I have evolved a new method of teaching English to learners from non English speaking homes/countries after considerable research. I have not been able to have a serious dialogue with any of the current teachers of English because basically they seem opposed to any new method of teaching hence do not lend their ears to what I have to say. I sincerely hope that they see my blog on the BBC site, learn something new and get in touch with me to tell me that I am talking 'rot' or they want more information on the new method.

It must be clearly understood that we cannot teach English to our learners on the style  followed for British or American or Australian or Canadian children whose mother tongue happens to be English and therefore they would understand everything a teacher says.  Would it be the same with regard to Indian children?  If anything they would see stars. So, we need a new method for them.

I give here below in a brief form how we should go about teaching English at primary school level.

Right from LKG up to Standard III in the English medium Indian schools, they should be taught simple sentences (in all tenses preferably) whose meaning must be explained to them in their mother tongue. Let them learn these sentences by heart.  What the teacher should introduce at this level is "parts of speech"  and how to identify the part of speech of every word in the language and of course their spelling.  They should have built up a c vocabulary of say 500 basic words, all the parts of speech.  by the time they reach Std IV.  The only achievement at this point is, (a) they know the pronunciation of some 500 words, (b) their meaning and (c) their  identity (part of speech.)  Incidentally, shall we stop teaching that there are 8 parts of speech?  According to my research, there are 10.  I have added 'articles' and 'auxiliaries'.  Auxiliary is a vital word and there is no English sentence without an auxiliary.  Some teachers feel that  an auxiliary is part of a  verb.  Wrong.  Auxiliary is a helper and a meaningless word as well whereas a verb is a 'word of action' and fully meaningful.

Introduce GRAMMAR at Std IV. When you write out a sentence on the board, your children will know the meaning of every sentence and could  also give the identity of every word. Don't forget they would know more than 500  odd sentences by memory. But they would have no idea, how we constructed those sentences.  

I have a new approach to teaching English grammar.

Tell the students that every English sentence can be divided into two parts - Grammar part and Meaning part.  Here are the examples. 

       (a) John is eating /  ice cream now in his room. (b) Martha cannot converse /  in English

               S   A    V                Object/Complement           S        NegA     V              O/C   

             Grammar       /     Meaning part                           Grammar part          /   Meaning part         

While the grammar part would give some meaning it is the 'Meaning part' that would give the full meaning of the sentence.

Grammar part

The grammar part consists of three elements  = Subject + Auxiliary + Verb.

Every verb requires a helper called 'Auxiliary'. A verb is like a lame person who cannot walk without an aid.  We can never use a verb by itself in a sentence nor an auxiliary. They form a pair, an inseparable pair in any sentence

Meaning part

The meaning part will consist of 'object' and/ or 'Complement' in any combination.  Some sentences may have upto 4 objects and no complement or 2/3 complementnt and no object.

A sentence without O/C [in other words, one that contains only S+A+V] will sound like one with incomplete meaning.  Take the part, "He could be".  Are these 3 words meaningful.  If anything, they would seem

                                                        S   A    V

to create many doubts or imply  many possible meanings.

Sentence patterns.

An English sentence can be written in 7 categories.  5 in 'question form' and 2 in 'answer forms' as described below:

       General question [GQ] -  What are you doing  /  in the living room?

                                             Int    A    S     V              O/C

       Specific question [SQ] -   Are you watching /  TV at the moment?                         

                                             A     S       V                O/C                                        

       Negative question [NQ] - Isn't  your sister watching / TV along with you?

                                           NegA        S             V                   O/C

       Positive answer [a1]    -  I am watching / TV in the living room

                                           S  A      V                  O/C            

      Negative answer [a2]   -  I am not watching / TV all the time

                                           S  NegA     V               O/C

     Emphatic question[EQ1]-  You are watching TV at the moment,  aren't             you?

                                           [-----------        a1  ------------------], NegA   Pronoun of the subject.

                                                                                                  -------Question tag ------------ 

    Emphatic question [EQ2]- I am not watching TV all the time, am I?

                                          [--------------- a2 ----------------]  Q. tag

Thus, we can write any sentence in 7 categories. Given one, you can amplify it into the remaining 6 categories.

  Points on the sentence pattern

1.         A GQ will always start with an 'interrogative word'. There are only 9 interrogatives in the Englishlanguage which are, WHO,WHAT,WHICH,WHOSE, WHOM. HOW,WHEN,WHERE and WHY.

 2.        We can frame any question in 5 different ways/categories.

3.         An SQ will fetch only two types of answers - yes [a1] or no [a2].

4.        An NQ will also fetch only two types of answers.  But an NQ sounds more powerful than an SQ.

5.        The difference between a1 and a2 is, the auxiliary is negative in a2.

6.        EQ1 and EQ2 are more powerful than NQ.  We form EQs by making use of the two types of answers.  We

           can use EQ1 and EQ2 as powerful statements also.

7.        These 7 category formulae are universal and applies to any tense.  The learners must memorise these 7 category formulae.

Conclusion

This much is enough for the time being.  Shall add more only after hearing comments from readers.

Israel Jayakaran