journal of english language teaching lxi/1, 2019...

Journal of English Language Teaching LXI/1, 2019 1

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Journal of English Language Teaching

Volume LXI Number 1 January–February, 2019

Padmasree S. NatarajanOur Founder Editor and Publisher

2 Dear Reader

3 Developing L2 Academic Writing: Going Beyond CLT R Rajeshwari

and TBLT

9 Direct Teaching of Vocabulary? Stephen Krashen

Beniko Mason

14 One-on-One: Interview with S. Mohanraj Albert P’Rayan

23 A Note on Comprehension Checking Stephen Krashen

Beniko Mason

25 Using Sports Vocabulary to Strengthen English Smitha Chandran

Language Skills of Engineering Students Seemita Mohanty

33 The Role Motivation and Exposure Play in the Robert Bellarmine

Learning of English: Interview with Shreesh Chaudhary

38 The Master Teacher Training National Workshop Revathi Viswanathan

48 Reading Activity K Elango

2 Journal of English Language Teaching LXI/1, 2019

Dear Reader

Good news! Soon we will have a dedicated website for the Journal of English LanguageTeaching (JELT). Steps are being taken to put JELT back on the list of UGC-approvedJournals. Our journal was earlier listed in the UGC approved journals. Unfortunately,some prestigious journals, including JELT, were removed from the list and the move drewa lot of flak from the academia. Now the UGC has decided to treat all peer-reviewedjournals at par with its own list of approved journals. This will help teachers earn pointsto enhance their research score.

The current issue of JELT carries a range of articles focusing on different aspects of languagelearning. It carries two interviews. The regular feature One-on-One by Albert P’Rayanfeatures an interview with S Mohanraj who served as Professor in the Centre for Trainingand Development and Dean, School of English Language Education, at the English andForeign Languages University (EFLU), Hyderabad. Mohanraj answers a wide range ofquestions and shares his experiences in his areas of specialization including TeacherDevelopment, Curriculum Design, Materials Production and Educational Technology. I amsure, novice as well as experienced teachers will find the interview interesting and useful.

In the second interview Shreesh Chaudhary, former professor in the Department ofHumanities and Social Sciences at IIT Madras, interacts with Robert Bellarmine who servedas British Council’s Manager of English Studies programmes & ODA/DFID projects andTeacher Educator at CIEFL (EFLU), Hyderabad. The interview is focused on the two mostimportant factors for second language learning: motivation and exposure. Chaudharyshares with Bellarmine the role motivation and exposure have played in his learning ofEnglish.

For the past three years, Stephen Krashen, well known for his theory of second languageacquisition, has been contributing regularly to our journal. In this issue we have twoarticles by Krashen and his co-author Beniko Mason. The article titled ‘Direct Teachingof Vocabulary?’ discusses direct teaching of vocabulary using a skill-building approachand aiming at rapid mastery. The second paper is ‘A Note on Comprehension Checking’which focuses on comprehension checking while the teacher is telling the class a story.

There are also two interesting research papers by two young scholars. In the article‘Developing L2 Academic Writing: Going Beyond CLT and TBLT’ Rajeshwari emphasizesthe importance of developing academic writing skills in students at the tertiary level throughemploying pedagogical instructions for the same in all areas: arts, humanities and sciences.Smitha Chandran, in her paper ‘Using Sports Vocabulary to Strengthen English LanguageSkills of Engineering Students’ reports on a small study she took up to examine whetherusing sports vocabulary in classroom assignments could influence and motivateundergraduate engineering students to take more interest in their English.

Hope you will find the articles interesting. Happy reading. Do write to the editor [email protected]

Dr Albert P’Rayan


Developing L2 Academic Writing: Going Beyond CLTand TBLTR RajeshwariResearch Scholar, English and Foreign Languages University, Lucknow

ABSTRACTThis paper aims at emphasising the importance of developing academic writing skillsin students at the tertiary level through employing pedagogical instructions for thesame in all areas: arts, humanities and sciences. The limitations in the existingpedagogy at the primary and secondary levels have been analysed so as to suggestnecessary pedagogical instructions at the tertiary level. Emphasis has been laid onthe establishment of writing centres in India, as Academic Writing finds little importancein college syllabi, except in some language courses. The analysis of primary andsecondary level language syllabi and teaching methodology has been done based onresearch done by means of tutoring school students up to XII standard (CBSE) inDelhi. Statistical analysis of IELTS score of 2017 has also been done so as to showthat writing skills require explicit instructions.

Keywords: ELT in India, developing academic writing, writing centres at tertiary level.

Introduction

The Institutionalisation of English Studiesin India, chiefly by Thomas Macaulay,Trevelyan and Raja Ram Mohan Roy, hastravelled far since the period of Imperialism;in the post-independence era through theRadhakrishnan Commission, the KothariCommission and the RamamurtiCommission to its present status as asecond language; from Raja Rao’s opinion,“it is to convey in a language that is notone’s own, the spirit that is one’s own”, to it(English) occupying one’s mind and heart.India is a country of the ‘outer circle’ whereinEnglish has attained the status of secondlanguage (Kachru, 1985).

After globalisation, English has made its wayas an important language not only inpedagogy, but it has also become acommunicative language in India. As it isrequired everywhere – schools, colleges, jobsetc., people have realised that for keepingthemselves well informed about theworldwide knowledge, they need to becomeproficient in the global language which isEnglish. Hence, English medium schoolsare the most opted for in India.

Prevailing Language Teaching Methods

It is important to understand the methodsfollowed till date for language teaching (L2).Various researches in language teaching in


the ‘inner circle’ countries have providedmany methods (for us). As is well known,Grammar Translation Method was followedearlier, wherein students were encouragedrote learning. As there was lot ofdissatisfaction in teaching the forms of thelanguage instead of the function,Communicative Language Teaching foundprecedence. It was based on Dell Hymes’theory of ‘Communicative Competence’(1966) which was propounded by him inresistance to Chomskian theory of Linguisticperformance and Competence (1965). CLTplays an important role in teaching languageas (according to Hymes) it is based on‘ethnography of Communication’, i.e. it issocially determined. In India, theimportance attached to ‘spoken English’ andthe mushrooms of institutes offering classesfor the same are evidences to show that itis more important to know the functionalaspect of the language than learn its forms.(Hymes).

Similarly, N.S.Prabhu’s Task BasedLanguage Teaching (1987) has gone a longway in teaching language as it is based ontasks which the learners are expected toperform following instructions providedtherein. His tripartite model of informationgap, reasoning gap and opinion gap wasinstrumental in changing pedagogicalinstructions at the school level in India.

TBLT has found a potential place inpedagogy. The CBSE position paper (2006)is a case in point, wherein the importanceof teaching English throughComprehensible Input has been given primeimportance. It also prescribes Teachers’

Proficiency (TP) and organising Teachers’Training programmes for this purpose. Italso emphasises the importance of TaskBased Language Teaching.

The increasing importance and role of digitaltechnology in language learning andteaching (CALL – Computer AssistedLanguage Learning) has seeped in India too.In school pedagogy it has taken the form ofEducomp and FlipLearn which are digitalapplications provided by schools to all thestudents. It is quite well known by suchstudents and parents that these portalsprovide pre written answers to questionsand exercises under the guise of providingthe students with Comprehensible Input.This is hampering and hindering the writingcreativity of the students to such an extentthat it has turned out to be a substitute tothe rote learning in the earlier GrammarTranslation Method; and we are regressinginstead of progressing. ComprehensibleInput (CI) (Stephen Krashen,1981) isfundamental in language learning; but therole of Comprehensible Output (CO) andFeedback (by the teachers) (Swain, 1985) isirrefutable. Hence, production of language,oral or written, is essential for developingthat aspect of language. It will be apt torefer to Nicky Hockley (2013) at thisjuncture. In his research he has studiedthe effect of Interactive White Boards in alanguage classroom. He has also calledupon earlier researches on the use oftechnology in a similar context. He surmisesthat the mere introduction of technology ina classroom does not guarantee anenhanced learning environment.


CLT and TBLT have played their part ininculcating ‘awareness and understanding’of the (second) language in India. It is timeto go further and realise the importance ofdeveloping the writing skills in English as aSecond Language.

Importance of Writing

Writing is an essential tool for themanifestation of thoughts which will prevailand not fly away as speech does. Therefore,writing finds an important place in the lifeof human beings, whether in curriculum orotherwise. Education, the ability to readand write, transforms lives and societies;being numerate and literate givesadvantages to human beings.

In education too, the measuring scale of anyexam, whether language or any other skill,is the writing ability of the student. If thestudent is unable to exhibit his or herknowledge through his/her writing, it doesnot find recognition. Hence the ability towrite is important for first language as wellas for second/foreign language learners.

Literature study

Second language writing attained theimportance and status for research sincethe 1950s and 60s with the aim ofdeveloping pedagogical instruments for theteaching and learning of second languagewriting for international students whostarted enrolling in vast numbers in Englishspeaking countries; but it derives fromstudies and research in L1 writing.

Since beginning, the main aim of a writing

task has been the product obtained thereof;but lately the focus has shifted to theprocess involved in writing. According toJeremy Harmer (2004), process involved ina writing task is more important than theproduct obtained. She observes that toencourage an L2 learner to write, theproduct should be considered only as animpetus to develop the process. There hasbeen a shift from grammar and spelling tocoherence, cohesion, sentence structuring,organization of ideas, etc. Researches inacademic writing have refuted the claim ofJeremy Harmer, as in the following study:

Figueroa et al(2018) , in their research onAcademic Language and AcademicVocabulary on Chilean VIII graders havequoted Graham and Sandmel that the latter,in their research, found the processapproach insufficient in developing writingquality. Hence Figueroa et al opine,“Therefore, the process approach appearsto be explicitly overlooking the contextualdimension of writing, both at the level ofwriter diversity—according to theirperformance—and of writing as a situatedpractice.” They also observe that writing,especially academic writing, requires highcognitive and linguistic efforts. Foranalysing the argumentative andexplanatory essays of the students, theyconsidered the following epistemic markersto be important: Syntactic structure,vocabulary, genre knowledge, ideadevelopment and discourse organisation

Halliday and Hasan’s taxonomy has beeninstrumental in analysing writing. In


‘Cohesion in English’ (1976), they haveestablished the important role played bycohesion in the ‘texture’ of the text. Theyhave used ‘texture’ synonymously withcoherence. Coherence and Cohesion studiesattained great importance in assessingwriting tasks. Carrell (1982) acknowledgesthe importance of cohesive devices andcoherence in a writing task; but she rejectsHalliday and Hasan’s claim and observesthat a text can be coherent even withoutemploying cohesive devices.

Ruegg and Sugiyama (2013) consider theimportance of organisation of ideas inestablishing the coherence of a writing task.Their research studies what raters aresensitive to while evaluating the writingtasks. They observe that organisation ofideas may be assessed at two levels- physicalaspects of organisation such asparagraphing and the existence oforganisation markers; and deeper textualaspects such as coherent flow of ideas. Theyhave surmised that both cohesion andcoherence are assessed while rating a text.

Hinkel (2013) has foregrounded theimportance of teaching Grammar to L2writers. According to him, L2 writers needto be taught such rules of Grammar whichare required in academic writing; and notthe entire range of grammatical rules whichseldom find a place in use. He has alsoprovided certain features which academicwriters should refrain from using, e.g.subjunctives or noun clauses as subjectsetc.

Hinkel has acknowledged the vital role

played by grammatical structures inacademic writing. “In recent years, in ESLpedagogy, the research on identifying simpleand complex grammatical structures andvocabulary has been motivated by the goalof helping learners to improve the qualityand sophistication of their second language(L2) production and writing.” Manyresearches have established thatgrammatical accuracy is an essentialcomponent of academic writing andspeaking (for L2 learners). It demands bothinstructions/teaching as well as intensivelearning. Hinkel is critical of themethodology adopted for enhancing thecommunicative competence of the L2learners as it focuses on personalexperiences which is more fun instead ofinculcating formal techniques of academicwriting. Students are exposed toconversational language so much that theyfail to differentiate between formal andinformal register. In this article, Hinkel hasgiven certain prescriptions for grammaticalaccuracy so as to improve L2 academicwriting.

Developing Instructional Design at theTertiary Level

The existing pedagogical pattern in schoolsimparts either a ‘copy-book-ideal’environment or an informal language, owingto CLT, to students; hence when studentsgo to colleges and universities they face therisk of plagiarism or the register in theirlexican is not complex and academic. Thereis a strong need of formation of ‘writingcentres’ in India. Other than a few languagecourses, colleges and universities seldom


offer a course in Academic Writing in India,be it arts or social sciences or life sciencesor technical sciences. To show thatdevelopment of writing skills requiresexclusive instruction at the tertiary level,statistics of IELTS band score of studentswho attempted the exams throughout theyear 2017 has been taken. (Retrieved fromhttps://www.ielts.org/teaching-and-research/test-taker-performance).

