Laugh and be Merry

Laugh and be Merry

Illiterates

Once, Albert Einstein was traveling on a train. At one station he got down to buy a newspaper. After buying the newspaper he realized that he had forgotten to put on his glasses. So he asked the shopkeeper to read the headlines to him. The shopkeeper replied, ‘I also like you. I am an illiterate and can’t read’.

Indians:

Once, an American, Japanese and an Indian were discussing the technological developments in their respective countries. The American said that his country was so advanced, showing a fine wire. The Japanese took it and demonstrated that his country could improve it and he drilled a hole through the wire. The Indian took the wire and the next day he brought it back and showed it to the other two. They could not make out anything. The Indian then handed them a microscope; they found the words ‘Made in India’ inscribed on the wire.

Interview

A: “For this job, we require someone who is responsible”

B: That would be me, Sir. At every place I worked, whenever something went wrong, they said I was responsible.

LEARNING OF ENGLISH- A GLOBAL PROBLEM

LEARNING OF ENGLISH- A GLOBAL PROBLEM

The English language has been growing rapidly and it has attained the stage of a trillion dollar status. It provides foreign job opportunities in India itself. Nevertheless its significance has not been understood by the Indian teachers and students. It is very poorly taught and learnt and tested by the authorities and this haphazard system of teaching and testing pulls down the quality of Indian education to its lowest level. It continues to be a global problem and all the developing countries are affected by the poor teaching and testing of it. Hence English language has become a killer –language and every year more than 2000 students attempt suicide as soon as the results are published.

“Cabbage in; cabbage out” is the modern saying about the computer. In the same way “Like the teacher, like the student” is true in teaching and testing of English in India. Testing the testers should be done by the educators to improve the overall improvement of the testing of English in India.

Kendriya Vidhyalaya and NavothayaVidhyalaya students do well in their competitive exams and even Matric and other English medium students could not compete with them. Why do the central school students thrive and other local first-generation students fail even in their English tests?

The rural learners of English fail miserably in their English and their lives become doomed forever. They develop a psychic fear towards the language and it dwells with them till they live. If this problem is not solved in the school itself our entire higher education system would be spoiled. There should be a change of mind among the English teachers and they should come forward to teach English with new zeal, new material, new methods and new testing system.

The English language is a survival skill and a practical life tool and it is not taught and tested like a skill but a knowledge subject. Here setting the question paper based on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives would not hold good. The English question paper should be set based on the four skills of the language, Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing (LSRW).

The English question paper at the school level at present contains the following items.

1. Short Answer questions

2. Objective type questions

3. Filling up the blanks and

4. Essay type questions

These questions need blind memory-based learning and are soon forgotten as soon as the exams are over. These questions are based on the skills of reading and writing. The basic skills of listening and speaking are completely ignored in the testing of English.

The fluency and proficiency of English of students are not tested and they have not got anything to test. When those students go to foreign countries especially English speaking countries, the universities expect the students to get a pass certificate in any one of the English as a foreign language testing system conducted by Cambridge University

E.g

International English Language Testing system (IELTS)

The Multi-National Companies (MNCS) test their candidates’ knowledge of English by personal interviews, debates, group discussion etc. Most of our students fail in these tests because of their lack of exposure to the skills of listening and speaking in their school and college lives

R.K. Bansal, the Father of Indian English pronunciation observes that

“We must try to improve our students’ proficiency in Spoken English by developing their skills in listening and speaking along with their knowledge of vocabulary, grammar and usage.”

The above statement is true and in all the International testing systems of English, the first test will be on the skill of listening and then follow the other skills like speaking, reading, and writing.

E.g. TOEFL (Testing of English as a foreign language)

The English Teachers in schools should come forward to enrich their English. Learning a language is a skill and a habit. The easiest way to learn English and teach it to their students is to listening to radio news and take motes repeatedly. Thus the teachers can self-test their own English

In the class rooms audio-visual instruments like radio, television and tech should be used to improve their skill of listening and speaking. These electronic gadgets are very useful to improve the students’ skill of listening and speaking. The testing and assessment of English should be continuous. Class tests, weekly tests, and term tests should be conducted without fail. This will help both the teachers and students to improve their English. The language skill should become a part of the students’ life. They should be encouraged and guided to listen to news readers’ English throughout their lives and test their English

WORD POWER

WORD POWER

Word Power empowers students and they should know the true value of improving their vocabulary. Students at the college level should have a minimum of ten thousand words for their active use. It is surprising to know that in speaking English, not more than a hundred words are used daily by any speaker in the world. In all the language activities like Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing (LSRW) not more than a thousand content words or meaningful words are used daily. All the other words are called passive words or words which are useful to understand messages and, these “Other words” are scarcely used words. Nevertheless they do the function of activating the cognitive abilities of students. Learn a few new words like the following and try to enrich yourselves.

