Hello everybody, I am Harsh from India. And I have been invited to be the first guest teacher by the British Council. Obviously I am happy and excited to know this. Let me say a few words about my work in India. I have been teaching English for a long time now. But I have also been doing a lot many other things. I shall write only about my work for the State Board of Education for now. May be later, if you want I can tell you about my other ventures.
I come from Maharashtra, one of the largest states of India. We have around 1.5 million students who study English as a compulsory subject in class X, that is the school leaving exam. Thousands of teachers are involved in teaching English. Aren't the numbers alarming? I shall be happy to tell you all about this project. How we initiated the process of change and what we did for its effective implementation and many other issues I shall deal with for you all.
As I said I am excited to get this opportunity of starting a dialogue with teachers from all over the world. I shall be happy if you write to me about your work, about your experinces as teachers, about something that you would like to share with teachers form all over the world! May be you have found out some new technique, some new strategy, some new way of dealing with one or more aspects of teaching, wouldn't you like to share all that with teachers from different parts of the world?
I am calling it a dialogue. How can there be a dialogue if only one person ( that is me) keeps talking and talking. So go ahead and play your role.
Comments
Daisy
I come from Maharashtra, one of the largest states of India. We have around 1.5 million students who study English as a compulsory subject in class X, that is the school leaving exam. Thousands of teachers are involved in teaching English. Aren't the numbers alarming? I shall be happy to tell you all about this project. How we initiated the process of change and what we did for its effective implementation and many other issues I shall deal with for you all.
Hi Harsh
This sounds like a really big challenge to get 1.5 million students up to standard for the exam. What percentage of students pass the exam each year?
Would you say those that pass have a fairly good command of English? For example would they be able to have a conversation with a foreigner in English?
Daisy
Nik Peachey
Harsh Kadepurkar
Dear Daisy
Thank you for joining in this dialogue. My comments on your questions:
Yes, it's true we have a challenge of facing large numbers of students. The results at the Class X exam, that is the school leaving exam, are around 6o % every year. And the results at the Class XII exam are around 70 %. However, these results are not necessarily an indicator of their proficiency in English. The reasons are obvious. When you are dealing with such large numbers you have to make compromises. At one end we have students who can be compared with students from anywhere in the world, as they are really very good. They can really 'use' English in any context, and that is what we call our major objective of teaching English. At the other end we have students who do not 'get' anything from the whole effort, that is neither do they pass the exam nor do they get any proficiency in English. Between them we have large numbers of students, who manage to pass the exam, with a very low-level proficiency in English.
We keep on struggling to do something for all such students and also for their teachers.
Harsh
Harsh Kadepurkar
Dear Nik
Thank you for joining in this dialogue. My comments on your questions:
Yes, we have very interesting kind of problems in India, as for the place of English in our education and also it's place in the Indian context in general. We were under the British rule for more than 200 years. The Britishers left India in 1947, but left behind ENGLISH, or may be we decided to continue using it. The reasons were obvious. English was looked upon as a window to the world, as an important international language, and also as a source language or a library language. Later it was realised that it was necesary also for internal communication for keeping us united as a nation. You know we have hundreds of languages, though officailly only about 20 of them have been recognised. Much later, may with the pressures of Globalisation, it was realised that English is an important language of communication not only at the international level but also at the national level.
Now a word about the opposition to English! In the pre-indepedence era there were people who opposed to English, as it was looked upon as a language of the rulers. But it will be interesting to note that some of our own nationalist leaders who were fighting for independene, were in favour of English. These leaders should be given credit for opening schools for this. And you know these schools were called New English Schools.
Even today, there are people who oppose English, but that is for political reasons. They would publically condemn teaching and using English, but would send their children and grand children to English medium schools.
Harsh
evasimeon
I have been teaching English to Christian students who enter seminary after graduation.they are from different language groups and they are required to do their studies in in English which includes attending lectures presenting papers and thesis wrting
I am happy to be a part of this discussion to be in touch with english teachers to share ideas,etc