of schools and linguistic environments supportive of English
acquisition, and, on the other hand, by systemically pervasive classroom procedures of
teaching a textbook for success in an examination, modulated by teacher beliefs influenced to
varying degrees by inputs from the English-language teaching profession.
One way to broadly characterise English-teaching situations in India is in terms of (a) the
teacher‘s English language proficiency (TP), and (b) the exposure of pupils to English outside
school, i.e. the availability of English in the environment for language acquisition.
Approaches and methods need not be exclusive but may be mutually supportive within a
broad cognitive philosophy (including Vygotskian, Chomskyan, and Piagetian principles).
Higher-order skills (including literary appreciation and role of language in gendering) can be
developed once fundamental competencies are ensured. (NCF, 2005. p.58)
5.5 Review of other Major References
V.K. Gokak has said that at the B.Ed. level, more periods are given to compulsory papers
than to methods of teaching. At the same time, the duration of training is very short. There
are also very meagre provisions and facilities for in-service education. This lack of proper
training affects the teaching-learning process as the teachers are not competent enough to
teach the subjects with required methods, techniques and aids. This affects the student’s
overall development of language skills. They found themselves unable to express themselves
in this foreign language due to weak base of language learned since elementary level.
(Kumar, R.B., 2008)
6. Strategy to Bridge the Gap
Some of the timely steps can be taken by facilitating the following emerging strategies and
techniques.
6.1 Learner Autonomy
The concepts of learner autonomy have gained momentum, and have become a much
discussed caption within the context of the new education specifically and are extended to
learning in general too. It goes without saying that this is a shift of responsibility from
teachers to learners, and it does not exist in a vacuum, rather it is the result of a concatenation
of changes to the curriculum itself towards a more learner-centred learning. What is more,
this reshaping, so to say, of teacher and learner roles has been conducive to a radical change
in the age-old distribution of power and authority that used to plague the traditional
classroom. Cast in a new perspective and regarded as having the 'capacity for detachment,
critical reflection, decision-making, and independent action' (Little 1991: 4). Thus, learners
turn to become autonomous learners, and expected to assume greater responsibility for, and
take charge of, their own learning. However, learner autonomy does not mean that the teacher
becomes redundant; abdicating his/her control over what is transpiring in the language
learning process. Learner autonomy is a perennial dynamic process amenable to 'educational
interventions' (Candy 1991), rather than a static product, a state, which is reached once and
for all. Besides, this focuses on the assumption of providing learners a greater control over
their own learning. It is necessary to help them to become careful of and sort out the potential
strategies. Learner autonomy in general propagates the following features:
• for situations in which learners study entirely on their own;
• for a set of skills which can be learned and applied in self-directed learning;
• for an inborn capacity which is suppressed by institutional education;
• for the exercise of learners' responsibility for their own learning;
• for the right of learners to determine the direction of their own learning. (Benson and
Voller 1997:2 quoted in Thanasoulas 2000)
To all intents and purposes, the autonomous learner takes a (pro-) active role in the learning
process, generating ideas and availing himself of learning opportunities, rather than simply
reacting to various stimuli of the teacher. This reasoning operates within, and is fitted upon
the theory of constructivism. He is not one to whom things merely happen; he is the one who,
by his own volition, causes things to happen. Learning is seen as the result of his own self-
initiated interaction with the world. Psychologically, it carries forth the attributes of cognitive
and metacognitive strategies on the part of the learner, motivation, attitudes, and knowledge
about language learning, i.e., a kind of metalanguage.
6.2 Instructional Technology
Instructional Technology is the problem analysis, solution design, development,
implementation, management, and evaluation of instructional processes and resources to
improve learning and performance in education and at work (Whelan 2005 citing Reiser). In
general, the rapid spread of participatory tools and sites facilitating social networking,
interactive game playing, collaborative writing and editing, and multimodal production
provide opportunities for new kinds of social encounters, new kinds of communities, and new
kinds of learning environments. There are a number of non-digital as well as digital tools and
technologies already existing to provide support to the learners.
