Handwriting, Reading, and Speaking Skills Development

Features of Handwriting Development

When a child first puts a pen or pencil on paper, she begins the journey with a highly conscious participation in the writing process. Slowly, with time and experience, the shaping of letters into words and sentences becomes automatic. Initially, children move through the space on paper, making letters one after the other. This motion is called praxis. Scientific studies have sought to describe the features of handwriting movement, rather than advocate one method over another. They have, however, thrown some light on the characteristics of efficient movement. Two features which come into play are: The amount of pressure exerted and The use of space.

A) The Amount of Pressure Exerted

When we write a letter or a word, the pressure of the fingers on the pencil is endlessly changing. The change in pressure corresponds very closely with the forms being produced. If the pressures are wrong in force or timing, the movement goes astray and the form is distorted. Writing pressure is controlled by shifting the pressure from larger muscles to the smaller muscles of the fingers. As the pressure shifts to the smaller muscles, the writing becomes more efficient. In the first stages of writing, there is great elbow movement along with movement of the whole body. Gradually, with more and more writing experience, there is reduction in the elbow movement, and an increased efficiency of the thumb and forefinger, and the speed and ease of the writing improves.

B) The Use of Space

New space, as in a blank piece of paper, places great demand on a young writer. Young writers must relate the space of their own bodies to the space on the paper. Young children gradually begin to understand the space (the paper) they are dealing with in relation to their own bodies. At first, children do not make any differentiation between drawing and writing. Later, writing begins to be represented by continuous scribbles across a page. In the beginning, underlined paper gives the children a surface free of restrictions when the attempts to write are unformed and immature. The larger the space, the easier it is for the child to explore it. In some places, broadly spaced lines are introduced to allow a child to control her muscles to explore a defined space. Initially, if a child is given a blank paper, she will make a chain of letters at almost any angle. The lack of ability to suppress large muscles and gain control over small muscles makes it difficult to use space with precision. As writing begins to convey meaning, words and sentence units lead to different kinds of spacing and use of space. At first, children run words and sentences together. As language develops and meaning increases, spaces begin to appear.

The Phonic Method in Teaching Reading

Visual Discrimination

The Phonic method focuses on the single letter value as the basic unit. The approach may be piecemeal, dealing with a single graphic unit in various positions, as for example the m in man, music, etc. This method relies on the visual discrimination possessed by the learner. The child should be able to distinguish one letter from another. When the letters are similar, differing only in the arrangement of strokes as in m or nm, w or v, it is difficult for the learners to distinguish them clearly. But to help them to become familiar with the distinguishing features of a letter, the children are presented with constantly changing letters in fixed frames: bat, cat, fat; can, fan, man; let, met, set. After this introduction to phoneme-grapheme (sound-letter) correspondence, the words are put together in sentences even though the resources for making sentences are rather meager at this stage. For example, combinations such as Dad can fan Pat – Can Pat fan Dad are realistic and children can easily understand them. But you may ask, “Won’t children in the kindergarten or the first standard be able to recognize the letters in isolation and to name them?” It is quite likely that they can do so. Still, it is better to systematically introduce the letters and help the students to name them correctly. This is just a necessary step and does not ensure success in reading words. What must be emphasized during this stage is the need to recognize unique features that separate one letter from another in order to be prepared to manage various instructional settings which deal with whole words and letter-sound correspondences.

In teaching the unique features of the letters, you can use the Natural Method and the Distinct Features Method. In the Natural Method, the child is allowed to scribble and copy letters and words which will lead to spontaneous and accurate production of many of the letters. This does not mean that all children will learn to produce all letters in the same way. In fact, there is considerable variation in the number of letters each child learns to produce because certain formations are very complicated for certain children. But when children are given ample opportunity to scribble and copy letters, they progress quite a lot in a year’s time. In this method, all the children will participate eagerly and will enjoy having a notebook to scribble and copy letters. Such a class is also easy to organize. Superficially, the lack of rigor in this procedure may give the impression that the child is only playing but actually, the child experiences an important correlation between symbol and sound during this process. In the Distinctive Feature Method, introduced in the primary stage of learning, letters are presented in pairs whose features are clearly distinct from one another. This enables the children to discriminate between the unique form of each letter of the alphabet. The significant features appear to be straight versus curved and open versus closed letters.

Straight uppercase letters:

A E F H I L T Z K M V W Y

Curved uppercase letters:

B D J 0 P R Q U

Open uppercase letters:

C H J U S

Closed uppercase letters:

B D 0 P R

The lowercase letters are grouped into ten sets to show those groups of letters that tend to be confused most often: set 1 bdpq set 2 huvn set 3 ceus set 4 yhkl set 5 mnwr set 6 xzvw set 7 flth set 8 aresijl set 9 qgyj set 10 nocu. These letter sets should be used in the distinctive feature method of teaching letter recognition and letter naming. When letters that have very similar features are taught in sets, children learn to attend to and generalize the distinctive features that separate one letter from another. Awareness of the distinctive features makes letter recognition and letter naming easier. For letters such as b, d, p, q which are easily confused, discriminating among their contrastive features helps learning. This is much better than providing color cues, because children will begin to rely on the color rather than on the contrastive features. This method teaches the child directly to get the knowledge necessary to match letters, to select one particular letter from a d m, to produce letters accurately and to associate correctly the name with each specific letter, whereas in the ‘Natural Method the child learns letter features and letter names through self’. One method could be used to supplement the other. Both the methods help children to become automatic and accurate in recognizing letters. In both the procedures, the children are actively involved in learning.

Assessing Speaking

Since speaking is a social skill, it is not so easy to evaluate it. It is important that any evaluation should occur in a natural situation, where there is a spontaneous flow of speech. Any evaluation in an artificial set up cannot provide a true picture of the child’s competencies in the spoken language. It can also be extremely threatening for a child and prove harmful for further speech development. It is therefore, essential that evaluation of spoken skills is done very carefully. Speaking is a skill which can be improved by practice and training. Given below are some indicators, which need to be looked at while helping a child to improve her spoken skills. It is suggested that these are used as informal indicators, which give a feed back to the teacher in an on going way, rather than as indicators to be assessed formally.