This score is of the students from all overthe world. IELTS is assessed on a 9-bandscale and reports scores both overall andby individual skill. Academic and generaltraining test takers (2017) split betweenthese two categories are as follows:

Academic – 78.10%

General Training – 21.9%

For this paper, the statistics in the categoryof Academic exam have been shown.

Table 1 shows Academic test takers’ meanperformance (overall and individually in allthe four skills) by gender. (See Appendix A)

This indicates that both in male and femalecategories, the band score of writing skill ismuch less than the other three skills.

Table 2 shows the mean of overall andindividual skill score of academic test takersfrom top 40 places of origin. (See AppendixB)

In this table, Indian students’ testperformance shows a lower score in writingas compared to the other skills. If we lookcarefully, this problem persists not only with

Indian students, but other than one or twoexceptions, this problem (of writing) persistswith students of all the countries (as givenin the table).

Table 3 shows the mean of overall andindividual skill scores of test takers basedon their first language. (See Appendix C).

Here, the writing performance of test takerswith one of the Indian languages as the firstlanguage, again shows lower values ascompared to the scores of other skills; otherthan the exception of Punjabi, wherein thereis not much difference in the score of writingand the scores of other skills; because intheir case, the score for Reading is lowerthan Writing. As for students with Marathias the first language, their score forListening has exceeded 7 band score, butthe score for writing is quite low.

In fact, the writing score of students withEnglish as the first language too shows aremarkable lower value as compared to thescores of their other skills because of whichtheir overall mean has come down below 7band score, in spite of the fact that theirscores for Listening and Speaking are abovethe 7 band score which is not very easy toprocure (as the statistics show).

It can be inferred that Genre basedinstructions can go a long way in developingthe writing skills of students at the undergraduate and masters level. This willenhance the overall development of all theelements of writing. Studying through thedifferent genres will provide the studentswith practical situations simultaneously


with improving their academic vocabularyand grammar. Thus it is essential todevelop both the macro and micro propertiesof the writing elements, namely:

Cohesion

Coherence (organisation of ideas)

Syntactic structures

Triad of CAF (complexity, accuracy, fluency)

Lexical density

Academic Language

Earlier researches in assessing academicwriting have considered all these propertiesfor evaluating the quality of academicwriting. Therefore, it is inferred that collegestudents in India need to be instructed forenhancing these elements in their writingtasks, so that the quality of theirassignments/journal articles/researchpapers improves.

References

Carrell, P. L. (1982). Cohesion is notcoherence. TESOL Quarterly, 16, 4, 479-488.

CBSE Position Paper by the Focus Group,March, 2006

Figueroa, J., Meneses, A., Chandia, E.(2018).Academic language and the qualityof written arguments and explanations ofChilean 8th graders. Reading and Writing:

An Interdisciplinary Journal, 31, 3, 703-723.

Harmer, J.(2004). How to Teach Writing.Harlow, UK: Person Education Limited.

Hinkel, E. (2013). Research Findings onTeaching Grammar for Academic Writing.English Teaching, 68, 4, 3-21.

Hockley, N. (2013). Interactive Whiteboards,IWBs in Mainstream Education. ELTJournal, 67,3

https://www.ielts.org/teaching-and-research/test-taker-performance

Hymes, D.H. (1972) On CommunicativeCompetence in: J.B. Pride and J. Holmes(Eds.). Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings.Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Kachru, B. (1985).Cited in (Eds) M.Charles,And D.Pekarari. (2016)English for AcademicPurposes. New York: Routledge.

Krashen, S.D. (1981). Second LanguageAcquisition and Second Language Learning.US:Pergamon Press Inc.

Ruegg, R., and Sugiyama, Y.(2013).Organization of ideas in writing: whatare raters sensitive to?.Language Testing inAsia, 3,8.

Swain, M., The Output Hypothesis: Theoryand Research, The Ontario Institute forStudies in Education, The University ofToronto


The goal of this paper is to discuss directteaching of vocabulary using a skill-buildingapproach and aiming at rapid mastery. Thisincludes pre-teaching vocabulary before astory or reading a text, interrupting thereading or listening with vocabulary lessons,and post-story vocabulary instruction.

Most skill-building vocabulary teachingmethodology begins with a list of words thatwill appear in the story or text, withtranslation into the first language, followedby vocabulary building activities that couldcome before, during or after the story. Hereare some examples.[Numbers 1,2 and 3 arefrom Mason and Krashen, 2004 and wereused in their study, described below),Numbers 4, 5 and 6 are activities includedin a Spanish text (Ray, Ray &Coxen, 2016.)]:

1. Comprehension questions (both yes/noand wh-questions) with target wordsused in questions and required inanswers.

2. The students read a written version ofthe story. They are then asked tounderline the words they want to learn

3. The students tell the story they just heardto another student, and are encouragedto use words from the list story.

4. Draw a line from the word to thedefinition.

5. Work a crossroad puzzle with target

Direct Teaching of Vocabulary?Stephen KrashenProfessor Emeritus, University of Southern California, USA

Beniko MasonFaculty member, Shitennoji University Junior College in Osaka, Japan

words.

6. Work a word search puzzle.

The use of these activities assumesthatvocabulary development from readingor hearing stories is either impossible orisinefficient.It is, however, both possible andefficient.

Vocabulary Development Without Skill-Building

Those with large vocabularies rarely reportdoing or having done vocabulary study.Smith and Supanich (1984) tested 456company presidents and reported that theyhad significantly larger vocabulary scoresthan a comparison group of adults did. Whenasked if they had attempted to increase theirvocabulary since leaving school, 54.5 percentof the presidents said they had. When askedwhat they did to increase their vocabulary,however, about half of the 54.5 percentmentioned reading. Only 14 percent of thosewho tried to increase their vocabulary (3percent of the total group) mentioned the useof vocabulary books.

Clearly, the value of commercial vocabularyprograms should be empirically tested. (foran interesting methodology, see McQuillan,in press).

Vocabulary Development is Gradual.We don’t acquire vocabulary all at once. We


build up the full meanings of wordsgradually. Nagy, Herman and Anderson(1985) concluded that each time readersencountered a new word in acomprehensible context they acquired aboutfive to ten percent of the meaning of theword. This may not seem like very much,but Nagy et. al. point out that with enoughcomprehensible input, this is more thanenough to account for what is known ofvocabulary development.

Ku and Anderson (2001) found very similarresults for 4th graders in Taiwan reading inMandarin, their first language. Each time theyencountered an unfamiliar character incontext, there was modest increase inrecognizing the character on a test, similar tothe increase found for reading unfamiliar wordsin English by native speakers of English.

Twadell (1973) anticipated the idea ofgradual acquisition of vocabulary, pointingout that “we may ‘know’ a very large numberof words with various degrees of vagueness.. in a twilight zone between the darknessof unfamiliarity and the brightness ofcomplete familiarity.”

The Relative Efficiency of Skill-buildingand Acquisition via ComprehensibleInput.The results of two studies of the impact ofStory Listening (Mason and Krashen, 2004;Mason, Vanata, Jander, Borsch andKrashen, 2009) on vocabulary developmentare highly relevant.

In Story Listening, the teacher assembles“prompters,’ prepared before telling thestory. The prompter is a list of words andphrases that appear in the story that theteacher needs to use to tell the story. Some

of the words are already known to thestudents and some are unknown. Whenthe teacher suspects that a word, phrase orstructure is unknown, the teacher tells thestory using already known language andinserts the unknow one while telling thestory, providing help in making the newitems clear by drawing when possible, andsometimes using the students’ firstlanguage. In this way, the story becomesmore comprehensible. The additionallanguage also serves to make the story moremeaningful, adding detail and depth.

At no time are students told that they areresponsible for remembering the words;rather, the goal is to understand and enjoythe story.

In other words, Story Listening usesComprehension-AidingSupplementation,designed to help comprehension and thuslanguage acquisition, as contrasted withForm-Focusing Supplementation, designedto help language learning (Krashen, Masonand Smith, in press).

In Mason and Krashen (2004). two groupsof first year EFL students in college in Japanheard a story in English. As describedabove,the teacher used prompters to makethe story more comprehensible as wellasmore meaningful.

A second group heard the same story butalso had supplementary vocabulary learningactivities, including comprehensionquestions, retelling the story, andunderliningthe vocabulary they wanted tolearn while reading the story. Table onepresents the results of a surprise vocabularytest given five weeks after the groups heardthe story.


Gain Time EfficiencyStory only 3.8 15" 0.25Story+study 11.4 70" 0.16

Table 1: Delayed test = five weeks later

At first glance, it seems that the extra studypaid off. The “story+study” group madelarger gains. But they also spent a greatdeal of extra time doing the exercises.Considering vocabulary gained per minuteof study, the story-only group did better.They were more efficient.

Mason, Vanata, Jander, Borsch, and

Krashen, (2009, study II) also informs usabout the lasting effect of study versusacquisition from context, a study ofJapanese students acquiring German as asecondforeign language.The students hadhad no exposure to German in theirsecondary schools, unlike their previousexperience with English.

post test delayed test Time Efficiency

story only 12.4 (36%) 4.5 (13.2%) 20" 0.23

list only 22 (65%) 4.6 (13.6%) 35" 0.13

Table 2: The long-term effect of skill-building

As in Mason and Krashen (2004), one groupheard a story told in Story Listening fashion.The story included 36 words considered tobe unknown to the students (this wasconfirmed on a pre-test: mean score = 1.9/36).

(Unlike more recent Story Listeningprocedures, described above, the wordswere written on the board, and studentswrote a summary in Japanese after hearingthe story while looking at the word list. )

In the “study” condition, subjects wereexposed to 36differentwords, also mostlyunfamiliar to them (mean score on pre-test= 2.4/36). They did not listen to a story butinsteadreceived explanations of each wordboth in English and Japanese (20 minutes)and were then told to memorize the words

“in any way they wanted to” (p. 5) for 15minutes.

On the post-test, the “list” group did better(table 2). But on a delayed test, after only atwo-week delay, gains were equivalent, andthe “list” group was less efficient. In otherwords, the comparison group showed moreforgetting after two weeks.

Taken together, these studies stronglysuggest that direct teaching of vocabularyis not as efficient as acquiring vocabularyvia listening to stories, and that the effectof direct instruction is more fragile: it fadesmore with time. The time dedicated to skill-building would have been better spentlistening to stories and reading, adecisionthat would probably have been greeted withpleasure by students. For other studies


reaching similar conclusions, seeMcQuillan, 2016, in press; Mason andKrashen, 2010).

The Case Against Context: Is Context“Misleading”?

Context, it has been argued, is unreliable:without a clear explanation or translationof new words, it is possible for acquirers toarrive at the wrong meaning. The classicexample is a language acquirer seeing apicture of a hand pointing, but doesn’t knowif the word describing the picture means“finger” or “pointing.”

More comprehensible input, however, ifthere is enough of it, will help the acquirercome to the right conclusion, or onereasonably close to it; information providedby additional input will narrow the meaningdown.

Most contexts are not “deceptive,”or“misleading”; they do not lead the acquiredin the wrong direction. Beck, McKeown andMcClaslin, (1983) examined contexts inbasal readings: 61% provided at least someclues to the meanings of unfamiliar words,31% were of no help, and only 8% were“misdirective.” Similarly, Perry (1993) askedan advanced acquirer in English as a foreignlanguage to list words she didn’t know whilereading an anthropology textbook and guesstheir meanings. She was able to guess 37%correctly, and was partly correct on another40%. She was completely wrong on only22% of her guesses.

Once again, we don’t expect full acquisitionof the meaning of a word from one exposure;

rather, meaning is built up gradually, a littleat a time, as we encounter the word againand again in comprehensible contexts.Acquiring vocabulary from context is theway we have acquired nearly all of thethousands of words we know in our L1 andL2(s), not direct instruction. Takingadvantage of context is not “cheating” but apart of how we understand input andacquire language.

Conclusion

The arguments presented here areconsistent with those presented byMcQuillan and Tse (1999). Seely and Ray(1999) claimed that “the pre-teaching ofvocabulary helps students comprehend andacquire language” (p. 5). They report thatin their experience “comprehension is farworse when vocabulary is not thoroughlytaught before a story is presented” (p. 5).

But McQuillan and Tse conclude that input“can be made comprehensible withoutisolated vocabulary teaching, throughtechniques such as visuals, gestures, andintonation. Moreover, studies indicate thatmost vocabulary acquisition is incidentaland incremental. Students pick up newwords while otherwise focusing on ameaningful activity, getting a bit more ofthe meaning each time they encounter theword in context … Explicitly teaching wordsthoroughly is not necessary and may evenbe undesirable” (p. 6).