6.3 Learning Strategies
The designing of curriculum for the learning strategies should take into the theoretical
rationales of learner autonomy linked with instructional technology. As discussed by
Thanasoulas (2000) [citing Cook 1993:114-115], it is observed that the learning strategies are
the special thoughts or behaviors that individuals use to help them comprehend, learn, or
retain new information. Learning strategies are mental steps or operations that learners use to
learn a new language and to regulate their efforts to do so. To a marginal extent, the strategies
and learning styles that someone adopts may partly reflect personal preference rather than
innateness.
6.4 The Instructional Management (IM) System and Emphasis on Multiple Intelligences (MI)
While designing learner autonomy, as a part of Instructional Technology, both IM system and
MI should be taken into consideration because it has its basic element that learning materials
can be broken down to their simplest elements. For example, in IM, we can have thinking of
a learning object as a chunk of learning content. Learning objects can take the form of any
type of media that can be digitized and sent across the internet. This opens up a wide range of
materials to the instructional designer – video, print, textbooks, magazines, slides,
collaborative activities, e-mail, web pages, telephone, etc. Inculcating learner autonomy
through instructional technology is proportionately related to the improvement of MI among
the students. It supports Information Technology Skills; Information Literacy Skills;
Problem-Solving Skills; Collaboration Skills; Flexibility; and Creativity. The design must
fulfil the verbal, logical, visual, kinaesthetic, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, naturalist
and existential needs. It should also focus on the dimension of artificial intelligence which is
important in the context of ability to deal with machines carrying out functions that are
normally associated with human intelligence, such as reasoning, correcting, making self-
improvements and learning through experience.
7. Language Learning through Culture as a Process of Social Interaction
Lantolf (2000:79) quoting the Socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky, 1978) holds the view that
specifically human forms of mental activity arise in the interactions we enter into with other
members of our culture and with the specific experiences we have with the artefacts produced
by our ancestors and by our contemporaries. Rather than dichotomising the mental and the
social, the theory insists on a seamless and dialectic relationship between these two domains.
In other words, not only does our mental activity determine the nature of our social world, but
this world of human relationships and artefacts also determines to a large extent how we
regulate our mental processes.
Within socio-cultural theories, development occurs twice: firstly, in the process of social
interaction (that is, on an interpersonal plane) and then within the mind of the individual (that
is, on an intrapersonal plane). Language is integral to learning in that it is the major means by
which we make and share meanings with ourselves and with others, and by which we
negotiate social relationships and social values. It is language that makes it possible for
people to objectify and conceptualise themselves in the world – to give names to experiences,
and make sense of the environment, objects, experiences, events and interactions leading to
cognition and metacognition. In short, language is central to the process of conceiving
meaning, which is integral to learning. Focus on English language learning through local
cultural contexts is a very useful process.
8. Some other Remedial Measures
8.1 Defining Construct and the Role of Translation as a Tool of English Language Learning
Introducing a system of translation of prescribed vernacular literature texts and other subject
textbooks can help the learners learn well. It amounts to formation of constructs which
become useful conceptual tools that facilitates communication. Once defined, constructs
become objects of conceptual scrutiny in their own right leading to continuous linguistic
coding and decoding.
8.2 Introducing more of appropriate language activities
The teachers should design language activities and create awareness for formal and informal
style in English language. They are required to make the learners learn bias-free language.
8.3 Preparing Multi-lingual Linguistic Inventory including Dialects/Tribal Languages
In order to make English language teaching and learning system comprehensive and realistic,
it has to be a part of our Indian linguistic study as well as references. In other words, there
should be collective efforts to prepare linguistic inventories keeping Indian languages and
English for a greater benefit of academic, cultural and professional purposes. This attempt
will be useful for the tribal English language learners those who speak tribal languages.
9. Testing English Language Teachers’ All-round Knowledge
There should be a provision of test of the knowledge of the teacher regarding the cultures and
etiquettes across the world. In addition, the knowledge of Multiple Intelligences is necessary.