  1. Articulation: Articulate in Latin means “to join”. Sounds are the joints of words. Listen carefully to student’s speech. Show them how to properly use their lips, tongues, jaws, and nasal passages to improve this technique.
  2. Voice quality: The power of persuasion often depends on convincing voice quality. Teach and show students how to use the voice to show feeling and have maximum impact on the listeners.
  3. Posture: A straight well-postured body fosters attention on the part of the listener. Good poise gives the listener an air of importance. All 639 muscles of the human body become actively involved.
  4. Vocabulary: Talk to your students about “Word Power.” A strong, rich vocabulary makes the speaker more clear and persuasive. Use words which help to define and create clear picture in the mind of the listener. Children need to learn to use precise words.
  5. Body language: Show your students how hand gestures and facial expressions are important assets for effective speaking.
  6. Positive thinking: Stress the importance of a good self-image. Through praise and an abundance of listening, attempt to build confidence in each student. Make each one feel comfortable and relaxed. This has a direct impact on effective speaking.
  7. Appropriate voice volume: The children need to realize the importance of this. They need to know that everyone in the audience has the right to listen. Every speaker has the right to the heard. Physical distance from the speaker and auditory differences make this important. Children need to know how to change their volume appropriately.
  8. Concentration: Children need to know that clear thoughts in an organized manner keep the attention of the listener.
  9. Repetition: Repetitions need to be avoided as they confuse the listeners. They should only be used for emphasis.
  10. Pacing: Tell children to avoid long pauses. They need to make sure that they think first and then speak. Grouping for the proper word and creating stilted thought patterns can make the listener ill at ease. In the case of prepared speech there is no substitute for good preparation and rehearsal. Involving children in the process of evaluation is often very effective. Given below is a sample of a student’s self-inventory. It may be changed or modified according to the needs of a specific class.

Helping Children with Hearing and Speech Impairment

If you observe learning in children, you realize that listening plays a significant role in learning. The inability to hear interferes in the learning and performance of children. These children may also develop speech problems, and problems in their writing and spelling become more visible. Reading correctly also becomes difficult. It is therefore necessary to identify such children with not as visible an impairment as visual or orthopedic. How to Help: Seat the child in the front row. Work on improving his/her listening skills. Talk clearly, slowly and loudly enough for the child to understand. Face the child as much as possible while talking and teaching. Do not speak with your face towards the blackboard. When you talk to the child see that there is sufficient light on you. Make extensive use of teaching/learning aids such as charts, objects while teaching. Encourage peer teaching. Provide opportunities for drill and practice for teaching children with speech defects. Use action-oriented situations while teaching. Avoid moving in the class while speaking. Use of a lot of visuals individually or in groups, to supplement general teaching inputs.

Syntactic and Semantic Redundancy

Syntactic Information

Readers who use information such as sentence structure, word orders, function words and word endings as they read are making use of syntactic cues. Self-correction of miscues that don’t sound right provide evidence of the students’ appreciation for and use of syntactic cues. It should be recognized, however, is that ESL students will bring a different experience and understanding to the phrase “sounds right”. To build students’ knowledge of how language works, the teacher may read to students from a wide variety of literature, provide time and opportunity for students to read independently, provide literature with repeated syntactic and semantic patterns thus encouraging students to make predictions based on their knowledge of such patterns, provide opportunities for students to use language for different purposes to tell stories, to explain, to ask questions, to give directions, use oral and written cloze activities focusing on syntactic patterns to predict and confirm, demonstrate through oral reading on how to use syntactic cues to predict and recognize miscues, encourage students to use the read ahead strategy and explain that this often helps them to predict a difficult word based on the structure of the rest of the sentence.

Semantic Information

Semantic contexts consist of meaningful relations among words and ideas. Readers construct meaning when they relate information in the text to what they know. When they use their background knowledge, meaning contained in illustrations and meanings contained in the words and their relationships, they are making use of semantic cues. Self-correction when the text doesn’t make sense is the indication of the child’s level of appreciation for and effective use of meaning cues. Effective readers have extensive knowledge of a wide range of topics and related language. To build students’ experiential and language base and to encourage reading for meaning, the teacher may extend students’ background experiences and involve them in as many real life experiences as possible, discuss experiences to extend students’ understanding and related vocabulary, encourage extensive independent reading to help build students’ experiences with a range of topics, before reading have students recall and share what they know about the topic to build their knowledge of the concepts and knowledge in the text, encourage predictions before and during reading to encourage reading for meaning, explain to students why they are making predictions before they read and how to use this prior knowledge effectively as a reading strategy, help students clarify and extend understanding by having them respond to reading in a variety of ways such as through drama, writing, discussion and drawing, help students learn to use the semantic cueing system by teaching them to ask themselves as they read what would make sense here, did that make sense, use oral and written cloze activities focusing on meaning to predict and confirm.

Didactic vs. Discovery Methods

The didactic method of teaching is different from the discovery method, which is more useful.

Didactic Method for Teaching Consonants

Aim: To teach primary class children that p represents the phoneme /p/. Step 1: Take a word like pet, underline the letter p. Tell the students that p represents /p/ in all words. Say the word pet loudly. Ask students to say the word pet and feel how their mouth moves when they say the word pet. Step 2: Now say the words: pet, pot, pine, pen. Ask students to raise their hands for the words they hear that have the same sound as the beginning of pet but to put their hands down when they hear a sound different from the sound at the beginning of the word pet. Include wet, get, net in the original list. Step 3: Write 5 new words that begin with the letter p and ask the children to say how all the words are alike. Step 4: Now write 5 new words that end with the letter p and repeat the procedure. Step 5: Now give 6 words to each child. Four of them begin with p but 2 don’t. Ask the children to circle the words that have the same beginning letter. Step 6: When the students have already been introduced to other single consonants such as t g, this step can be used to review their knowledge of sound symbol correspondence. Children can be given cut-out letters for p t and g. Ask them to show the letter that begins or ends each word you say. In this method, the teacher first tells the children the grapheme phoneme correspondence followed by examples and reinforcement. Often this requires the teaching of phonic rules to help children remember grapheme phoneme correspondence. In step-1 the teacher tells the phoneme for the grapheme p in pet. Step 2, 3, 4 and 5 give auditory and visual examples to help children recognize and then discriminate it from other graphemes. Finally in Step-6 reinforcement is provided.