References

Beck, I., McKeown, M. and McCaslin, E.(1983). Vocabulary development: Not all


contexts are created equal. ElementarySchool Journal 83: 177-181.

Ku. Y.M. and Anderson, R. (2001). “Chinesechildren’s incidental learning of wordmeanings.” Contemporary EducationalPsychology 26: 249–266.

Mason, B. and Krashen, S. (2004). Is form-focused vocabulary instruction worth-while?RELC Journal 35 (2): 179-185.

Mason, B., Vanata, M., Jander, K., Borsch,R., & Krashen, S. (2009). The effects andefficiency of hearing stories on vocabularyacquisition by students of German as asecond foreign language in Japan. TheIndonesian Journal of English LanguageTeaching, 5(1), 1-14. http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/articles/mason_et_al._2009.pdf,

Mason, B. and Krashen, S. 2010. Thereality, robustness, and possible superiorityof incidental vocabulary acquisition. TESOLQuarterly 44 (4): 790-792.

McQuillan, J. (2016). Time, texts, andteaching in vocabulary acquisition: Arebuttal to Cobb (2016). Reading in a ForeignLanguage, 28(2), 307-318.

McQuillan, J. We don’t need no stinkin’exercises: The impact of extendedinstruction and storybook reading onvocabulary acquisition. Language Learningand Teaching. In press.

McQuillan, J. And then there were none?Measuring the success of commercial

language courses. Language Learning andTeaching. In press.

McQuillan, J. and Tse, L. (1999).The authorsrespond. TESOL Journal 8(2): 6.

Nagy, W., Herman, P., & Anderson, R.(1985). Learning words from context.Reading Research Quarterly, 10(2), 233-253.

Perry, K. (1993). Too many words: Learningthe vocabulary of an academic subject. InT. Huckin, M. Haynes, and J.Coady (Eds.)Second Language Reading and VocabularyLearning. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Ray, B., Ray, V. and Coxon, M. (2016). Mini-stories for Look, I Can Talk. Eagle Mountain,Utah: TPRS Books.

Seely, C. and Ray, B. (1999). Comments onJeff McQuillan’s and Lucy Tse’s “What’s thestory? Using the narrative approach inbeginning language classrooms. TESOLJournal 8(2): 5.

Smith, R., and G. Supanich. (1984). Thevocabulary scores of company presidents.Chicago: Johnson O’Conner ResearchFoundation Technical Report 1984-1.

Twadell, F. (1973). Vocabulary expansion inthe TESOL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 7,61-78.

This paper was presented at the 2018/27thInternational Symposium on EnglishLanguage Teaching and Book Exhibit,Taipei, Taiwan, November 9, 2018.


Dr S Mohanraj served as Professor in theCentre for Training and Development andDean, School of English Language Education,at the English and Foreign LanguagesUniversity (EFLU), Hyderabad. His areasof specialization include TeacherDevelopment, Curriculum Design, MaterialsProduction and Educational Technology.

Professor Mohanraj, you have been ateacher, teacher educator, teacher trainerand materials writer for over fourdecades. What inspired you to become ateacher in general and English languageteacher in particular?

My ambition in life was to become a medicalpractitioner. After I graduated with a degreein science, my attempts to get into medicalschool were not successful. I got a seat inMA English on the strength of my marks inlanguage English paper and soon I paid myfees and joined the course. A month later Iwas offered a seat in MSc but I could not takeit for the fee once paid could not be refundedor appropriated. So having done my mastersdegree in English, I became a teacher ofEnglish, and I have no regrets since. A teacherwho taught us phonetics (Dr L Vishwanath)greatly impressed me and motivated me to goto CIEFL for further education, and thisshaped me as a teacher educator.

One-on-One: Interview with S. MohanrajAlbert P’RayanProfessor of English, KCG College of Technology, Chennai

Email: [email protected]

You have taught in different states inIndia and abroad. Can you share with thereaders your most rewarding teachingexperience?

After obtaining PGDTE and M Litt degreesfrom CIEFL, I got a job in an ELTI at VallabhVidyanagar. This helped me shape mycareer as a teacher educator. This Instituteused to offer training programmes both atthe pre-service and in-service level. In-service teacher training took me to differentcorners of the state and beyond. While here,I taught in the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan,Maharashtra and Goa. Teacher training isdifferent from teaching. It is morechallenging for the students are mature andscope for discussion is a greater possibility.I began to develop tasks for helping theparticipants on the programme grapple withconcepts in language teaching and materials


development. The experience across all thestates was more or less similar. In Goa, thestate decided to develop its own coursebooks for teaching English. I was a resourceperson to train a group of teachers todevelop the new books Gomantha Bharathi.This was a very enjoyable experience as theresults of training were seen in tangibleform. Subsequently, when I was chosen bythe UGC to work as a Resource Person on arefresher course meant exclusively for theMethod Masters of English from Colleges ofTeacher Education from across the country(at the Central Institute of Education, NewDelhi in October 1985) my outreach as ateacher educator expanded.

Having worked in Gujarat for over a decade,I moved to CIEFL in 1993 and this gave mean opportunity to visit different states of thecountry to train teachers as part of the ELTISupport Scheme as well as the DistrictTraining Scheme. This helped me gain afirst hand knowledge of the syllabuses usedin different states and the course books usedfor teaching English at different stages ofschool level.I consider this a valuablelearning experience.

In 1996, when I was your student atCIEFL you said that you love interactingwith school teachers and teaching schoolstudents. Do you still have the interests?

Yes. Being a teacher educator, I have alwaysfelt that it is essential to keep in touch withthe ground realities. Hence, I havemaintained a good rapport with schools, andwhenever I get an opportunity, I go to aschool and teach the children with some of

the new techniques that need to bedisseminated.

According to the Framework for 21st

Century Learning, the four mostimportant skills that one should possessare: 4Cs – Communication, Collaboration,Creativity and Critical Thinking. Doesit imply that English language teachers’role as mere teachers of English haschanged / has to change in the twenty-first century?

Teachers of English have been endowed withthe responsibilities of teaching 4Cs from along time. I remember this happened wayback in mid 80s. I was in Anand (Gujarat).National Dairy Development Board (NDDB)started a new department of HumanResource Development (HRD) and theconcept was still new. Some of the membersof the faculty in our Institute (H M PatelInstitute of English Training and Research)were drafted in to train the personnel. Wedesigned the course on communicationskills including interpersonal skills,presentation skills, and a bit of persuasionskills required by marketing personnel. Wewent to sources available and learnt theseskills ourselves using peer teaching as astrategy.

Today, in most of the Engineering collegesa special paper has been introduced in theVII semester of the course which has a focuson 4Cs including confidence buildingstrategies, facing interviews andparticipating in group discussions. Thiscourse is managed by the teachers in thedepartment of English. This suggests that


a change in role has already been in place,and it is right that we brace ourselves forthe same.

You spent over a quarter century as afaculty at CIEFL (EFLU). It is said thatthe premier institute of English languageeducation should have contributed muchmore to the development of ELT as aspecialized field than it has done. Yourcomment.

Sadly, what you have said is at least partlytrue and many of us should take theresponsibility for this. The Institute was setup with a specific mandate to train teachersto teach language English at all levels. Thiswas at a time (1958) when Indian ELT wasin its infancy. There were plenty ofopportunities to develop an Indian brand ofELT. But sadly that did not happen. I donot like to blame anyone for this. Perhaps,the teachers those days were trained inBritain and had lofty ideas which were notvery practical in the existing Indian context.Hence, no concrete contribution could bemade and sustained.

But this is not the whole truth. In terms ofmaterials development, CIEFL hascontributed substantially. Let’s LearnEnglish was a course book produced byCIEFL and published by NCERT for use inKendriya Vidyalayas and other CBSEschools. These were qualitatively differentfrom course books available around thesame time (mid 70s). The structure of thesecourse books gave rise to similar books byprivate publishers – Gul Mohar series beingone of them. This book is popular to this

day thirty years after it was published forthe first time.

One person who is a product of CIEFL andgave the world of materials an excellentcourse book was Prof Prabhu. Incollaboration with Prof W W S Bhaskar hedesigned English Through Reading. Often, Ihave said and with conviction, that I amyet to see a course book which is better thanthis.

Another contribution CIEFL has made to thepromotion of ELT in India is monitoring twomajor national projects – The ELTI SupportScheme and the District Centre Scheme.These schemes were funded by the CentralGovernment and have helped severalthousands of teachers across the countryto receive good training in teachingmethodology as well as materialsdevelopment. Some of the teachers trainedunder these schemes have attained seniorpositions both at the national andinternational levels.

Unfortunately, there are no recordsmaintained and continuity of work ismissing in the Institute. This gives animpression that the contribution of CIEFLhas been almost minimal. The statementis just partially true.

Almost a quarter century ago, youexperimented with educationaltechnology in ELT and introduced thecourse “Computer-Assisted EnglishLanguage Teaching” at the CIEFL. I wasfortunate enough to be one of yourstudents on the course. I must say that


you inspired me to get interested intechnology-integrated language teaching.Are you still interested in educationtechnology?

I had a basic training in using computersin 1985. The NCERT organised a mastertrainers programme in line with therecommendations of MHRD to introduceCLASS (Computer Literacy And SchoolStudies) programme. Those days we hadvery basic models of desktop computerswhich worked on DoS environment. Thesewere called AT and XT systems with verylow memory (compared to today’s systems).In those days, such memory (64 MB) wasthought to be elephantine. However, theCLASS programme was shelved due tocertain political reasons. It is notappropriate to discuss the details of it here.

When I joined CIEFL, I proposed a coursein CALL as an optional course in the secondsemester of PGDTE. The Academic Councilgracefully accepted the proposal and I washappy to offer the course with meagrefacilities. You are a witness to it. Luckilyfor me, we had Professor Keiser visiting usfrom Lucerne, Switzerland. He literally heldme by hand in offering the course. I amalways grateful to him. Today, the coursehas developed itself substantially, we areable to provide hands on experience to ourstudents and become fairly proficient inusing the available software for teachingEnglish. They also undertake projects inCALL which are classroom based. I amhappy that a course that began in a modestway has developed itself wonderfully well.

Some of my students who are now on thefaculty are handling this course.

My personal interest in educationaltechnology has not waned, but I am not ableto keep pace with the recent developments.I am happy using my PPTs, and Web2 Toolsto a certain degree when I am asked to teach.

Gary Motteram, in his book Innovationsin learning technologies for Englishlanguage teaching argues that “digitaltechnologies are ideally placed to helpteachers working with learners, andlearners working independently, to do thenecessary ‘languaging’ (M. Swain) thatmakes their language developmentpossible.” What is your take on it?

In response to this question I would like togo back a little in terms of time and look atthe original objectives of ET. ET had fourbasic objectives:

a. Promote self-learning as best as possible

b. Provide every learner with a teacher

c. Promote learning at one’s own pace.

d. Maximise learning by reducing wastagein teaching inputs.

Programmed learning was supposed toachieve all these objectives. Today, theseobjectives are seen as more pragmatic inrelation to ICT. I am reminded of what oneof my teachers (Prof Devidas, who was apioneer in using Radio for languageteaching) said, ‘with the use of media (readtechnology) a teacher can also learn withthe learner. Learning becomes


participatory’. There cannot be anythingmore true than this statement when we usetechnology to teach our learners.

Technology has made individualisedlearning a reality. To give a simpleexample, an exercise in print can be puton a system and the same exercise whenadministered on a system (in soft form)can be used by different learners indifferent formats. The exercises lendthemselves to better exploitation. Youwould remember some of the exercises likeLondon Adventure, Cloze, Text Salad etcwhich we used on the CALL course withtheir inbuilt feedback mechanismproviding an opportunity for constantimprovement. Prof. Keiser used to oftenemphasise on this aspect of computerbased exercises. With a lot ofadvancement in programming materials,we have today Web based exercises whichprovide for independent learning.

What is your response to the criticismthat in India not much has been done topromote the use of technology inlanguage teaching?

Unlike CLT, Technology has not spread verywidely in our education system. It is stillconfined to urban pockets and perhapsbetter used in schools of medicine,technology, management and to a certainextent in some institutes of teachereducation. Several international schoolsand rich private schools have harnessedtechnology but their number is far belowthe desired levels. Technology will reachacross the country if and only if this is

introduced in all government schools withproper training given to teachers. Thegovernment in many cases has provided thehardware, but the schools have little or noresources to cope with the maintenance andalso buy the required software andconsumables. This, I find as the majorreason for technology not picking up in theIndian education scene.

Some language researchers and ELTprofessionals say that methods are deadand we are in the post-method era.Kumaravadivelu (2006) talks aboutfacilitating “the growth and developmentofteachers’ own theory to practice” and“postmethod pedagogy”. What is yourview on methods?

