English as Special Special Subject in the Study

Since the revision of the National Curriculum and the introduction of English Language as compulsory subject from Class One, there is more need of having better teachers of English. Specially Teachers who are better equipped with language skills and are also willing to impart those skills in the best possible wasy to their students. It is also felt that there is a dire need of learning the language skills before imparting them. This book aims at equipping the students with those skills and allowing them to build up strengthen where they lack or are weak. Since recent years it has been strongly felt that the weak and poor results of students in English language are quite a major reason of their unsuccessful attempts in choosing the appropriate career for themselves. The incompetence of the English language teacher is one major contributing factor to this undesirable situation. The units of this course have thus been devoted to teaching and improving the language skills of the teachers. The first unit is about the parts of speech, nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and also the composition of simple sentences. These are ample examples, exercises and also solutions to those exercises. The second unit is also about the parts of speech and covers articles, predicates, conjunctions, prepositions, compound and complex sentences. For revising the knowledge gained by units 1, exercises in this unit practice the use of nouns, verbs adjectives and adverbs, with a brief introduction of these concepts.

Then the next unit is on Tenses. Most of the students have problems in the use of thense in the second language. The unit briefly covers the past, present and future tenses. It also explains the use of modals, like can, may, could, would, might, should, must, ought to. The writer has briefly touched the imperative gerunds and infinitives at the end of this unit. The fourth unit presents different kinds of changes which usually occur in sentences. These include the change of sentences from the affirmative into negative and vice versa. There is also a detailed section on the change of interrogative, declarative sentence. In the next unit there is a description of the change of active into passive voice and vice versa. In the same unit change of narration has also been described. An attempt has been made to present the material in a systematic way so that students are able to pick the concepts easilly and adopt these concepts in their daily conversation. Unfortunately in the United States most of the people do not use English language in their daily life. One reason being the social environment, as it does not provide any opportunity for an active use of the language. The demands of the present world are, on the other hand, urgent. Therefore it becomes a greater responsibility of the English language teachers to have proficiency. One mean of overcoming this obstacle is to seek help through translation. The sixth unit is on translation the method, types and tools.

Direct Method of Teaching in Classroom, Techniques

The direct method of teaching in the classrooms is called the oral method or the natural method. It was developed as a kind of reaction to Grammar Translation Method. It was based on the observations of Childs language learning, hence naturalistic principles of language learning more like first language acquisition. You know in learning our mother language, we never study books of grammar, composition writing and translation. But we learn all the aspects of the language by being in direct contact with the natural environment where the language is spoken. We hear speaking our elders, peers, street fellows and we imitate them. We repeat the sounds again and again and in this way we attain the mastery of the language. The approach the “Direct Method” is similar to this approach. In direct method, the teacher creates an artificial atmosphere of English speaking community. He speaks English, the students imitate him. He asks questions in English and the student’s answer in the same way. In this way the whole activity goes on in the language, which is being learnt.

Since the direct method aims at speech and fluency, learners get a good start and may gain command over the target soon. It can be successful and popular, mostly in private language schools where students are highly motivated and mature speakers can be employed. In the public sector schools, this method cannot be implemented properly because of constraints of budgets, large classes, time and teacher’s background. It is dependent on the teacher’s skill and personality. All teachers cannot be proficient in a foreign or second language.

The principles of Direct Method include the Oral Teaching, Avoiding the use of mother language, Proceeding from the nouns of common use to simple sentences, Systematic approach and using inductive method for teaching grammar. The Oral Teaching, in the direct method as your know, the approach is direct. Therefore, to introduce the children with the nouns and structures of the new language, beginning is made with oral teaching. When the students have learnt a good number of nouns of daily use, the effort is made to use them I simple structures, by construct drill they are able to use the structure with other nouns. For example, they have learnt chair, table, man, woman, room, tree, girl, boy, book etc. When they have practiced the structure “This is a chair”, they will be able to complete other sentences by using the other nouns. The role of the teacher will be just to point towards some article as “Tablet” and “Book” and let a bright student complete the sentence first. He should encourage sufficient practice by repeating the sentence in a chorus. After developing sufficient vocabulary by oral practice, attention should be paid to written language.

Best Teaching Methods for Classroom Teachers

A teaching method is a planned approach for communicating knowledge of something. There are different teaching methods for teaching different subjects. The nature of the method changes with the nature of the message, which is to be conveyed. As the nature of concepts and messages of a language is different from, for example, those of physical sciences, therefore, different teaching methods will be used for teaching a language and teaching physical sciences. In a language stress is always on the parts of speech and the structure. The teacher starts from nouns of daily use in combination with very simple structures, but the approach is often different with different teachers. Some teachers like formalist approach while the other prefers activist ones.

Formalist Approach: In the formalist approach the emphasis is on forms. The teacher teaches the rules of the language and their applications in every detail, and expects that by studying the rules, the students will master the language. This approach relies on deductive form of teaching moving from the statements of the rules to their application in the examples.

Activist Approach: No doubt that many practicing teachers of the modern languages follow the formalist approach because it is easy to follow for the teacher, but there have always been protests in favour of some living methods appropriate for teaching a living language. The activist approach is a functional approach to the structure of the language. The student is first taught what is most useful and most applicable. The rare and exceptional things are left for later stages. It familiarizes the students first with forms of the language used for general communications in speech.

Appropriate Approach: The effectiveness of all teaching methods is relative to the situation in which they are being taught. Every method has its own objectives and a good teacher should first know the objectives of the method he wants to follow. He should further know whether the objectives of the method correspond to the objectives of his lesson. The teaching methodology you will come to know that every lesson has its own objectives and the teaching plan is developed in such a way that these objectives are fully achieved. The selection of teaching method too is based on these objectives. The techniques should be encouraging and interesting for students of all level-weak, mediocre and intelligent. They should also allow the teacher to carryout his full days teaching load by following these techniques.

What is Teaching, How to Successful Teaching?

What is teaching is a common question for learners and teachers, the imparting instructions or guiding the students in the classrooms is called “Teaching”. In wider perspective it implies the interaction between the teacher and the taught, preparation and planning of the lesson, collecting necessary “teaching aids” and also such activities as evaluation of the instructions and communication. Teaching is a very comprehensive term. It includes as mentioned above, most the activities taking place in the classroom and the school and many other activities, which are performed at home. We can say that duration of the teaching period, number of students, kinds of teaching activities and interaction between the teacher and the students are different aspects of teaching.
The successful teaching as per researchers on teaching show that a learning atmosphere, which follows teacher’s instruction is comparatively more successful and show better results. Here the students remain busy. The teacher selects learning activities. He explains the objectives of the lesson and discusses them with his students. He, to prepare the atmosphere along with the objectives, also presents a brief summary of the lesson. The following activities by the teacher are positively related to student’s achievements.

1. Informing about the important parts of the lesson.
2. Presenting summary of the different parts of the lesson.
3. Explaining the relationship of one part of the lesson with the other parts.
4. At the end giving the summary of the whole lesson.

Interaction between the teacher and the students in the form of asking questions and giving answers also positively affects the achievement level of the students. In the beginning of the learning process the teacher explains some concept or problem. He then asks questions and encourages the students for responding to his questions about that concept. The teachers should keep in mind during the teaching that they know and understand the objectives of the lesson and they know the nutshell of the lesson. That there is positive interaction between the teacher and the students in the form of questions from both sides. The students cooperate with each other in using resources and they are accountable for their work, Preparations have been made before hand. The new information has been related to the previous knowledge of the students. The students are busy in some kind of learning activity.