Discovery Method for Teaching Consonants

The Discovery Method differs from the Didactic method in that, instead of initially telling the children the sound symbol correspondence, the teacher makes them go through a series of steps to discover it for themselves. This method usually takes more teaching time. The teacher presents the students with carefully selected examples of words having a common phoneme or grapho phoneme pattern which controls the phoneme associated with a consonant or vowel grapheme. It is expected that children will discover the grapheme phoneme correspondence and they will remember and transfer it later. In teaching, the sound symbol correspondences of single consonants and consonant clusters, there are only minor differences between the didactic and discovery methods. Step 1: Write a familiar word such as bag. Underline the letter b and tell them that there are many words that begin or end with the letter. Step 2: Give a list of words bet, bat, ball. Ask them to listen to the list you are going to read and put up their hands for the words that make the same sound as the beginning of bag. But they should put their hands down for words that do not have the same beginning sound as bag. Include pet, wet, set in the original list. Step 3: Write 5 new words that begin with the letter b. Ask the students to tell how all the words are alike. Step 4: Repeat the procedure with 5 words ending in b. Step 5: Give a list of 6 words to each child. Four of the six words ‘begin with b but two don’t. Ask the children to circle the words that don’t have same beginning letter. Step 6: Make the students copy the word bag from the blackboard. Now read out a list of 6 words and ask them to write the number on their paper for each word you say. You should say: “Word No.1 – bit; word No.2 – back.” Step 7: Provide further practice by having children classify words that do and do not have the same beginning or ending sound as b. Provide a list pin, bat, ball, cab, grab, pat, cat.

Didactic Method for Teaching Vowels

(PHONEME/GRAPHEME CORRESPONDENCE) The aim of the lesson is to teach the phoneme correspondence for the grapheme a in words that have the CVC spelling pattern. In this pattern, the phoneme /a/ will have the same sound as in apple. The words hat can be used for this purpose are pan, man, rag, sack, fat. Step 1: Show the word pan written on a 8″ X 10″ card and tell the students that the word is pronounced /paen/ and the letter a has the sound /ad. Step 2: Show them the words sack, fat, rag, man but do not say them. Ask them which letter is the same in every word. Show them the card with pan on it and ask them if the letter in the middle of the four words is the same as that in pan. Step 3: Now say each word clearly and ask the students to repeat the words. Call on students to give other words with the /ae/ sound. Step 4: Now show them more words with the sound /ae/ in the middle – for example pat – ask the students to tell you how to say this word – (Nominate students, to ensure that everyone is involved). Ask the students to say the words as you hold up each card – nap, ran, gap, tack, rack, sat. Step 5: Give the students a little stack of cards with the words pack, rat, pan and tin. Ask them to show the card appropriate to the word you are going to say. Now call out the words; the word tin is never called. But if it is held up by a child several times, then you know that the child has not learned the /ae/ correspondence for the letter a in the CVC pattern. Step 6: Conclude the lesson by giving each child a sheet of paper with the word pat on the top, and below this word a list of 12 CVC words, seven of which include the vowel /ae/ but five have /e/ or /i/ or /o/. Tell the children to circle all the words that have the same sound as in the middle of the word pat.

Discovery Method for Teaching Vowels

The main idea in this method is to make children discover sound symbol correspondences by themselves. The spelling patterns used here refer to those words in the language whose vowel sounds are controlled by the consonants that surround them. For example, a, e, i, o, u when preceded and followed by consonants in almost all English words represent a short sound. For example, bad, men, fig, hop and put have a short vowel sound. The only exceptions are when r and -ll follow a vowel, as in far, fer, fir, for, fur and ball, bell, bill, boll, bull which show changes in the regular short sound for their respective vowels when followed by other consonants. These two exceptions should always be taught in separate lessons and these are relatively easy to learn if all vowels are taught within each ‘r’ and -ll’ pattern in one or two lessons. The most regular spelling patterns which control vowel sound symbol correspondence are CVC, CVC + e and CWC. The VC and CV spelling patterns depend heavily on their position in a word and within polysyllabic words, they function primarily independently from the three major patterns. In polysyllabic words the morphemic function of the VC and CV rather than their spelling pattern are significant. Since the VC and CV graphemic bases must be learned as individual units, they lack the generalizability which the CVC, CVC + e and CWC spelling patterns offer. Therefore, it is better to concentrate on the CVC, CVC + e and CWC patterns first. It is possible to generate over 600 monosyllabic words using these three patterns. In this method, which uses spelling patterns the objective is to discover those that control the phoneme associated with a single vowel or vowel cluster in specific patterns. In the CVC, CVC + e, CWC patterns the vowel is always in the middle position. When polysyllabic words have to be segmented it is helpful to use the knowledge of the spelling pattern surrounding a vowel. The discovery method is as follows: Step 1: Show the words sat, can, tap, flag, band and ask the students to indicate how these are alike. Select the words so that each has different initial and final consonants. Step 2: Say each word and ask students to say it to themselves. Step 3: Now ask all the students to say the words together and let them find out how the letter ‘a’ in each word sounds. Now do six pairs of words and ask students to put up their hands if the a in the two words sounds the same, and to put down their hands if the a in each pair sounds different. Step 4: Now ask students what sound do they hear for the letter a? Is it a or something else? Step 5: Ask students what sound is heard when there is one vowel in the middle of a short word that you move your mouth only once to say. (You will have already taught them the concept of one and two syllable words by showing that the number of times you move your mouth to say a word indicates the number of syllables it has. Step 6: Get students to give you other words that have only one syllable and have /ae/ for a? Step 7: Conclude the lesson by getting students to show a card for /ae/ and /i/ when you say a word including either sound. The same steps may be used to introduce a new vowel in any CVC, CVC + e or CWC patterns. For example: A CVC : fan, Pan, man fin fan fun ccvc than, that, span, spit, spar which, will, gist gilt B CVC + e : fine, mane, tone CCVC + e : gripe, whole, stale C CWC : moot, root, boot mootweed paid root, soon, tool plain, bleedspoon teeth, sound roost The CVC words are taught first, then CVC +e pattern and finally the CVVC pattern. Contrast lessons are used to discriminate a-i, i-o, a-v, i-v, o-u, a e, i e, o-e and u-e within CVC, CVC + e and CvvC patterns.

Different Types of Listening

On the basis of their function in a typical day, most of us spend a great deal of time listening – to environmental sounds like horns in traffic, to background sounds like music, to informational sounds like the radio and television broadcasts, and to conversational sounds with the people around us. We seem to be listening all the time. However, if we think of the ways we listen, we will realize that we do not actually listen for understanding most of our waking hours. Much of the time we are simply filtering out sounds to find out what is ‘worth attending to. There is also a variety of settings and types of sounds in everyday life. The settings might range from individual (for example listening to music or to the television), to interpersonal (for example, taking to someone on the telephone), to group-based (for example listening to an announcement at the school assembly or’ listening to the teachers’ instructions in class). Some types of listening are interactional i.e. involving a response to others and some types are non-interactional (not involving a response). Listening involves both social and cognitive processes i.e. our relationship with the outer word, both human and non-human, as well as our ability to receive sounds consciously and to be able to respond to these appropriately and meaningfully.