I would prefer to take a slightly differentpath in responding to this question. Manyscholars have said ‘there is no best method’.Prof Prabhu’s definition of teaching is‘Teaching is hoping for the best.’ (This islargely because, we as teachers are blissfullyunaware of what is happening in thelearners’ brains.) When we look at thesestatements, we may need to change ourperspective on teaching. For long scholarshave advocated ‘eclectic approach’ as thebest approach. There are ever so manydefinitions of this term. One I like most is‘best method suitable for my learners at agiven point of time’. I like this because ofits flexibility and the autonomy it providesto the teacher.

A teacher knows his/her students and theirneeds best. Hence, a teacher should begiven the liberty to do what he/she thinks


is best. In fact, Kumaravadivelu doessuggest this in his book Beyond Methods:Macrostrategies for Language Teaching.

Your PhD research was on materials. Youhave written over a hundred course booksand you have been quite successful as amaterials writer. Stephen Krashen saysthat input must be not just interestingbut compelling and when it is compellingthe learner forgets that it is in anotherlanguage. According to him, “Compellinginput appears to eliminate the need formotivation, a conscious desire toimprove”. What is your response toKrashen’s Compelling Input Hypothesis?

The term ‘compelling input’ is not a new one.We have been talking of need basedmaterials. Let us look at it from a differentperspective. Littlewood held ‘Languagecannot be used without a purpose’ as thebasic tenet of language teaching. If we takethis seriously, we can accept Krashenwithout any argument. To relate this pointto materials, let us cite a few examples.Building exercises with sufficient amountof information gap, framing comprehensionquestions that are not factual butinferential, testing comprehension in avariety of ways such as information transferetc. which will help in creating a purposefor using language. Compelling input helpsus develop what I call ‘copy proof’ materials/exercises. A learner provides a responsebased more on his/her experience andunderstanding rather than copy a part ofthe text. Such materials are available todayin Indian course books both at school andcollege levels and are labelled HOTS –

exercises that promote Higher OrderThinking Skills.

Most English language teachers dependon the course books prepared by expertslike you and this over dependence killtheir creativity as teachers. Don’t youthink that English language teachersshould be trained to become materialswriters too?

I cannot agree more with you on this point.All teachers should be basically materialsproducers to some extent. Therefore in ourcourses on teacher education, we obviouslyprovide sufficient practice in analysingsyllabus and the course book. For this wemay use the framework provided byCunningsworth or we may develop our ownframework. A detailed analysis of either ofthese documents helps them understandtheir structure. With such understandingthey are able to appreciate the strengths andweaknesses in these and also find ways ofovercoming the weaknesses. This is what Icall basic introduction to materialsdevelopment. A teacher who can look at thetextbook prescribed, cull out the syllabusbased on the course book, understand theneeds of the learners and appropriatelysupplement the textbook is a materialsproducer in his own right.

You have been involved in Englishlanguage teacher education for manyyears. You taught at HM Patel Institutefor 13 years and at CIEFL for 25 years.Pre-service training is very important fornovice teachers. How effective are theBEd and MEd courses offered by different


education institutes for teachers ofEnglish?

Pre-service teacher training course [BEd,BEd (Elementary)] have undergone arevision as recently as 2016. Unfortunately,the changes have not happened the way theywere envisaged by the NCTE (NationalCouncil for Teacher Education). A draftcurriculum was framed in the year 2009called NCFTE (National CurriculumFramework for Teacher Education). A teamof very senior teacher educators (mostlyretired from NCERT) went round the wholecountry disseminating the broaderobjectives of the new teacher trainingcurriculum envisaged. A period of five yearswas given to prepare a good curriculum forthe two year programme which was to beintroduced in the year 2016. However, thenew syllabus was a recap of the old syllabusdivided into four parts to cover the foursemesters. A few additional value basedcourses were added and the duration forteaching practice was increased from 40days to 120 days. Many details that shouldhave been spelt out with these changes werenot properly spelt out and hence the B Edprogramme has remained what it was.

All teacher education programmes whetherthey are in-service or pre-service should aimat providing adequate content knowledge.The two year period was thought to providefor improving content proficiency. This hasnot happened. (The four-year integratedprogrammes offered by Regional Institutesof Education – NCERT have beensuccessfully doing this for over five decadesnow.) Another reform is likely to happen

soon. The nation is planning to come outwith new curriculum at the tertiary level‘Learning Outcome Based Curriculum’ withchoice based courses made available to thelearners. With this the structure of B Edprogrammes is also likely to change for thebetter.

M Ed is not a teacher training programmeas conceived by the NCTE. It is a trainertraining programme and the curriculumhere also needs to be revised in line withcontemporary societal needs.

Though the communicative languageteaching continues to be the dominantELT method in many countries whereESL/EFL is taught, most ESL teachers inIndia seem to be obsessed with traditionalmethods. As an ELT educator, how doyou see this issue of resistance to changeby teachers?

I am not sure if this is really true today.There are strong reasons to support what Isay. I consider the years 1990 – 1992 asvery significant in the history of ELT inIndia. Earlier to this, there had beenattempts in smaller pockets to introduceCLT but without much follow up. To cite afew examples, experiments conducted bySNDT experiment (1975), Loyola CollegeExperiment in Chennai (1975), West BengalSecondary Education Board experiment(1983), Bangalore Project (1979-81) etc. In1990, the CBSE took up a major project todevelop new type of materials, build newstrategies of teaching and evaluation. Thiswas a bottom up process in true sense ofthe term. 50 practising teachers from


different CBSE schools in the country wereselected to undergo a sustained trainingprogramme in Marjons College, Plymouth.They were trained to develop coursematerials, train teachers and also developquestion papers. The three teams workedin coordination and trained secondaryschool teachers across the country. Twonew course books called Interact in English Iand II were prescribed for use in classes IXand X respectively.

This caught the attention of teachereducators across the country. Severalteacher educators volunteered to becometrainers and trained teachers on 10-dayinset programmes before the course bookswere put to use. To help children cope withthe new materials, several schools took theinitiative to develop similar course booksand give the learners an early start. Thishas picked up in a big way with all the CBSEschools.

Looking at the success in such schools,several state board schools have alsodeveloped new materials, trained theirteachers and the CLT has come to beaccepted. There may be a few small pocketswhere traditional methods are still in use.But by and large, CLT is the in-thing today.Not only in schools but also at the tertiarylevel similar course books are produced andused. This is especially true of colleges ofEngineering and Management studies.

How important is professionaldevelopment for teachers of English?What should be the role of premierinstitutions like EFLU in contributing to

teachers’ professional development?

The concept of Professional Development(CPD) has picked up in the recent years inan obvious manner. This boils down toteaching ethics and its importance cannotbe ignored. We have had teachers ofexceptional quality in the past. Some oftheir working qualities have beensystematically abstracted and offered to theteachers in training as a course. This isreally necessary.

Professional development is an awarenessrising (conscientization) programme andshould be an essential component in teachereducation. Lack of professionalism can bedeterrent to one’s career and also to thegeneral goals of education at large.

You have been actively involved inteacher development activities sinceretirement. You have been playing a vitalrole in strengthening the EnglishLanguage Teachers’ Association of India(ELTAI). What should be the role of ELTAIin promoting English language teachers’professional development in the days tocome?

My involvement in teacher developmentprogrammes was for two reasons. It gaveme my bread and secondly, it became apassion with me. Perhaps there is yetanother reason, it helped me build a betterrapport with teachers who were closer tothe learners and thus they formed a bridgebetween me and learners in school. I couldaccess the school learners easily becauseof my involvement in teacher development


programmes. As time progressed, I had toretire, and with a long standing request fromDr. Elango, I accepted to offer my help.

ELT@I has been engaged in certain activitiesrelated to teacher development, conductingseminars for updating knowledge and alsopublishing a few journals both in printmedium and online.

This is good work in itself. But being apremier association and at that being a verylarge body of teachers, it has potential forlot more work. I for one feel, that ELT@Ican harness its strength in publishingquality books. There is a dearth of goodbooks in ELT with a focus on Indiansituation. ELT@I has adequate humanresource to deploy to produce quality books.

An index of all the articles published inthe Association journal (over 50 years and300 issues and nearly 3000 articles) canbe made available to the readers in softform. Some of the best articles can bepublished in the form of anthologies ofgood writings in ELT and this can be agood source of reference and also bring insome revenue for the Association. I hadbriefly mentioned this in the Conferenceat Cochin (2017) and this is reiterated byProf Robert Bellarmine.

The Association has now started

establishing chapters. The chapters can beprovided with some autonomy to designtheir own programmes and earn somerevenue to maintain themselves well. Therecan be a system established to bring aboutcollaboration among the chapters and theCentral body. This will help in providingnecessary motivation for some of thechapters which have not been active.

Name one ELT book that you found veryuseful. Would you recommend the bookto other teachers of English?

Ray Mackay’s book Basic Introduction toEnglish Language Teaching. This is a bookpublished based on Dr. Mackay’s experienceof working with teachers of English atdifferent levels in the state of West Bengal.Though the book provides examples fromBengal and teaching at the primary level,the book is relevant to all the teachers ofEnglish across India.

Thank you Professor Mohanraj for sharingyour experience and views on differentaspects of ELT with the readers of theJournal of English Language Teaching.I do appreciate your contributions to thegrowth of ELTAI .

Thank you, Albert for giving me thisopportunity to share my thoughts with allof you.


The focus in this note is on comprehensionchecking during aural/oral interaction, e.ginterrupting the telling of a story and askingstudents if they understood. There are twokinds of questions used for this kind ofcomprehension checking: Global, eg. “Didyou understand?” and Local, focused on aparticular item used in the story ordiscussion, e.g. What does “vicarious”mean? To simplify discussion, the focushere is on comprehension checking whilethe teacher is telling the class a story.

The goal of comprehension checking duringa story is to inform the teacher if input iscomprehensible. We must ask whethercomprehension checking is necessary.

Students generally (but not always, seebelow) know when they have not understooda message. If students feel that they havenot understood, they should be able tocommunicate this to the teacher. In otherwords, if students know when they haveunderstood, there is no need forcomprehension checking.

Certain conditions must be met for this tohappen: Most important, students must feelfree to interact with the teacher.

Teacher-imposed comprehension checking(e.g. “tell me what I just said”) is onlynecessary when students will not indicatelack of comprehension, that is, when theyfeel they have no control over the

situation.

When comprehension checking isInterpreted as a test

Whether comprehension checks are aimedat globalor local comprehension they canbe interpreted as a test, raise anxiety, andtake the focus away from understanding.Instead, the focus will be on preparing forthe comprehension question, which oftenmeans having a translation ready todemonstrate comprehension. Also, localcomprehension checking sends the messagethat students should fully understand everyword and understand each word wellenough to give an accurate translation,which is counter to what we know aboutvocabulary acquisition.

Reducing the need for comprehensionclarification requests

Students need to be informed that they donot have to understand every word: Evenoptimal input will contain a little “noise,” alittle incomprehensible input (unknownvocabulary, unacquired grammar). This isnormal and harmless if it does not seriouslyimpair comprehension.

When there are comprehension problems,in many cases, comprehension of the storywill improve with more input; even the verynext thing the teacher says may helplisteners understand the flow of the story

A Note on Comprehension CheckingStephen KrashenProfessor Emeritus, University of Southern California, USA

Beniko MasonFaculty member, Shitennoji University Junior College in Osaka, Japan


and lead to more language acquisition.Students need to know this. Similar adviceapplies to reading as all.

Arguments in favor of comprehension-checking.

There are two arguments used to supportteacher-initiated comprehension checks:

First, students sometimes think theyunderstand but they don’t. But errors incomprehension, as noted just above, often workthemselves out with more input. Of course,when input is impoverished, when it consistsof only a few sentences, one cannot be sure.But with longer, more natural input,wegenerally arrive at the correct interpretation.

A second justification for comprehensionchecks is that they force students to payattention to input they would normally not payattention to. Knowledge that a comprehensioncheck is coming acts as an incentive to attendto a text or presentation that is difficult orboring. Surely a better way is to provide moreinteresting and more comprehensible input.

Nearly all language acquisition proceeds quitewell without external comprehension checking.If we make sure input isinteresting andcomprehensible, are sensitive to students’indications of lack of comprehension, and makesure that students feel comfortable indicatinglack of comprehension, there will be no needfor a great deal of comprehension checking.Even shy students will not hesitate to ask forclarification when necessary; with trulycompelling stories, students will really wantto know what is taking place.

We have arrived at the same conclusionsMcQuillan and Tse (1999) did. Seely and Ray

(1999 argued that “it is impossible to knowwhether every student is … understandingunless further steps are taken.” Moreover, itmust take place “early in the process ofvocabulary acquisition…(and be) nearlyinstantaneous…” (p. 5).