Logistics – The careful organization of a complicated activity so that it happens in a successful and effective way – CALD

- The flow of goods, information, and other resources, including energy and people, between the point of origin and the point of consumption, is defined as logistics. -The New Indian Express.

Amalgamate - (V) Combine, merge, unite, join, fuse, blend, meld, mix, incorporate-

(opp) separate

Blueprint - (N) Plan, design, diagram, drawing, sketch, layout, model, template,

pattern, example, guide, prototype, pilot

Cache - (N) Hoard, store, stockpile, stock, supply, reserve, arsenal

Diagnose - (V) Identify, determine, distinguish, recognize, interpret, detect,

Pinpoint.

Excel - (V) Shine, be excellent, be outstanding, be skilful, be talented, stand

out, be second to none

The short cut to improve your word power is the judicious use of thesaurus i.e. Book of synonyms. Try to learn minimum a hundred words a day.

FAME IN NAME

FAME IN NAME

A Welsh girl called Gwyeth visited Japan recently. There, people had problems pronouncing her name. So she became “Gwyniss”.

Everywhere she went, she was greeted with tremendous respect. At a farewell reception her host said, we’ve been so excited to have a famous author in our midst.

“What am I supposed to have written?” She asked, baffled.

“Why – The Gwyniss Book of records”.

-Courtesy, Reader’s Digest

GRAPHOLOGY

GRAPHOLOGY

“Written words are the symbols of Spoken words.” – Aristotle

Today in many companies, the handwriting of employees is used as lie detectors and it is called polygraph. Calligraphy is the art of producing beautiful handwriting. “Graphology” is the study of handwriting and in particular in order to reveal character and personality traits. It was in 19^th Century a monk by name Michon collected and studied thousands of handwriting samples, eventually publishing an account of his system of analyses. It has become a part of Psychology courses. Psychologists use graphology and for studying human behavior.

Graphologists try to predict the character of an individual and say whether they are “aggressive, ambitious, artistic, cultured, dishonest, honest, imaginative, independent, loyal, quarrelsome, reserved talkative etc”

Mind -Hand-Coordination is an important trait to be followed by all students. While writing, they should face the paper and write. This will facilitate them to read and write. If they make it a habit, they can correct their own careless errors in their writing. By correcting their own errors in their test papers, they can expect five to ten marks extra in every test paper.

Hand Writing has been considered as a life time companion. It is a skill and a habit. It has great values for Indian students. There is a good relationship between their handwriting and scoring of marks. Good handwriting tempts the examiners and they become biased towards it and provide good marks. Further the student’s thinking is also depends a lot on their writing. The Students with poor Hand writing hesitate to read their own writing. They think that it is their fate and their writing habit cannot be changed.

Poor writing can be completely changed provided the writers think over it and ready to change it. They should not forget that good handwriting gives pleasure to the readers. On the contrary poor or bad handwriting invites the wrath of the examiners and it is a dishonour for them to go through it because they couldn’t make out anything from it.

Most of the students are unaware of the effects of their handwriting. Any student or adult can change or improve their writing within a day. The following ideas will help the students to improve their handwriting. The handwriting should be legible. Enough space between letters and words should be maintained throughout the writing. The correct shape of the letters should be in mind while writing them and also they should see that the letters are big enough to read without any constraint. The general rule in writing with space is that the students should not write not more than four to five words in a line and in a page they should not write more than twenty five lines

Learning English

Learning English

The difficulties of learning English are enormous and they can be overcome by continuous training and constant integrated study

The first difficulty for Indian learners is the mother tongue influence. The next obstacles arise due to wrong teaching methods and learning methods. The aspect of self-learning is totally absent among the learners. Further the learners don't know the future of the role of English in their lives. The most important thing is that they are poorly motivated.

Killer Language

English remains a killer language in India. For every year more than 2000 students attempt suicide as soon as the results are published. Moreover the poor learning and teaching of it causes tearful learning amog students.

Hence Engish Language causes the downfall of the quality of Indian Education.