Types of Listening Based on its Function

a) Accurate, Purposeful ListeningAttentive listening is needed in situations in which accuracy of comprehension is involved, as in following directions, announcements, introductions, questions, etc. Accurate listening is necessary to follow the thread of the discussion, to be able to repeat exactly or to summarize what has been said.The good listener starts to listen from the first sentence since s/he knows that speakers often state their central idea in the first sentence or at best among the first few sentences. As s/he identifies the main ideas s h e listens to supporting statements in terms of whether they are illustrative, essential or irrelevant to the topic. Systematic training in carrying out directions, early in the school years, ensures accurate, purposeful listening b) courteous appreciative listening Good conversation and constructive discussion depend upon the individuals willingness to listen while others talk. Throughout the school day the need for courteous listening is evident in group planning and discussions, class conversations and other audience situations. The courteous listener is willing to hear but does not necessarily accept the ideas presented. Children need to learn that it is impolite to interrupt a speaker or fail to listen when someone is addressing them.From time to time, children need to listen to something purely for aesthetic appreciation, poetry read aloud has a stronger effect than when it is read silently. Through listening to poetry we can teach children to use their voices with melody, range and variety. Appreciation of poetry can be enhanced by listening to the variations in tempo in poetry. An identifiable rhyme schenle or a rhythm pcrttern in blank verse have a beat and tempo. Melody and movement can be used to describe the action in the poem. Listening to poetry helps children appreciate harmony, rhythm, and beauty in sound and language.c) Critical Listening
Critical listenings perhaps, the most challenging form of listening as the child is required to think as s/he listens. The critical listener tries to sort out the facts and opinions and then decidc what s/he may accept as true. Young children can learn to’ discriminate between facts and opinions. To become a critical and effective listener the child should try to identify one or illore of the following:1. What are the main points?
2. What lesser points are given under each main ideas3. Are the ideas explained and supported by facts?4. Where does the speaker say s h e obtained hisher ideas5. Does thc speaker follow a logical order?6. Does the spe’aker try to present different points of view?The critical listener thinks about what s/he hears. dhe asks questions and discusses his her view with others.a) Creative ListeningListening to create may be tlie highest form of listening. As the child is encouraged to gain sensory impressionsfrom what s/he he hears she is able to see pictures, smell scents, feel textures as s/he listens creatively. To help the child be a creative listener d he needs experience in creative activities, such as acting out stories, making up poems, etc. Listening creatively allows the child to reconstruct what dhe has heard either through drawing, body movement, action, songs, etc.

4) How can we make the current system of education useful for undepriviledged? state some problems of underpriviledged learners in learning english?  The current system of education can be adapted to the culture of the underprivileged learners provided positive changes are made in the following important areas of education.(i) Preparation of textbookWe have observed how the current textbooks are biased in favour of the privileged class. There is, therefore, a need to remove these biases as far as practicable. The subject matter of the textbooks needs to be relevant, interesting and enjoyable for the underprivileged learners. The theme, structure and the cultural content should be carefully graded. The content, wherever possible, should foster in the underprivi- leged learners a positive attitude to their culture and people.(ii) Methods of teachingIn devising and selecting methods of teaching for underprivileged learners, their learning styles should be taken into account. For example, if we devise methods of teaching for tribal learners who constitute a major section of underprivileged learners in India, we have to take into consideration the tribalstyle of learning through play, music, memorisation and learning from peers. Taking into account their learning styles we have to select and/or adapt some of the existing methods of teachingearning. For instance, methods such as oral reading,

recitation, groupwork, role-play, peer- learning can be effective in case of tribal learners. We should also take into account some of their positive characteristics greater sense of independence and responsibility for example. (iii)EvaluationWe have observed how the existing tests and test-materials are biased in favour of the privileged class. Underprivileged learners, therefore, lack test-taking skills and perform poorly in such tests. Attempts, therefore, should be made in two directions: reducing the dominant culture biases in. tcsis and training underprivilegedlearners intest-takingskiiis.Hiasesshouldbe removedinallthefourareasoftestscontent, language, test-taking situation and the time and competition involved. Instructions to the test should be made very clear and, where possible, be given in the language and dialect of the underprivileged learners. Initially the time limit should be relaxed for these learners and they should be trained in the skills of test- taking.
(iv) Education through the language and dialect of underprivileged learnersEducationists today agree that it is better to teach a child to read and write in his native language before introducing himher to any other language. They believe that is is easier to develop reading and writing skills in the learners’ mothertongue / mother-dialect first, which can easily be transferred to other languages learned subsequently. A learner who already knows how to read in one language, for instance, does not have to struggle with the problems of reading all over again. Where th languages are closely related, there is almost complete transfer of reading ability. Even when the languages are entirely unrelated, the essential process involved in decoding graphic symbols ren~ailsthe same. Thus attempts, wherever possible, should be made to use the languageuialect of the underprivileged learner in education. Language, as we all know, is a vital element of culture and the loss of language is a major step towards loss of culture.(v) Teacher preparationThe role of teachers in teaching underprivileged learners is very important. The changes suggested in the areas of textbook preparation, evaluation, methods of teaching and use of the language/dialect of the under-privileged learners are, due to various reasons, not always possible. But, if the teacher is willing and capable, s/he can implement some of these changes at hisher level. For example, if the textbook hasprivilegedclassbiastheteachercanremovethesebiaswhileteaching. Similar- ly, slhe can use the language/dialect of the underprivileged learners in the classroom even when the system of education has made no provision for these languages1 dialects. Unfortunately, the conventional teacher training course/programmesdo not help teachers develop these skills. Thus special teacher training programmes should be designed for teachers teaching underprivileged learners, to equip them withthese skills.While the underprivileged learners’ need for English, is great, their proficiency in English is found to be very low in comparison to their privileged ocunterparts and they have more problems in learning it. Some of their major problems in learning English are as follows:-i. Fear of English as a subject of studyFor various reasons underprivileged learners have a great fear of English which comes on their way of learning it. Their fear of English is partly due to the associa- tion of English with the elite culture in India and partly due to the inappropriate, ill- prepared text-books and teaching methods. The teachers of English who are often the members of the privileged class are also responsible for creating this fear in their underprivileged learners.ii. Language load and poor reading skillsUnderprivileged learners in India are often the speakers of a non-standard variety of a language or of a minority language. Education through their language and dialect has not been possible-so far. Reading skills are easy to develop in learners though their first language. As this has not been possible for most of the underprivileged learners’in India, they are poor in reading skills. But reading skills in English are very important in India as reading constitutes the most important resources for exposure to English.iii.. Inappropriate textbooks, teaching methods and testing procedure English textbooks are biased in favour of the privileged class. So also the methods of teaching and testing. The content, characters and even the pictures in English textbooks, for example, are all biased in favour of the privileged learners. The families and characters one finds in an English textbook are from upper class culture. Similarly the test, test materials and testing procedures are based on upperclass culture. Underprivileged learners, as said earlier, lack test-taking skills