But McQuillan and Tse point out that thereshould be “no expectation that students willunderstand every word of the story, nor [shouldthey be] held accountable for such a standard… Freed of this burden, students are muchmore likely to be engaged. As real listeners,students feel more comfortable askingquestions or indicating a breakdown incomprehension when they do not understand.If that atmosphere is absent, then the problemis with the teacher, not the students. Webelieve that putting students on the spot withconstant comprehension checking iscounterproductive because it may raise studentanxiety and certainly will break the flow of thestorytelling itself” (p. 6).

Works cited:

Krashen, S. and Mason, B. (2018). Directteaching of vocabulary? Submitted forpublication.

McQuillan, J. and Tse, L. (1999).The authorsrespond. TESOL Journal 8(2): 6.

Seely, C. and Ray, B. (1999). Comments onJeff McQuillan’s and Lucy Tse’s “What’s thestory? Using the narrative approach inbeginning language classrooms. TESOLJournal 8(2): 5.

This paper was presented at the 2018/27thInternational Symposium on EnglishLanguage Teaching and Book Exhibit, Taipei,Taiwan, November 9, 2018.


Using Sports Vocabulary to Strengthen EnglishLanguage Skills of Engineering StudentsSmitha ChandranPh.D. Scholar, NIT Rourkela, Rourkela, India

E-mail : [email protected]

Seemita MohantyProfessor, NIT Rourkela, Rourkela, Inia

E-mail : [email protected]

ABSTRACTThis paper reports on a small study that was taken up to examine whether usingsports vocabulary in classroom assignments could inf luence and motivateundergraduate engineering students to take more interest in their English learning.Culturally Indians are observed to be very sports loving. One hundred and twelve 2nd

year electrical engineering students were considered for the study and were dividedinto two groups, group 1 comprising the experimental group, and group 2 comprisingthe control group. Specific language tasks based on sports were given to theexperimental group to ascertain their level of interest. A pre and post-test method wasapplied, in addition to obtaining qualitative feedback from group 1 students. The resultsreveal that there was a marked improvement in the interest level and in the score levelof the students who were subjected to the intervention process.

Keywords: ESP, sports, sports vocabulary, classroom assignments, motivation

Introduction

A sport is not merely an institution withvarious sporting practices, coaches, players,spectators, sponsors, etc. Sport is also anactivity that ‘communicates a large varietyof ideas’ (Hill 2006, p.15). In today’s timessport is very informative and can evenfashion the ideological underpinnings of asociety. As once noted by an Americannovelist, Thomas Wolfe wrote to ArthurMann in February 1938:

“Is there anything that can evoke spring?

The first fine days of April? Better than thesound of the ball smacking into the pocketof the big mitt, the sound of the bat as ithits the horsehide…” (Wolfe, 1983)

Arguably, what else can be more motivatingthan sports? Let us give a thought to this,as to how many Indian teenagers were gluedto their televisions for the full schedule ofcricket world cup 2015? Probablynumerous! Youth is a time of burgeoningindependence and overflowing energy. Sosports are fun and perceived to developyoung people’s skills and talents to the


fullest. That is the one thing that they donot carry out to please their parents orsatisfy their school obligations. Sportssometimes become a vehicle to stimulateinterest in those students who areuninterested in academics (Gentile, L,1980). Culturally Indians are observed tobe sportive people. At National Institute ofTechnology (NIT), Rourkela, where the studyhas been conducted, the sporting environsare observed to be exceedingly dynamic withthe majority of the students indulging insports either as players or as spectators.Taking into account this high level ofinterest in games and sports among thestudents, it was decided to introduce tasksbased on sports to harness the amplelearning potential sports as a field had tooffer. This was validated once the task wasintroduced to the students in their Languagelab sessions. When the topic of thepresentations on sports was given to thestudents, it was observed that they showedgreat enthusiasm to work on the task andcomplete it successfully.

The rationale of the Study

Nowadays educational climate being diverse,language lab sessions play a significant rolein learning language skills in a happyatmosphere. In this experiment, it wasintended that students who were not thatconfident about their English skills, developan interest, and learn the language in arelatively relaxed atmosphere, while at thesame time students with better Englishskills feel motivated to work toward a higherlevel of proficiency. It was made explicit fromthe outset that the objective of the task was

to improve the students’ Englishcommunicative skills that included fluencyand confidence, and not grammaticalaccuracy per se.

The Present Study

At NIT Rourkela, the basic idea behind thelab course is to give the engineeringstudents practical, hands-on experience onEnglish language skills, at the end of whichthey would be able to give formalpresentations, face an audience, andgenerate enough confidence to face theplacement interviews. Thus, while designingeach task teachers have to be careful thatthey do not make the sessions boring forthe students or else it becomes difficult forthese students to concentrate continuouslyfor three hours on a subject that has noconnection to their area of study. The twosections experimented with consisted of 57and 55 2nd year electrical engineeringstudents respectively who had completedtheir school exposure to the language. Thestudents had all successfully cleared thestrict pan-India engineering entranceexamination, and were ranked more or lesssimilar in the test, as a result of which theywere able to get into the much sought afterthe electrical branch. The section with 57students was named as group 1, theexperimental group, and the section with55 students as group 2, the control group.These individuals use English essentially forwider communication alongside the nativelanguages they speak, so for them achievingnative-like competence is often notnecessary or desired (Lee Mckay, S, 2015).In such a background it becomes a massive


challenge to the teacher to designassignments that can challenge and at thesame time interest the students for threehours.

Procedure

Pre-test

The experiment consisted of a pre-test forboth the groups, intervention in the form ofvocabulary practice and PowerPointpresentation for group 1, and again a post-test for both groups. The pre-test comprisedof a list of hundred and ten terms relatingto eleven different sports, ten words for eachdifferent sport respectively. The words wereall carefully selected. Special care was takento see to it that each term in addition tobeing related to sports, was also a part ofeither our daily vocabulary or of officialcommunication. No prior information wasgiven to the students regarding the test. Thetest was conducted in order to understandthe students’ previous knowledge of sportsvocabulary. The second phase of thisexperiment was the classroom presentationfor group 1. Group 2 being the control groupwas not assigned with the task. Group 1students were divided into eleven groupseach representing a different sport. Thesame sports that were selected for the pre-test were chosen by the students for thepresentation.

Classroom Presentation by Group 1

Scaffolding was provided to the studentsthrough the following guidelines so thatslides preparations for their presentationsbecame easier.

l Prepare a short, exciting presentation.

l Start with an attractive introduction thatwill make your presentation stand outfrom the rest.

l Then give the necessary details of thesport. Speak about the equipment used,tools and techniques, rules andregulations of the sport, number ofcountries the sport is played in,worldwide popularity of the sport, basicrequirements for that particular sport,etc.

l Talk about life-changing events in thelife of its famous players. Motivate yourfriends with interesting short incidentsand narratives about those players.

l Along with your closing commentsencourage as well as motivate yourfriends into playing that sport.

One week was provided to the students toprepare their slides. The final presentationincluding all the eleven groups continuedfor four weeks. The students were given halfan hour to present, and another half hourwas consumed in the post-presentationdiscussions.


Table 1: Example of the sports vocabulary used by the students along with theirmeanings and daily usage

Table 1 shows a small glimpse of the actualwords used by the students. E.g. the groupthat represented swimming used the word‘dive right into’ in their presentation, whichmeans, start doing something immediatelywithout hesitation. They used it in a sentencewhile talking about Michael Phelps, thefamous American Olympics swimmingchampion. The sentence mentioned, ‘MichaelPhelps dives right into for practice as soonas his day starts.’ Here ‘dives right into’ is aphrase that can be used in our daily life. Sothe above table explains some of the wordsthat the students used in their presentations.

Post-test

same list of vocabularies given in pre-test was

provided to the students of group 1 as well asgroup 2, and the post-test was conducted.These were then evaluated, and the result isrepresented in the following graphs.

Figure 1 shows the marks obtained by eachstudent in group 1. A considerable level ofincrement can be seen in post-test whencompared to pre-test. Some students havea high percentage of increase, while othershave low. The low percentage of incrementis perceived to be for the students who wereobserved to be not much interested in thepresentations due to their lack of interestin sports. It can be seen that most of thestudents have shown an increment aboveaverage. This is because the majority of theclass showed interest in presenting their


topics for which they willingly spent timefor study and preparation. Moreover, thehigh increment is by the students who

showed interest as well as had a high levelof proficiency in English speaking andwriting skills.

Figure 1: Pre and post-test marks obtained by the students in group 1

Figure 2: Pre and post-test marks obtained by the students in group 2

Figure 2 shows the marks obtained by eachstudent in group 2. When compared togroup 1 results there is only a marginalincrement in the marks obtained in thepost-test when compared to the marksobtained in the pre-test. Without anyassignment practice being given to themas given to the group 1 students, no notableimprovement is noticed in their post-testresults.

ResultsStudent FeedbackTable 2: Feedback FormWrite (Yes/ No/ Not Sure) against eachquestion.1) Was the task interesting?2) Was the task interesting because thefocus was on ‘sports’?3 ) Has your in terest l evel in thelanguage lab sessions increased?4) Were you mot ivated towards


exploring more into the vocabulary ofEnglish?5) Has your confidence level improved inorder to face an audience?

6) Was the task useful?7) In what way hasthe task been useful to you and whatsuggestions would you like to give to improvethe course?

Figure 3: Graph showing the responses given by the students in the feedback formin percentage

Analysis of the Feedback

Figure 3 above represents the responsesgiven by the students in the feedback form.The response to the first question clearlyshows that quite a high percentage (62%) ofthe students found the task to beinteresting. The second and third questionforms the crux of this task justifies theargument put forward in this paper. (66%and 65%) Agreed with the fact that the taskwas interesting because the focus was on‘sports.’ The fourth and the fifth questionsshow that a good percentage of students(61% and 69%) had accepted that they weremotivated towards exploring more into thevocabulary of English and that theirconfidence level had increased when it cameto facing an audience. And the 59% positive

reply to the sixth question suggests that amajority of the class found the lesson to beuseful, yet at the same time we cannotignore the fact that almost one fourth of theclass, i.e., 23% of the class did not find thetask useful, while some others were unsureabout the usefulness of the task. Thus moreeffort is still required from the instructorsto address the concerns raised by thesegroups of students, and encourage themtowards taking more interest in classroomtasks and ultimately towards better Englishlearning.

The open-ended question in the feedbackform reveals the perceptions of the studentstowards the task that has helped us in betterunderstanding the attitude of studentstowards such classroom tasks. The following


statements are some of the actual responsesreceived from the respondents to theseventh question in the feedback form.

1. This task has improved my confidenceto face an audience.

2. Yes, it has increased our interest in thelanguage lab classes but if only we haveto talk about our favourite sport.

3. We came to know the nuances ofdifferent sports.

4. Since I have come to know some newwords, I use it while chatting withfriends.

5. I come from a regional medium schoolwhich made me struggle with Englishin the presentation and hence could notspeak all that I wanted in the limitedtime provided to me.

6. Some of the presentations were not veryinteresting.

7. Yes, I could improve my vocabulary, butthe task was too short to bring a crediblechange in vocabulary intake.

8. I was very inquisitive to research aboutthe sport and later present it before ourfriends which increased my self-confidence.

9. I have never been into sports, so it wasdifficult for me to get involved in thepresentations fully.

10.The presentations were very fast for me,so I could not grasp much vocabularyfrom the presentations.

11. I am afraid of speaking before anaudience but was able to present in abetter manner as I had researched aboutthe topic and was quite excited to conveyit to my friends.

Concluding Thoughts

Second language researchers continue todebate how acquisition and learning relateto each other and how both might functionin the language classrooms. Ellis (1997)specifies that SLA research findings may notprovide straightforward guidance for theteachers, but it offers a wide range ofconcepts that teachers can interpret andmake better sense of their own classroomexperiences. At the end of the courseanalysing we can say that the reasons forthe improvement of the vocabularies of thestudents are the presentations itself. Thusit can be concluded that young people findsuch tasks meaningful and motivating whenthe task involves an area that is a centre oftheir focus and forms a part of theirimmediate context like sports. The figuresdepicted above inform us that students haveadded some new vocabulary to theirdictionary, and this has aided towards anincrease in their confidence level while usingthe English language.

One notable drawback of this exercise is thatstudents who are not into sports do not findthe task stimulating and motivating enough.This category of students, even though aminority, is a part of the class and need tofeel included in classroom tasks. A differentproblem that was observed was that in somepresentations students became so much


engrossed in the sports stories that they gotdiverted from the real task of focusing onthe vocabulary aspect.