There should be assessment regarding the knowledge of dealing with software, tools and
gadgets meant for language teaching and learning. What’s more, there should be good
knowledge of the teachers regarding English language testing and evaluation, not alone
conducting formative and summative assessments.
10. Focus on Post-method Pedagogy
The post-method is fundamentally to restructure our view of language teaching and teacher
education. It urges us to review the character and content of classroom teaching in all its
pedagogical and ideological perspectives. It drives us to streamline teacher education by
refiguring the concrete relationship between theory and practice.
Post-method pedagogy as outlined by Kumaravadivelu (2008) can be visualized as a three-
dimensional system consisting of three pedagogic parameters: particularity, practicality, and
possibility. They interweave and interact with each other in a synergic relationship where the
whole is much more than the sum of its parts.
The parameter of particularity is any post-method pedagogy must be sensitive to a particular
group of teachers teaching a particular group of learners pursuing a particular set of goals
within a particular institutional context embedded in a particular socio-cultural milieu. It then
rejects the very idea that there can be one set of teaching aims and objectives realizable
through one set of teaching principles and procedures. At its core, the idea of pedagogic
particularity is consistent with the hermeneutic perspective of situational understanding,
which claims that a meaningful pedagogy cannot be constructed without a holistic
interpretation of particular situations, and that it cannot be improved without a general
improvement of those particular situations.
The parameter of practicality means that if context- sensitive pedagogic knowledge has to
emerge from teachers and their practice of everyday teaching, then they ought to be enabled
to theorize from their practice and practice what they theorize.
The parameter of possibility owes much of its origin to the educational philosophy of the
Brazilian intellectual, Paulo Frère. He stresses the importance of acknowledging and
highlighting students’ and teachers’ individual identity, and they encourage them to question
the status quo that keeps them subjugated. He also stresses on the need to develop theories,
forms of knowledge, and social practices that work with the experiences that people bring to
the pedagogical setting.
In sum, the three pedagogic parameters of particularity, practicality, and possibility constitute
the conceptual foundation for a better teaching-learning ambiance relating rural India.
10.1 The Post-method Teacher
The post-method teacher is considered to be an autonomous teacher. Teacher autonomy is so
central that it can be seen as defining the heart of post-method pedagogy. It recognizes the
teachers’ prior knowledge as well as their potential to know not only how to teach but also
know how to act autonomously within the academic and administrative constraints imposed
by institutions, curricula, and textbooks. It also promotes the ability of teachers to know how
to develop a reflective approach to their own teaching; how to analyze and evaluate their own
teaching acts; how to initiate change in their classroom; and how to monitor the effects of
such changes.
11. Conclusion
Emphasis has been always put on the teaching of English in India, but what is required is the
expertises in making the learners learn better. Worth saying that English language education
in India is very much identified with Second Language Acquisition (SLA). But, the fact is
that this language is very much associated with our livelihood, our future global position and
development of economy. What matters most is the development of positive and encouraging
attitude towards English language acquisition as well as fluency meant for all communication
purposes. To an appreciable extent, concerns such as multilingualism and validation of local
knowledge or choices need to be focused. Input-rich theoretical methodologies (such as the
whole language, the task-based, and the comprehensible input and balanced approaches) aim
at exposure to the language in meaning-focused situations so as to trigger the formation of a
language system by the mind. What’s more, we observe in the passing years that English
language has become an integral part of Indian lifeline. We cannot treat it any more as a
British industry. It is rather high time to assimilate the language with Indian culture and
language corpora in a more convenient, flexible, and accessible in a scientific manner so as to
use it in all relevant contexts and strengthen the formation of potential Indian English.
Instead of confining only to classroom teaching using textbook of English, the English
language teachers in rural India need to develop critical sensibility and commitment to foster
the renewed opportunities, involve in lots of practical activities, and apply all the
technological tools and techniques to help the learners avoid shyness, utilise their local socio-
cultural knowledge and translate their personal ideas and interests into English. The policy
makers have equal responsibilities in this regard too.
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