5) What are the different aspects of evaluation of writng skills? Design a criteria sheet of evaluating writing skills of a group of children at the elementary school? Evaluation is a necessary educational process that helps students recognise their strengths and weaknesses, thereby improving future writings. Some of the ways a teacher can help create a positive attitude about writing are as follows:1. Communicate the idea that each student has good and relevant ideas to share.2. Provide students with many writing activities to give them the security that familiar- ity brings.3. Instill confidence by finding positive things to say about each writing and by showing appreciation of it through displays, reading and sharing.The actual evaluation of writing can be done by using several methods, some of which we will look at later on.While evaluating a child’s writing a teacher needs to look at the following:
Evaluation of Written Work
a) Accuracy i. e.
the grammatical and lexical stnrctures spellings/ punctuation/ handwriting
b) Appropriacy i. e. (or fluency)the suitability of the language and formatto the function of the writing as well as to the writer’s purpose, and whether the layout is appropriate
c) The range i.e..the amount of language available, and whether the child is able to express her/himself clearly through the choice of vocabulary.
suitable

d) Complexity i. e.the extent to which a child is able to produce a coherent piece of writing with a logical order in the flow of events.
Asmentionedearlier,studentsneedapositivefeedbackontheway theirwritingis improving. This may be given through comments at the end or through a grade. If the only feedback the students receive is negative, in the sense of corrections, with no encouragement or appreciation for trying, the children may not want to write. A number of teachers have begun to feel that correction after the writing is over, is not very useful, instead children should be encouraged to revise and edit as much as possible during the writing. This helps the children to internalise the corrections as much as possible. An example of a criteria sheet on a three point scale is given below: CRITERIA SHEET
Evaluation of Written Work


CRITERIA SHEET CRITERIA GOOD AVERAGE NEEDS IMPROVEMENTACCURACY writes grammatically correct sentences there are some grammatical spellings many errors which correct spellings and punctuation legible or punctuation errors but dont destroy interfere with the handwriting communication handwriting is fairly legible meaningAPPROPRIACY use of language entirely suitable to purpose use of language is broadly suitable though there language is unsuitable layout suitable are some inconsistencies layout generally appropriate layout unsuitableRANGE expresses clearly using selectively vocabulary adequate but some words are limited vocabulary vocabulary and figurative speech with logical flow of ideas misused writing contains some gaps lacks coherenceCOMPLEXITY uses specific and original examples shows ability very few details writing is often very no detail goes off to use complex sentences sketchy and off the topic the main idea

6) Importance of oral communication Oral communication is more extensively in daily life than written expression in school and out of it children of all ages converses discuss explain share experiences and report their progresses or findings in some personal enterprise thus oral communication takes many different forms it is important to expose children to these various forms since the type of language used varies the kind of language used in informal conversation will greatly vary from that used in making for a speech for second language learners these variances have to be learnt therefore the more in the variety in the exposure to spoken language forms the better will the children learn classroom oppurtunities for oral expression helps second language learners to increase their vocabulary and the ability to use the language be articulate when speaking that is speaking coherently and in complete sentences become fluent inexpressing their feelings and opinions improve listening skills listen to different point of view and value the opinion of others develop confidence in the use of language learn thesocial skills needed for group interaction enhance their abiliy to communicate with a variety of audiences reinforce grammatical structures intonations pronounciations through actual usage

7) Teaching english to underpriviledged learners  given below are some tips for teaching English to underprivileged learners. Although these tips are equally useful for teaching any other subject or other kinds of learners, they are especially important for teaching English to underprivileged learners.Take your underprivileged learners into confidence and try to understand their problems in learning English from their point of view.Be generous in giving them feedback. Praise them for partly answering a quesiton. Move close to them, touch and pat them to encourage them to learn. They need your help most.Allow them to answer in a word, a group of words. Do not insist always on full sentences. To begin with, ask them easy questions which can be answered by ‘yes/ no’.Allow them to answer in their first language when they fail to answer in English.Do not concentrate your attention only on the privileged learners. Rather the underprivileged learners need your attention and help more.Underprivileged learners tend to occupy back benches. Encourage (but do not force) them to occupy front seats. Make them sit close to some of the best students of the class and encourage them to learn from these student(vii) Provide them with more clues when your underprivileged learners fail to answer: For example, ‘The answer is in the fourth line. protectyourunderprivilegedlearnersfrombullys.Seethattheprivilegedlearners dg not make fun of them.
Tolerate their errors. Instead of public”correction, choose a time and place where you can correct their errors privately

8) use of redundancy in reading comprehension there are two major ways in which uncertainty during processing can be reduced. One is the meaning content of the message itself. The probabilities are worked out on the basis of the received information as well as the vocabulary appropriate to the context and the syntactic and discourse structure permissible in a particular language. The other, comes from the receiver’s prior knowledge of the meaning content of the mes- sage. In both the cases, meaning is available from more than one source of informa- tion. This is known as redundancy. 11 is based on the probability of the occurrence of any single information unit or sequence of units within the total message. If the units of information which make up the meaning of the message are highly redundant and the receiver is aware of most of the redundancies, then uncertainty is reduced to the minimum.In .summary, information processing theory explains the major principles that underlie the acquisition of meaning during communicationbetween a sender and a receiver of information. The receiver must be actively involved to construct a meaningful message from incoming information by using the cognitive and language resources which the receiver brings to the situation. Redundancy, noise and the resolution of uncertainty are the major issues in the human information processing system. These issues are relevant whether the information is represented in sound, print or any other form.When we apply the principles underlying any form of human information processing to reading, we have to consider the major sources of redundancy in print, the sources of noise and the importance of the rates of processing by individuals. There are may/ levels of redundancy in print. Most of them are equivalent to the redundancies in spoken language. But the format and the organisation of language in printed form is more formal and distant from the receiver. Punctuation is quite explicit in print, but print cannot indicate mood, juncture, intonation and body and facial expressions implicit in speech. The reader must learn to get to meaning through using the sources of print redundancy that are equivalent to those already used in speech.The major sources of redundancy in print are:1. The graphic correspondences for sounds and words;2. The correspondence between speech and print; signals for word order, tense, number, gender emphasis and reference;3. The correspondence between semantic information already possessed by the reader and the semantic information provided in print, such as word meanings.