The conclusion is not only derived from theirtest results but also our observations andinteractions with the students. Studentsresponded assertively about the increase inconfidence level and vocabulary. However,they regretted that as the time provided forthe presentation was thirty minutes, i.e.,approximately six minutes to each studentin the group, many of them were not able toconvey all the information that they hadgathered regarding the particular sport.Although the time spent in these classes isnot enough for the students to become fluentin English, the results show that there werepositive gains for the students at the end ofthe course. We perceive that the studentsleft this language training lab with a newtechnique for learning and organisingvocabulary. This can subsequently helpthem in increasing their lexical repertoireeven outside the formal instructionalsetting. This was a small experimentconducted within a designated time-framewith a limited number of words at ourdisposal. Similar classroom tasks, takinginto account universal youth interest areaslike music, cinema, food, fashion, travel etc.

can be designed to address the needs of ESPstudents. More time can also be given tothe assigned tasks to generate better resultsamong the students. What is proposed inthis paper is just an idea and its applicationsuited to these engineering students, butthe idea can very well be customised andextended to a different set of students inany other context.

References

Ellis, R. (1997). SLA research and languageteaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gentile, L. (1980). Using Sports toStrengthen Content Area Reading Skills.Journal of Reading, 24(3), 245-248.

Hill, D. A. (2006). Multiple Intelligences andLanguage Learning: A Guidebook of Theory,Activities, Inventories, and ResourcesMultiple Intelligences in EFL: Exercises forSecondary and Adult Students.

Lee Mckay, S. (2015). English as anInternational Language. In Teaching Englishas an International Language (3rd ed., pp.1-135). New York: Oxford University Press.

Wolfe, T. (1983). My other loneliness: lettersof Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein. UNCPress Books.

For ELTAI updates and News from our Chapters

Read our Quarterly E-Newsletter

You may access it at our website www.eltai.in


Robert Bellarmine served as BritishCouncil’s Manager of English Studiesprogrammes & ODA/DFID projects andTeacher Educator at CIEFL (EFLU),Hyderabad and currently he is Consultant& Trainer, English LanguageCommunication and Success Skills.

Shreesh Chaudhary served as Professor inthe Department of Humanities and SocialSciences at IIT Madras and currently he isProfessor at GLA University, Mathura.

The main purpose of the interview is todiscover the role Motivation and/orExposure have played in the interviewee’slearning of English. What do the terms‘exposure’ and ‘learning’ mean? Influencedby Dr NS Prabhu, the interviewer uses theword ‘exposure’ in an inclusive sense. Itdenotes not only exposure to the targetlanguage data but also to the method usedto teach the language, that is, to bothmaterial and method. Unlike in Krashen’s,“learning” is not to be contrasted with“acquisition”.

Robert: All in all, what do you think has beenthe sole or most important factor in yourlearning of English: Motivation or Exposure?(You can choose both, if that’s closer toreality.)

Shreesh: Both, but motivation has been

more important. Students getting goodmarks in English were looked uponfavourably by all even at my village. ThoughI attended a Hindi medium school andcollege, there was a lot of English in theform of books and journals all over MYhome. My father, Govind Chowdhary(1909-2002), was a lawyer and avid reader of booksin Bengali, English, Hindi, Maithilli andSanskrit. Even before I realised what theymeant, I had titles of these books staringinto my face. But a still greater factor wasthe sense of prestige attached with English.Anyone, even with a modest proficiency inEnglish, had no difficulty finding a job. Likeothers, I also wanted one.

Robert: What was the earliest time whenyou became aware of this?

Shreesh: I entered high school at the age ofeleven and began learning English there. Isaw that those good at English, i.e. good atspelling and meaning of words, were looked

The Role Motivation and Exposure Play in the Learningof English

Interview with Shreesh Chaudhary

Robert BellarmineFormer English Studies Officer, British Council


upon favourably by all. It was a pastime withelders at my village, for those who knew anyEnglish to frequently embarrass youngstudents by asking them to spell a relativelydifficult word or to test their studentsknowledge of meaning of these words. Thosethat answered correctly rose in publicesteem.

Robert: Was the integrative aspect ofMotivation part of your Motivation? In whatways did it originate? How has it beenstrengthened or weakened?

Shreesh: Not quite. I did not want to belongto any group other than my own in thevillage. But within the village, and in thetown of Darbhanga nearby, there werepeople who used English comfortably. I didnot want to become exactly like them, someof them were seen as snobs, and a few ofthem affected a strange pronunciation; but,even if involuntarily, I wanted to speak likethem or even better than them.

Robert: “Machiavellian” motivation is theopposite of integrative motivation. Forexample, the Indian leaders of our strugglefor independence learnt English to fightagainst the English, to argue with them, andin various ways, use English in theirstruggle for freedom. In some ways, was thisone of the aspects of your Motivation? Canyou please explain and illustrate this?

Shreesh: No, I had no such designs. I didnot learn English to fight or oppose anyone.For that and for me, even Maithili wasenough. But English definitely opened moredoors, than any other language, even in that

small town. If I was late taking a relative fora hospital appointment, then, I found,speaking in English helped.

Robert: In your high school and collegedays, what ELT methods did your teachersuse? (Please note: Although the “Languagethrough Literature Method” has not beenas well known as the Grammar Translation,Structural, Direct, Communicative andCommunicational methods, it was certainlyrecognized as a method by CIEFL.)

Shreesh: My teachers used what generallyhas come to be called Grammar TranslationMethod (GTM). We were taught basicstructures of English along with frequentlyused words of this language within two yearsof starting. I started learning English, as Ihave already said, at the age of eleven.

Robert: Can you recall the teachers, bothin your school and college days, whocontributed to the increase and decrease ofyour Motivation? In what ways did theyincrease or decrease your motivation? Werethe materials and techniques and personalrapport some of the aspects of what affectedyour Motivation?

Shreesh: I remember a few teachers, bothat school and college, who were greatmotivators. They convinced me and myfriends that learning English was easy andenjoyable, that regular work gave power andprestige, and that we could approach themfor help and advice anytime we needed it.They sustained our motivation across ourschool and college careers. All of theseteachers were, perhaps, not equally great


scholars, but none was less loving than theothers.

Robert: Apart from the prescribed texts,what did you use as sources of yourExposure to written English?

Shreesh: As I said above, I found illustratedbooks and journals all around me, thoughin a limited quantity at my home in thevillage, and far too many more at my father’sresidence in the town nearby which I wasallowed to visit during school vacations. Bythe time I reached senior school class, I hadbegun reading stories and newspapers inEnglish on my own.

Robert: Apart from the prescribed texts,what did you use as sources of yourExposure to spoken English?

Shreesh: I had little exposure to spokenEnglish. Hardly, anyone spoke in Englishat my village, where I stayed until I wassixteen. Even today that situation hasn’tchanged much. Those that speak in Englishto members of the family or community inthe village are seen as utter snobs. Even inthe town, where I studied for college, hardlyanyone spoke in English. Even Englishteachers, very often, used Hindi or Maithilieven in the class. But my father had a radioset at his home in the town, and he listenedto the English news on radio every morningand evening. That, I remember as my firstexposure to the spoken English. I stillremember the opening words of the newbroadcast every morning, “This is all Indiaradio giving you news read by LotikaRatnam.”

Robert: Approximately, from what age towhat age do you think you learnt English,irrespective of the levels of mastery?Are youstill learning it? During this period, haveMotivation and Exposure played the samerole with the same intensity and vivacity?Can you explain or illustrate it?

Shreesh: I began learning English alphabetwhen I was eleven, and have continuedlearning the language ever since. Of course,I am still learning it. I continue to be unsureof pronunciation, spelling and meaning ofmany words. Motivation and exposure haveplayed an important part in my career withEnglish. I still take a lot of time to write; Ihave to do several drafts even for an ordinarymail, and many more drafts for anythingmore formal. I still commit errors ofpronunciation, particularly of those words,that have clusters of consonants at thebeginning of the word, such as, split, school,strike, street, etc. Only recently, did I learnthe meaning of words like “sinecure”. Manytechnical terms form other fields, such asmedical and engineering, continue to tell mehow much more one dozen know yet.

Robert: Pit Corder said, “Given motivationand exposure, second language learning isautomatic”. But I believe that givenmotivation, exposure is automatic andtherefore second language learning. Incontrast, Dr N S Prabhu said in the eightiesthat the only thing we can be sure of insecond language learning is Exposure,Exposure in an extended sense to includemethods and materials. What do you think?

Shreesh: Both exposure and motivation are


important. I am motivated to learn Persian,but I cannot learn it because it is not easilyavailable to me. On the other hand, I wasin Andhra Pradesh, now Telangana, togetherfor over ten years, and in Tamil Nadu foralmost thirty years, yet, I could learn neitherTelugu not Tamil. To learn a language, inmy opinion, one needs both motivation andexposure; no matter how they are defined.Actually, one also needs a third thingwithout which neither of the above couldbe useful. One needs “aptitude” to learn alanguage. I know that current theories oflanguage learning do not recognize thisfactor, but there are a lot of overwhelmingdata such that the significance of this factorin language leaning cannot be denied.

One set of evidence to support this claimcomes from human biology. In no aspect ofcreation any two human beings are exactlyand totally alike. Even cattle and otheranimals are not totally alike. They differ inmany ways including in aptitude for things,just as they differ in height, weight, looksand other attributes. God, or Nature, has amass production factory where each pieceis customary.

There is yet another piece of evidence insupport of this claim that aptitude is asignificant factor in language learning. Thereare some celebrated examples. SrinivasaRamanujan was a genius at Mathematicsbut not in languages. On the other hand,Rabindranath Tagore was great atlanguages, including English, in spite ofbeing a school dropout, though he was nogreat guns at Mathematics. There are many

other examples. Even within the samefamily, and within same classroom, wherea number of factors are identical, childrendiffer in learning a variety of things in avariety of ways. Some write beautifulhandwriting but cannot spell entirelycorrectly, just as some spell quite correctlybut can hardly write legibly. There are peoplewho write well, like Gandhi ji, but cannotspeak; just as, there are those who canspeak well, like Kabirdas, but cannot write.Some are good at sports, but not inacademics – Sachin Tendulkar, M S Dhoni;some are good at acting, but not inacademics – Amitabh Bachchan, Rajni Kant;some are good in academics, but in nothingelse – a whole lot of academicians inuniversities and colleges. We have similarexamples from of sciences, business,politics, arts, crafts, music and sports.Similarly, some people are good at all ofthese things. I have had the good luck toknow some who are good at music, sports,literary arts, sciences and languages. Whocan deny the power of language of StephenHawking, whose book on astrophysics, ABrief History of Time, sold more copies thanany other published in English since theKing’s Bible. Hawking was otherwise barelyable to do anything with his body. Aptitudeis a huge factor, given this factor, all else,including motivation and exposure, can becreated; without this neither will help.

Robert: In the ELT contexts, do you thinkcreating, arousing and maintainingmotivation is partly the responsibility of theclassroom teacher(s)? What about syllabuswriters, textbook writers, and question-


paper-setters? Alternatively, is it solely theresponsibility of the learner and theirparents?

Shreesh: No. No learner is born motivated.Motivation to learn anything, other thananswering the biological necessities, suchas sleep, hunger, sex, fear, etc, is acultural influence. We learn not all, yetonly those skills or ways of life for whichwe have motivation. This applies as muchto children learning how to pick pockets,how to tell lies, as to how to learn Englishor Mathematics. Motivation is provided bythe community. It is, therefore, teacher’sjob to create and sustain motivation. Bythis same yardstick, it is also the job ofthe syllabus designer and materialsproducer to create methods and materialssuch that would interest and benefit thelearner. A lot of failures in learninglanguages, or Mathematics and Sciences,can be directly attributed to unimaginativemethods and boring materials and toinsensitive teachers. Families are as muchduty bound to create and sustainmotivation as schools and colleges are.Many grandparents and some parents, aswell have made history by helping theirwards learn beyond what was ordinarilypossible.

Robert: If Motivation is of paramountimportance, why have the editors ofprofessional journals not included apermanent section on it? Will ELTAI’s JELT

one day do this?

Shreesh: There is no need of specialsect ion for essays and art icles onmotivation. Any success story in any fieldis a saga of motivation. I would muchrather have my children, my students andcolleagues read the biographies ofAbraham Lincoln, Akio Morita, DhirubhaiAmbani, Henry Ford, JRD Tata, MahatmaGandhi, Martin Luther King, NelsonMandela, etc. than read my article onmotivation in any journal. Our problem isthat we have lots of theories but limiteddata. I would much rather have ELTAIjournal to publish success stories, like itdid of Robert Bellarmine (ELTAI Journal,Vol… No… Pp…) himself, than have verygeneralized articles.

Robert: Can English or any L2 be learntwithout any motivation? Is such a situationimaginable or plausible?

Shreesh: Nothing can be learnt withoutmotivation.

Robert: On the theme of this interview,Motivation and Exposure, what are yourfinal comments?

Shreesh: I seriously believe thatmotivation and exposure both are equallyimportant. Neither would help without theother, but both of these would producefabulous results when combined withaptitude.


Project Head: Dr. S. Rajagopalan

Resource Persons:

1. Dr. P.N.Ramani

2. Dr. Revathi Viswanathan

3. Dr. Pradeep Singh

4. Dr. Joycelin Shermila

The workshop, exclusively meant for ourChapter Heads or their nominees, wasattended by 17 of them. Dr.A.JoycilinShermila, Principal, Annammal College ofEducation for Women, Thoothukudiwelcomed the gathering and inauguratedthe workshop.

Day 1:

Session 1: The workshop began withsession - 1 by Dr. P. N. Ramani on LearnerAutonomy– What, Why and How. He dealtwith the concept of Learner Autonomy andthe need for making students autonomouslearners. He reiterated the importance ofencouraging students to take upresponsibility for their learning in order todevelop autonomy. He introduced a fewclassroom practices and highlighted thelearners’ and teachers’ role in introducingautonomy in institutions.

Session 2: In the next session on Listeningand Speaking Skills, Dr RevathiViswanathan introduced various strategiespresented by O’Malley and Chamot and

discussed the importance of trainingstudents in various strategies for developinglistening skills among students. In thissession, her focus was on designing self-instructional materials relating to speakingand listening skills. She insisted thatteachers need to prepare worksheetsthrough self-instructional modules in orderto encourage students to take upresponsibility for their learning. Dr.Revathielaborately discussed the variouscomponents of the self-instructional tasksand also provided a sample material for thebenefit of the participants. She alsointroduced the software, ‘Audacity’, whichcould be used for developing speaking skills.The speaker stressed the need for settingup a Self Access Centre in every institutionto help students learn and practice eachcommunication skills themselves.

Session 3: Dr Xavier Pradheep Singhhandled the use of digital tools fordeveloping Writing skills among students.He introduced tools used by NextGen ZLearners and provided hands on experienceto participants in using tools like Nearpod,Tricider, Padlet, Trello, Google Docs, andGrammarly. He reiterated that teachersneed to use various digital tools in order toencourage students to use the languageskills even beyond the language classroom.

Day 2:

Session 4: This session focused on

The Master Teacher Training National Workshopon The Use of Digital Tools for Learner Autonomy in Communication Skills

(A HornbyTrust (UK)-funded project)at The Annammal College of Education for Women, Thoothukudi, India

15 -16 February 2019A REPORT


‘Developing Autonomy in Reading Skills’ andwas handled by Dr P. N. Ramani andDr.Revathi Viswanathan. Dr.Ramani spokeon the basics of reading skill, therelationship between reading ability andlearner autonomy and its concepts. Aspectof reading and its process were introducedwith examples. A sample for measuring textdifficulty and level of readability throughLexile software was given. Dr. RevathiViswanathan encouraged the participantsto prepare a self-instructional module forreading. She divided the participants intogroups and provided a self-instructionalmaterial template for each group to preparea task assigned to it. In the end of thesession, the tasks were collated and madeinto a single file.

Session 5: Dr. Revathi Viswanathandiscussed the strategies for developinglifelong learning skills and listed a few theself-evaluation rubrics for students to usewhile self-directing their learning. Dr. M.SXavier Pradheep Singh introduced a fewlearning platforms for encouraging studentsto do online courses.

Session 6: Dr.M.S Xavier Pradheep Singhintroduced resourceful websites onvocabulary like visuwords, lexipedia,vocagrabber, lexical lab, your dictionary,lingro, word hippo, free collocation andvocabulary (as a tool) and demonstrated theway of using them in detail. Dr. Ramaniintroduced a few online resources ongrammar.

Dr.M.S Xavier Pradheep Singh introducedresourceful websites on vocabulary likevisuwords, lexipedia, vocagrabber, lexical

lab, your dictionary, lingro, word hippo, freecollocation and vocabulary (as a tool) anddemonstrated the way of using them indetail. Dr. Ramani introduced a few onlineresources on grammar.

During the feedback session, a fewparticipants shared their views about thesessions handled for two days. Then, withthe aim of disseminating the knowledgegained from the workshop, the participantswere instructed to conduct a similar type ofworkshop for teachers in their respectiveregions.

After the feedback session, Dr. S. ZahiraBanu, Assistant Professor of English, SriMeenakshi College, Madurai proposed voteof thanks.

During the feedback session, a fewparticipants shared their views about thesessions handled for two days. Then, withthe aim of disseminating the knowledgegained from the workshop, the participantswere instructed to conduct a similar type ofworkshop for teachers in their respectiveregions.

After the feedback session, Dr. S. ZahiraBanu, Assistant Professor of English, SriMeenakshi College, Madurai proposed voteof thanks.

In conclusion, it should be said that nowords are adequate for thanking Dr. A.Joycelin Shermila, Principal, AnnammalCollege of Education for Women,Thoothukudi for having made excellentarrangements for the conduct of theworkshop.

Revathi Viswanathan


The proposal of the Action Research Projecton Essay Writing submitted by Thoothukudichapter was approved and the project workstarted from September 2018. Twenty fourprospective teachers studying in I BEd atAnnammal College of Education for Women,Thoothukudi were chosen to get training inEssay Writing. Causes for the problems inessay writing are poor vocabulary, lack ofideas and lack of writing in logical sequence.The investigator believed if systematictraining is given the students’ essay writingskill can be improved.

A one-day workshop on essay writing wasarranged with a view of giving exposure toexpert training. On 14/09/2018 Dr.RevathiViswanathan, Professor & Head,Department of English, BSA Abdur RahmanCrescent Institute of Science andTechnology, Chennai served as a resourceperson and all the participants were orientedon the different kinds of essays and how towrite an essay in an inspiring way.Problems in essay writing were identified tobe due to poor vocabulary, lack of ideas andlack of writing in a logical sequence. Shegave models of best essays to theparticipants. In the workshop basicsentence structures and how to use keywords effectively in different essays weretaught.

Followed by the presentation Dr.A.JoycilinShermila, Convener of the ELTAIThoothukudi Chapter, conducted a brainstorming session on the topic ‘My Concept

of a Good Teacher’. Students were asked towrite an essay on ‘My Concept of a GoodTeacher’ and that was the first essay theywrote.

Eaach student was helped to create a blogand they uploaded their essays in theirblogs. It was planned to post an essay everymonth. Following are the essays studentshave posted in their individual blogs –

October - My Concept of a GoodTeacher

November - My Childhood Experiences

December - Significance of ICT inTeaching and Learning

January - Is Social NetworkingNecessary for Students?

February - Every person is anArchitect of his own Future(Essay writing competition)

Following are few sample URLs of the blogs –

1. priyadharshini1114.blogspot.com 2. Snega1997.blogspot.com3. Ayswarya97.blogspot.com4. 1avijit9.blogspot.com5. prafina21.blogspot.com

In February, a competition was conductedamong the participants and the topic “Everyperson is an architect of his own future”was given. Students were made to writethe essay in the class under the supervisionof a teacher. Duration for writing the essay

Report of the Action Research Project on Essay WritingJoyceline SharmilaConvenor, ELTAI Thoothukudi Chapter & Principal, Annamalai College of Education, Thoothukudi


was 40 minutes. Papers were collected andwere valued by the following two membersof ELTAI Thoothukudi chapter:Dr.V.Chanthiramathy, Associate Professor,PG & Research Department of English, VOCCollege, Thoothukudi, and Dr.S.RasulMohaideen, Assoicate Professor of English,VOC College of Education, Thoothukudi.

They valued all the 24 papers and finalizedthe winners of the essay competition.Following are the three students who won

prizes:

1. P.Thriveni (Books worth Rs.1500)

2. K. Sharone Snowfana (Books worthRs.1000)

3. S.Sweetlin Mercy (Books worth Rs.500)

As planned the first three participants willbe given prizes during the 57th College dayof Annammal College of Education which isplanned to be held on 16th March, 2019.

Journal of English Language Teaching (Survey)Dear readers

The 5Ws and the H will be handy to enhance the skill to question and arouse curiosity.The Journal of English Language Teaching, published by the English Language Teachers Associationof India, is the oldest ELT journal in India. Launched in 1965, the journal has been a platform forteachers of English and scholars to publish their research work. Of late, globally well-known ELTexperts and researchers including Stephen Krashen and Richard Smith contribute regularly to thejournal. We need to constantly improve the quality of the journal in order to serve the ELT communityin India better. We would like to get your feedback on the journal and your suggestions to make ita reputed journal. We do appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Please send your responsesto the Editor at [email protected]

1. Are you a member of the English Language Teachers’ Association of India (ELTAI)?i) Yes ii) No

2. Type of membershipi) 1 year ii) 3 years iii) 10 years

3. How long have been subscribing to the Journal of English Language Teaching?i) More than 10 years ii) 6-10 years iii) 1-5 years iv) Less than a year

4. Do you read ...?i) All the articlesii) Only the articles that you find interesting/relevant/usefuliii) Undecided

5. What type of articles do you find very useful?i) Research-based articles ii) Reports of action researchiii) Interviews with experts iv) Reading /Writing activitiesv) Book reviews iv) App reviewsvi) Any other

6. Have your articles been published in JELT?i) Yes ii) No

7. Are you interested in getting your articles published in JELT?i) If ‘yes’, why?ii) If ‘no’, why?

8. How would you rate the timeliness of the articles published in the journal?i) Excellent ii) Good iii) Fair iv) Poor v) Don’t know

9. How would you rate quality of the articles?i) Excellent ii) Good iii) Fair iv) Poor v) Don’t know

10. What are your suggestions for improving the quality of the journal?


Reading Club

A Reading Club was inaugurated for all thePG students of the college as an initiative ofthe ELTAI Action Research Project Scheme.All the students were enrolled as membersof the club that is functioning effectivelyeven after the project period. An hour a weekwas given exclusively to encourage andenhance the reading habit of the studentsthrough several reading activities. Aseparate rack in the department library ismaintained for reading club books.

Google forms and sheets were created forthe following entries: MembershipEnrolment and Issue of Reading Club books.

Report of Action Research Project on Library CenteredTeaching of EnglishB ZulaihaShakeelConvenor, ELTAI Ramanathapuram Chapter & Head, Department of English, TBAK College, Kilakarai,Ramanathapuram

Issue of reading club books and reviewsubmission were maintained. Students weretaught to make entries of their progressthemselves. This helped them to learn howto use Google sheets.

Details about the club

No. of students and classes involved: 25(2 Classes)

Duration of the Project: 8 Months (03.01.2018 - 01.09.2018)

No. of books purchased: 31

No. of books read on average by students:2 to 3

Action Plan - Reading Activity

l looking at main ideas versus details (10 minutes)l understanding what is implied versus stated

(10minutes)l making inferences (10 minutes)l looking at the order of information and how it effects

the message (5 minutes)l identifying words that connect one idea to another (10

minutes)l identifying words that indicate change from one section

to another (10minutes)l Review (5 minutes)

l Reading may be combined with a speaking and writingcomponent (10 minutes)

l Students may set their own goals for their next session(5 minutes)

Sl. No. Activity Type of Reading

1. Intensive reading(3 weeks)

2. Extensive reading(3 weeks)


l Students may progress from reading graded readingmaterial to authentic text. It should be expected thatstudents will “slow down” in their reading then, it itbecomes more challenging (15 minutes)

l Summarize the concepts (5 minutes)l Students assumes total responsibility for developing

reading ability (10 minutes)l Students reads without the use of a dictionary(5

minutes)l Students recollect all the materials (10 minutes)l Review (10 minutes)

l Skimming is used as part of the SQ3R method ofreading, often for speed reading (10 minutes)

l This method involves the studentin surveying, questioning, reading, reviewingand reciting (10 minutes)

l Students must locate facts that are expressed insentences, not single words.(15 minutes)

l Although speed is essential and the teacher often setsa time limit to the activity, skimming should not bedone competitively (10 minutes)

l Students should be encouraged individually to betterthemselves (5 minutes)

l Review (10 minutes)

l Read slowly and pause occasionally to think aloudabout a story (15 minutes)

l But keep the story flowing as smooth as possible (10minutes)

l Talking about stories they read, develop theirvocabularies, link stories to everyday life, and use whatthey know about the world to make sense out of stories(15 minutes)

l Share their experience (10 minutes)l Review and summarize the whole concept (10 minutes)

l Ask friends, neighbours, and teachers to share the titlesof their favourite books (15 minutes)

l Check the book review section of the newspapers andmagazines for the recommended new books(10minutes)

l Keep in mind that your reading level and listening levelare different (20 minutes)

l When you read easy books, beginning readers will soonbe reading (5 minutes)

l When you read more advanced books, you instill loveof stories, and you build the motivation that transformsinto lifelong readers(5 minutes)

l Through the story identity motivational speech(5minutes)

l Review (5 minutes)

Sl. No. Activity Type of Reading

3. Skimming(3 weeks)

4. Story talk(3 weeks)

5. Look for book(3 weeks)


Sl. No. Activity Type of Readingl Read the story and get an idea with clear (15 minutes)l Think individually about a topic or answer to a question;

and share ideas with classmates (10 minutes)l The teacher asks questions to elicit meaningful

responses from the students that would lead to optimumunderstanding of the poem, short story, fiction(25minutes)

l Review and summarize the whole concept (10 minutes)l How to evaluate what’s being said (10 minutes)l Give their feedback about the story (10 minutes)

l Work in pairs, the students read and analyze the givenparagraph (20 minutes)

l They write their interpretation on the sheets of paper(15minutes)

l Frame questions on their ownl Through that students write their own story in effective

way (20 minutes)·l Review (5 minutes)

l Enhance the pronunciation, stress, intonation ,speedand accuracy of your reading which are extremelyimportant (55 minutes )

l Teacher has to instruct the readers about the activityand the reading material (poem) (10 minutes)

l Readers have to create a mind map about the readmaterial(poem) (25 minutes)·

l Readers have to produce tune for the poem. (readerhave to sing the poem in their favourite tune) (25minutes)

l Try reading first with just a paragraph, then graduallyexpanding your selection to include more paragraphsor whole sections or sub-sections of text (20 minutes)

l Set realistic goals for the amount of time and numberof pages to be read (10 minutes)

l Think, interpret, and analyze the first time you read, toavoid unnecessary re-reading (10 minutes)

l Examine and re-examine the answers to yourquestions(20 minutes)

Review Seminar:

Reading Club seminar was held for the members on 01.09.2018 and prizes were given from thesanctioned amount of the action research project for the best presentation. All the members ofthe club were given bookmarks and pens as complement.