8) helping children learn english with low intellectual functioningsome children consistently show low academic achievement. They may have no physical problems. Often they are poorly adjusted in the classroom. Short attention span, poor memory and slow in following instructions are other visible sips.to make your task of teaching these children simpler, you can take up the following action points:-a Provide concrete experience to these children while teaching.a Use repetition, practice, and drill procedure, till mastery is acquired.Educating Childrenwith SpecialNeedsBe flexible in transacting curriculum. a Give rewards from time to time.Break up the task into small steps.a While teaching, adopt a developmental sequence.Use a variety of activities to hold the childrens’ attention and interest.

9) description of any 3 grammar games Game 1 Super Duper.
Level Beginners/Elementary. Grammar Parts of speech: Verb
Procedure Ask one child to leave the classroom. Let the others choose a verb. (eg)snore. Now ask the child to come back. He has to guess the verb by asking questions, where, in the place of the verb he uses “super duper”.
(eg) Do we super duper at all times of the day ?
Do we all super duper ?
Can you super duper when you are eating ? etc.
Make sure that the questions require only “Yest” or “no” as answer. Do not ask “Why”question (eg) WhenWhyIHow do you super duper ? When the child makes the correct guess, he has won. Now ask another child to go out.
Compare this with a traditional exercise on verbs : (eg) Fill in the blanks with suitable verbs.the sun   in the east.
Many people    heavily when they sleep. Game 3 Yes or No 7
Level Higher Secondary/tertiary
Grammar Interrogatives Yes/No questions
Procedure Ask a student to volunteer to come forward and face the class. Now ask the rest of the class to five questions at him in rapid succession. The questions must be so framed that they require a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ only as an answer. (eg) Did you have breakfast today ? Do you like grammar ? etc. Do not allow ‘wh’ questions. The volunteer student should answer the questions without using the words ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
(eg) Do you like grammar 7 Of coursdnot at all/I’m not sure etc. The moment he uses the words ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ he’s out. This game is based on the psychological tendency to respond with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ automatically.
Game 4 Silly Stories
Level All lwels
Grammar Past Simple, Past Progressive
Procedure The teacher beigns a silly story with the first sentence and then asks the learners to continue.
(eg) Teacher : I saw a horse sitting in the kitchen. It was eating…. Student 1: a piece of cake
Student 2:anddrinkingacupoftea
Teacher : I asked the horse
Stud@t 3 :Don’t you have milk in your tea ?

10) illustrate in detail how oppurtunities can be created for young learners to speak english in the primary classes The possibilities for using spoken language in the classroom are immense!. There are opporhmities for spontaneous, unplanned discussions, debates, verbal sharing, recitation. Often informal talk between students is very constmctive if it can be given a focus. We are looking at a few as an illustration of the kind of activities that can be taken up. What is exccdngly important is that a child should feel completely free and relaxed. The classroom atmosphere must be completely non-threatening. individual differences in children niust be respected. Children should not be compared with each other. Shy children should not be forced to speak in front of the whole class. They should be gently helped to participate. Teachers need to say, ” no talking”, a little discretely. Talk is the vehicle for a lot of learning in the classroom, and blocking i t can take away great opportunities for developing fluency in ideas, speech and expression. To maintain a harmonious level of ‘meaningful noise’ the answer is not the over used “no talking”, but rather talking within very clearly defined rules, developed with the children.We shall now look at some ways in which activities for reinforcing the spoken lan- guage skills can be taken up in the classroom.
a) Opportunities for vocabulary development.
Through sharing experiences children become acquainted with the art of talking in fiont of a group. Spontaneous sharing brings to light the stage of the child’s speech and the areas where the child’s vocabulary needs strengthening. Some specitic activities for vocabulary development are:through games, which help the child to acquire new concepts for commonly used words. For example games which emphasise Merent parts of speech, such as adjec- tives, prepositions or adverbs. (put the ball into the bag, under the bag and so on). Also playing games We word building, categories, spotting the odd one, guessing games, miming and so on.using synonyms for tired or overused words, as well as, for the purpose of using more precise wordsusing synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, homographs, prefixes and &es, to change the meanings of words.using word games such as “I spy with my little eye something beginning with…” or making riddles.
learning to figure out the meanings of words from the context.making friends with new words by locating their meanings and using them wheneverthe opportunity arises. (Learning the skill of using a dctionary).becoming aware of i d o i c expressions!i common use, as well as, figurative language such as similes, analogies and metaphors.using sense perception to create words. After a picnic or an outdoor experience, sense perception can be highlighted by having children describe how they felt when they touched the grass or trees, what were the different smells they got, how the sound of gthe wind was different to that of the water, the Merent things they saw. The teacher provides a verbal prompt for the children to respond to.b) Opportunity for creative speechThrough using literature for releasing children from the pressuresofcolourlessspeech, as well as, for evoking creative responses. This could include choral recitation, read aloud sessions, as well as, creative drama.Through poetry. Poems evoke in children words and feelings that no other language expression can. Nonsense rhymes, picturesque poems, story poems provide plenty of opportunity for word play and improvisation. Children enjoy reciting as well as improvising new poems based on existing patterns or structures.Sentence building games work well, each child adds on a word till the sentence is complete. Then a new sentence is started. Expanding sentences or changing sentences by using opposites, are some variations.
-Providing familiar materials for descriptive words. Provide situations for children to use exact and concrete words to express an experience or fceling. For example bring different kinds of material to the classroom, such as wood, a bottle top , a piece of silk, a brush, a cork. Pass the objects around so that each child can see, touch and smell them. Encourage the children to describe them in new and imaginative ways.
-Build stories. Provide a starting sentence. Let each child in turn add on a sentence, to make a whole story. Encourage children to be imaginative.Help children to create images with words. Use phrases such as”dancing leaves”, “slinky crocodile”, ”squirmy worm” to illustrate how words can create images, and make meanings clear and interesting. Let each child pick any noun and use ,colowfd descriptive words to create images.Children enjoy creating sound words and nonsense words, such as SWISH SWASH went the tail of ‘,?e donkey, or SNIGGELDY SNAG went the tired crocodile. This can be turned into a game. One child names an animal, and the other one give a suitable sound word.
Opportunities for verbal communication and sharingEngage co-operative learning through planned group work or pair work. Structure some activities so that children are required to discuss and share their perceptions or views to be able to do an activity. It is much less threatening for shy children to participate and speak up in small groups. Such activities help children to express their ideas verbally. They also help children to learn to listen to, and respect the views of other children. It is important to use authentic, and real life situations preferably from the childrens’ daily life experiences. Children iden- with such activities and enter into real discussions. This greatly helps a spontaneous flow of speech. For instance, the children may be asked to form pairs and come up with three ideas for making their classroom interesting.
Later the ideas could be pooled together and some of these ideas may actually be taken up. A few more examples of the kind of activities that could be taken in groups or pairs are problem solving or working on puzzles, which requires the children to discuss with each other.
finding each others preferences on some particular topic.discussing likes and dislikes and coming to a consensus on some topic. Teaching each other.Finding information about each other, based on a format.Working together on creating a story, poem or play.Group recitation.
Memorising.Giving and following’directions.Improvisations and role plays based on some clues or stimulus.Question/ answer sessions based on a reading text, a project or group experience. Talk sessions based on sharing a book or an experience.Show and tell sessions the children in turn bring something to show and talk about.informal talk sessions.Schedule some time each day or each week as ‘informal talk time’. Throughout the w&k build up possible topics, keep track of questions or problems that arise during the school day. Use these to generate discussions.Encourage children to talk about their experiences. Encourage others to listen and ask questions.
d) Opportunity far improving articulation
Exposure to the spoken language helps children to improve their articulation. Some areas that need special focus are listed below.
Hearing the difference between a consonant sound made correctly and incorrectly. Use jingles, stories and rhymes to illustrate the sounds made correctly and incorrectly.
Identifying particular consonants in words and in isolation. Give the children many chances to hear the sounds of letters that are being mispronounced in isolation and in words. The most frequently defective sounds are th, s, sh, r, 1.Identifying letter sounds in initial, medial and final positions. Test whether the child can use consonants and vowels in the tliree positions. Let each child select an object for consonants in the initial, medial and final positions.
Distinguishing between sounds often confused. For example s-z, th-s, th-f, w-r, 1- r, m- n, p-b. Use games, rhymes and songs for practising these, and reinforcing their correct forms.
Developing rhythm. Use choral speaking and group recitation of poetry as rhythm setting in speaking and in helping children to to learn timing and coordination. To aid in improving enunciation and voice, tie speech into rhythm and dramatic play.
Finding methods which increase speech fluency. See if different ways of delivery, particularly with formal speech: increase the level of fluency. Experiment wit11 different methods of reporting such as a speech, informal chat sessions, interview, etc.
Using intonations to suit characterisations. Locate in the dialogue of a story a short speech by one of the characters which could be misunderstood unless correct voice intonations were used. Ask the children to listen to and choose which one of the three ways fit the character: a monotone, intonations which suit the character, an unsuitable
Using intonations to suit meaning. Find out if the children can show varied meanings of the same word by changing the intonation, posture and gesture.

11) Is listening a passive or active skill describe the different types of listening and how you would teach sound discrimination to elementary children Listening has often been called a passive skill. However recent linguists claim this be misleading (Littlewood 1991) because listening demands active involvement from the hearer. In order to reconstruct the message that the speaker intends, the hearer must actively contribute. It is only by applying her knowledge of the language that a child can divide the continuous stream of sounds, that she hears, into meaningful units. Further by relating these to her earlier language experiences, the child is able to find a suitable meaning. In fact a majority of utterances that we hear in daily life could be conceived as carrying different meanings in different circumstances and it is only because the child is actively involved in the communication^ process that she is able to relate them to a single appropriate meaning. A child therefore cannot get meaning or understanding by listening to ideas that are unrelated to her intellectual or cultural experience.in a typical day most of us spend a great deal of time listeningto environmental sounds like horns in traffic , to background sounds like music, to informational sounds like the radio and television broadcasts, and to conversational sounds with the people around us. We seem to be listening all the time. However, if we think of the ways we listen, we will realize that we do not actually listen for understanding most of ow waking hours. Much of the time we are simply filtering out sounds to find out what is ‘ worth attending to. There is also a variety of settings and types of sounds in everyday life. The settings might range from individual (for example listening to music or to the television), to interpersonal (for example, taking to someone on the telephone), to group-based (for example listening to an announcement at the school assembly or’ listening to the teachers’ instructions in class). Some types of listening are interactional i.e. involving a response to others and some types are non-interactional (not involving a response). Listening involves both social and cognitive processes i.e. our relationship with the outer word, both human and non-human, as well as our ability to receive sounds consciously and to be able to respond to these appropriately and meaningfully.
Types of Listening on the Basis of the Nature of the Sound Input
a) Listening to non-verbal sounds
b) Listening to words or spoken language (i.e. verbal inputs)
a) Listening to Non-verbal Sounds
All sound creates some kind of conscious or sub-conscious response either within oneself or with another human being. There is constant sound throughout life. In fact, there is so much sound that we only hear what we feel is important to us or what we want to hear.
The principal non-verbal sounds are from nature, mechanical sounds and music. These sounds are heard and interpreted perhaps as frequently throughout the day as the voices of people. We need to:
make children aware of sounds in their environment,
fill the sounds children hear with meaning, and
help children develop an alertness to the differences in sounds.
Since children listen to a multiplicity of sounds in daily life, we need to set-up tasks in the classroom which help children to listen purposefully to verbal as well as non- verbal sounds. ,
Listening and natural sounds
Teachers find that the world of nature is a wonderful medium to explore and use as a means for developing good listening habits in their pupils. Sounds in nature help children to capture different moods and emotions, and associate these with their own meanings. Thus the sounds of birds singing or bubbling streams may signify joy and happiness, while the rumbling of a storm or the loud swishing of trees may be associated with anger. Further children learn to distinguish natural soundsfor example the ‘splash’ ofwaterorthepitterpatterofrain,theclip-clopofatrottinghorse,thehumof a bee, the bark of a dog, the yelp of a puppy, the meow of a cat, the gentle mew of a kitten, and so on. Children learn to group sounds on the basis of their sources, or on the basis of the feelings they evoke or the colours they bring to mind. Especially planned activities sharpen childrens’ perceptions and discrimination of natural sounds, and help children to respond meaningfully and effectively.
Listening and mechanical sounds
Listening to and identifying sounds and noises is a step which precedes the discrimination of related words and sounds within the words. Listening to the sounds in our environment and discriminating between sounds that are far and sounds that are near, or sounds made by heavy things and light things, or inside sounds and outside sounds,all such activities sharpen the child’s perceptions of sound and the capacity to discriminate between these various sounds. Ifa child tries to take in all sounds, his world will become a bedlam; therefore children nked to able to select the sounds they would like to attend to. Familiarity of sounds depends upon the experiences in one’s environment. City children may be surprised to hear that there are children who have never heard the sound of a fire-engine, or the siren of a police car. Children from a rural background, on the other hand, will be surprised to know that some children have never heard a horse neigh or a cow moo or a mill grind grain. Children need to develop the concept of tuning in and tuning out, knowing when and to what to listen, know how to associate meanings to different sounds for e’uample how to associate a loud yelp or cry with a plea for help, or a growl with danger.
Listening and music
Listening and music are very closely related. In fact, music came about as a result of a desire for meaning and beauty in sound. To understand and enjoy music, one must learn how to listen and what to listen for. Music has the potential to stir in us a range of emotions which breakdown barriers of language and culture. Similarly different types of music bring up mental images or colours. A child learns to listen as she sings, plays an instrument or dances. The child must listen if hidher interpretations of music through bodily movements are to be rhythmic and expressive of tlie music. Music develops a keener sense of rhythm and rhythmic contrasts, an enjoyment of melody, an appreciation of different musical instruments and so on. In listening to music, the physical, emotional and intellectual levels are so closely interwoven that we are often not able to draw boundaries between them.
Listening to Words or to the Spoken Language
Listening is a skil! that underlies all verbal communication. It is a process that is triggered by our attention. In psychological terms, by giving attention to certain incoming sounds we stimulate certain nerve pathways in our brain, so that they can organise the incoming sounds (or stimuli) in an efficient way. One-way to think of listening is in terms of information processing, or in other words how the information, initially in the form of sound signals, is transformed into meaningful units in the brain. While listening, the most basic and concrete units are individual sounds and groups of sounds. By combining these sounds we understand words, by combining words we understand phrases and sentences; by combining phrases and sentences we understand ideas, topics, subject matter. In short we use inputs from ‘lower’ levels to build compre- hension at progressively higher levels. Recent research in linguistics has also highlight- ed the fact that our interests and motives exert a powerful force on how we listen. We cannot view a listener as passively receiving all that the speaker is saying. The quality of the listening is largely determined by the listeners beliefs, opinions, values, interests, motives and background knowledge. For example, a student of economics will listen to a lecture on economic theory dith far greater attention than will a cricketer who is not interested in the subject. A little boy who loves animals will listen with greater interest to a talk on animal care, than will a little boy who has no interest whatsoever in animals.
Hearing speech
Listening and Speaking in the Primary School
or sounds made by vehicles and other sounds
b)
When sounds reach our inner ear and excite the auditory nerve, they are passed onto the auditory cortex of the brain. Here we quickly almost automatically classify them as speech or non-speech. If they are speech sounds we begin phonological decoding. This is the step of discriminating betrveen sounds or putting sounds into categories. As we aquire our first language as young children, largely by listening to people around us speak it, we acquire prototypes or typical examples for each of the sounds of our language. Gradually, over the course of the first few years of our lives. we begin to hear all speech sounds as falling into one of the fifty or so categories that our language has. These categories are phonemes, which are the smallest unit of sound meaning in a lanyage. They are the smallest units of speech that can be reliably produced and identified by speakers and hearers of a lanyage. However, in connected speech, individual phonemes cannot be isolated. These phonemes can be further classified as vowels and consonants. We recognise speech as a sequence of phonemes that are partiedak to our language. These phonemes have slightly differing characteristics of length, duration and frequency which help us to discriminate between them. The various sounds in English (or in any language) can be arranged in various sequences to form thousands of difrerent words, and these words can in turn be arranged in different sequences to form a nearly infinite number of phrases.when we listen to language we must depend on a sampling ofsounds from the stream of speech; we are able to infer sounds which we do not actually hear. This inference process, however, can bc carried out efficiently only with continuous speech in context. We cannot perceive speech well with sounds and syllables and words in isolation.