Winners of the Review Seminar

Ms NiloferNisha R (II MA English) - I Prize [Rs. 1000]

Ms Muneeswari K (II MA English) - II Prize [Rs. 500]

Ms Pargavi K (II MA English) - III Prize [Rs. 300]

6. Think-Pair-Share(TPS)

(3 weeks)

7. Thought-UnitParaphrasing

(3 weeks)

8. Loud reading(3 weeks)

9.

10.

Tuning afterreading

(3 weeks)

Practicing ActiveReading(3 weeks)


The Journal of English Language Teaching (JELT) – ISSN-0973-5208[A publication of the English Language Teachers’ Association of India (ELTAI)]

SubmissionsThe JELT is an international, peer-reviewed journal published by the English Language Teachers’Association of India based at Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, but with over 55 chapters in differentparts of India. Please see the front inner cover for details of the establishment and objectivesof the association.

The JELT is published six times a year – February, April, June, August, October and December.The overall aim of the journal is to promote the professional development of its readers, namelyEnglish teachers teaching at all levels, researchers and teacher trainers around the world. Thejournal, therefore, accepts submissions on all aspects and issues relating to the teaching and learningof English in ESL settings.

Criteria for Evaluating SubmissionsEach submission will be evaluated for its suitability for publication in terms of the following criteria.The article should:· Reflect current theories and practices in English language teaching.· Be relevant and appeal to the wide readership of the journal.· Be well written and organized, with sufficient explanation and examples to enable readers

to apply the ideas and insights in their own classes.· Discuss the topic in the context of other work related to the topic.· Be written in clear and concise language, making it easy to read.

Guidelines for SubmissionsEach issue of the journal addresses a specific theme. Authors should send submissions related tothe theme before the deadline indicated for the issue. See the ELTAI website and the journal for thethemes (if any) and deadlines for the subsequent issues.Authors should follow these guidelines while preparing their articles for submission:

1. The article should not have been published previously in any form (print or online).2. The maximum length of the article should be 2000 words (excluding an abstract in 150 words).3. All pages should be double-spaced with a clear margin of 1 inch on all sides.4. The title should be brief and focused, not broad or vague.5. The article should carry only the title, abstract and the main paper.6. The title, author(s)’ name(s) [the last name first], affiliation [i.e., the name of institution(s) the

author(s) belong(s) to; city, country] and email address should be provided on a separate coversheet for the article, along with author(s)’ photo(s) [.jpg].

7. Only sources cited in the article should be listed as references at the end of the article.8. The article should use the author-date format for citations and references (e.g., Anderson 1997;

Anderson 1997, p.17). See the Chicago Manual of Style (15th edn.) for more details and examples.9. A list of all the references cited in the text should be given at the end of the article.

In each reference, only the author’s last name and initials are to be provided.The year is placed after the author’s name.Only the first word of the title and the sub-title (after a colon) are capitalized along with propernouns.Titles of books and journals should be in italics.Quotation marks are not to be used in the title.For electronic sources such as websites, the date of accessing the source should be given inbrackets after the URL.

10. The filename of the article (in MS Word format) sent as an email attachment should contain keywords from the title and the (lead) author’s name.


Padmashri S.Natarajan(Dr. S.S. Rajagopalan, Educationalist, Chennai)

My father was a member of the South Indian Teachers’ Unionand even as a student, I used to accompany him to the AnnualConferences of the Union. I was fairly familiar with leadingpersonalities. At one gathering, Shri G.Krishnamurthi ofTrichirappalli made a fiery speech attacking the office-bearers onseveral counts. His oratory fascinated the entire gathering. ThenS.Natarajan, General Secretary rose to answer the accusations made.For an hour the members were spell-bound not only by hisarguments, but his diction and fluency of speech. No wonder Ibecame his instant disciple. I became a member of SITU the very

day I became a teacher.

S.Natarajan started his career as Science teacher in St Gabriel’s High School,Broadway, Chennai. As was the wont, he also took classes in English. He was a devotedteacher, much loved by his students, colleagues and the Headmasters. His involvementin Teachers’ Union in no way affected his school duties. In a rarest of rarehappenings, the catholic management made a non-catholic S.Natarajan Headmasterin the twilight of his career. It was a recognition and appreciation of the dedication ofNatarajan to the school.

Natarajan was synonymous with SITU. M.S.Sabesan of the Madras Christian College wasthe President when Natarajan was elected the Secretary. It was a wonderful team. TheSouth Indian Teacher, the official organ of the Union was edited by Natarajan for manyyears. It was published monthly without any break. In addition to Union affairs, it usedto contain matter to improve the professionalism of teachers. Natarajan firmly believedthat teaching should be as good a profession as medical. He developed close contactwith teachers’ unions in other countries. On exchange basis, he was getting the magazinespublished by the National Union of Teachers (NUT), UK, National Education Association(NEA),US and the American Union of Teachers (AUT). He was surprised to find that the Unionsthere went far to address to the other needs of teachers, in addition to their pay and rights.Though Madras Teachers’ Guild, the first Teachers’ Union in India started a Housingscheme exclusively for teachers called Teachers’ Colony, it was Natarajan to take it tohigher levels. The Union promoted a life insurance company in the name of SITUTeachers’ Protection Fund. When insurance was nationalized, SITU Protection Fundwas adjudged as the best managed insurance company and for every Rs 1000 insured, itwas converted into Rs 1600 of LIC. It was a bonanza for the teachers. A model schoolnamed after Sabesan was started to cater to children in the area.

He was basically an academician. He had close contact with the Education ministers,both at the State and Union levels. He was so much respected that in the erstwhileMadras Presidency, no important decision would be taken without involving him. He


had direct access to the first Education Minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, It wason Natarajan’s persuasion that the Directorate of Educational Projects(DEPSE) wasformed to encourage action research by teachers. SITU Council of EducationalResearch, founded as an adjunct to the Union made the fullest use of DEPSE.Natarajan served as Honorary Director of DEPSE. No wonder that DEPSE blossomed intoNCERT.He also founded SITU Publications as a public limited company to publish booksfor students for extra reading. Shares were taken mostly by teachers. Teachers wereencouraged to write books on themes not generally found in the traditional syllabuses. Itis sad that it was not continued after the demise of Natarajan who used to travel to all partsof Tamilnadu carrying the publications all alone.

Natarajan’s opinions were crucial to decision-making on issues. He tendered evidencebefore the Secondary Education Commission headed by Dr A.L.Mudaliar and the KothariCommission. Actually he was a member of several sub-committees formed by the KothariCommission. No wonder he was the convenor of the Sub-committee on teachers’ serviceconditions. He was an active member of the World Confederation of the organizations ofTeaching Profession. He rose to become its Vice-President. But for his demise, he wouldhave been the first and only Indian to be its President.

Natarajan was dismayed that most teachers stopped reading the day they completed theirteacher education course. Even schools did not subscribe to educational journals. A lookat the visitors to the school library showed that very few teachers used it. At the same timeduring his interaction with teachers he found every teacher faced some problem or other intheir professional life. His interaction with the National Union of Teachers, UK promptedhim to provide help to teachers in their classroom problems. He first founded the Societyfor promotion of Education. Under its auspices several subject teachers’ associations werestarted. Their main objective was to improve the classroom teaching. Of them, only two arealive. One is the Association for Mathematics Teachers of India and the other is the EnglishTeachers Association of India. Though primarily intended to cater to the needs of schoolteachers, over the years the associations have lost track of their objectives.

Natarajan was a fearless fighter for the rights of teachers but he was against any directaction. When the Association of non-gazetted officers of Madras Presidency went on astrike in 1947 to demand pay revision, many teachers wanted to join the strike. Natarajanvehemently opposed the strike move and he had his way to keep teachers away from it.

Natarajan was selected to the Madras Legislative Council representing the teachers’constituency. The membership gave him a status which he used to promote teachers causes.He was highly respected for his sedate comments. It was unfortunate he lost the reflection. After independence a large number of schools were opened in rural areas and a new crop ofyoung teachers who joined the profession had no acquaintance with the SITU. But Natarajancontinued to serve the teachers and their profession.

The crowning contribution in his illustrious professional career was his deep involvementin the drafting of the UNESCO document on the Rights, duties and responsibilities of theTeaching Profession. He represented WCOTP on the drafting committee.


READING ACTIVITY

Intertextual Reading (comparing & contrasting for ongoing discourse)

Dr. K. ElangoNational Secretary, ELTAI & (Formerly) Professor of English, Anna University. [email protected]

Objective : Facilitating readers to read a text in relation to other texts to form a web oftextual relations, a network of texts to become critical readers

Participation : IndividualMaterial : Any text. Example - Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Anita Nair’s Ladies CoupePreparation : While reading a text, constantly referring it to other texts of similar kind

or totally contradictory to identify their proximities and differences.Procedure :• Start with a writer of your choice and one of his/her works. For instance, Woolf’s novel, Mrs.

Dalloway, to be read after familiarizing oneself with her feminist leanings as reflected in heressay, A Room of One’s Own. One of the dominant themes in Mrs. Dalloway is the condition ofwomen in the patriarchal society.

• If one gets interested in the area of feminism and wishes to find out how this gets reflected in theIndian context, they could choose a writer such as Anita Nair and read some of her novels suchas, Ladies Coupe, to identify the similarities and dissimilarities between these two novelists.

• One could figure out some of the similarities between the protagonists of these two novels: Woolfpresents Clarissa Dalloway as the proverbial ‘Angel in the house’ playing the role of a perfecthostess in the party to be hosted in the evening. But the emphasis is on her private thoughts ofher existential crises – she rebels against the wifely duties and rejects the male-dominated sexualityimposed on her and so on. Likewise, Akhila in Ladies Coupe is portrayed as a perfect daughter,sister, aunt and provider but she attempts to break free of these responsibilities and buys a one-way ticket to Kanyakumari to start a new life. Both the stories happen in a space of one day inMrs. Dalloway and one night in Ladies Coupe and they follow the flashback technique.

• One should focus on dissimilarities as well, following the strategy of contrast. There are severaldifferences between these two novels – although they thematically resemble, the socio-culturalcontexts are quite variant. While Woolf situates the events and characters in the post-FirstWorld War England, Nair draws them from a conservative Brahmin family moored in totallyIndian ethos and so on.

• Reading these two novels as a network of texts throws up innumerable opportunities to compareand contrast them in terms of content, form and style which sharpens readers’ comprehensionand their critical acumen.

Learning outcomes:1) Learners recognize that the strategy of comparison and contrast is a significant means of acquiring

new insights.2) Learners realize that intertextuality promotes reading a text not as an independent entity but as

an ongoing discourse process.Further reading: Reading any text not in isolation but always in association with other texts whichcontain certain similarities and dissimilarities.____________________________

*Intertextual reading: This concept is used in the sense of bringing texts together of the samewriter or different writers who have similar concerns and styles. These texts are to be read inparallel, so as to identify the textual links and variations. This kind of reading strategy wouldincrease the critical sensibility of readers.Research in comparative literature often compares writers from different contexts belonging to differenttime period. For instance, several scholars have compared Shakespeare and Kamban/Ilango Adigal(two important Tamil writers or Margaret Atwood and Jane Austen and so on).

journal of english language teaching lxi/1, 2019...

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