12) describe in detail cloze methods to teach reading comprehension The Successive Cloze method In this method different degrees of grapho-pheneme information is offered to the child to decode a word. It is best to use nouns, adjectives and verbs as phonics applies mostly to content words. These words should be selected from lessons previously taught. Let us now look at a format to teach children how to combine syntactic and semantic cues with CVCspelling pattern cues.
1. The horse at………………………………
2. The horse ate gr……………………………….
3. The horse ate ……………………………….
4. The horse ate ………………..ai …………….
5. Thehorse ate gr……………………………..n
6. Thehorseategrai ……………………………….
7. The horse ate ………………………………ain
8. The horse ate grain


In the first sentence there is a blank for wholc word and thc child has to guess from thc syntactic and semantic context. In the other sentences the same content words are givcn along with the various combination of vowels and consonants. Now look at scntcnccs 2 to 6 carefully and work out what combinations of vowcls and consonants arc givcn in cach scntencc.
Preferred Cloze
This is the same as thc previous excrcise, but instead of just one sentence, two sentenc- cs are used to provide the context. In this exercise only the grapho-phonemes taught during the lesson are uscd. That is why it is called preferred cues. Suppose the conso- nant blcnd bl, cl, and fl had bccn taught in the last class. Then the exercise could be:
~ h c ‘ ~ irro1de hcr bl bikc. Blue was the colour she liked best
The street was cl. It was cleaned evcry morning.
The fl ……………… was rcd and black. It waved in the wind.
Notice that the word to be decodcd is found in the first and second sen’tcnced It is also placcd in the middle, or at the cnd or thc sentence. Both the sentences should offer st~ficientsemantic or syntactic clues to find out the word.
Structure Word Cloze
In this exercise the focus is on structure words. You may remember that in the earlier part of this unit we discussed how most of these structure words (articles, conjunctions, pronouns. prepositions) cannot be brought within the rules of phonics as their sound synibol correspondcnccs are irrcgular. They have to be taught as whole words. Structure word cloze using binary choice is very useful in teaching whole words usually con- li~scdby a child. This method uses simple alternatives for decoding sight words that begin with the same consonant digraph usually found in first standard textbooks. They arc the (1) th series; the, this, that, these, those, them, their, there and through and (2) the wh series: who, what, when, where, why, which and while. If the child does not attend to their meaning, these words can cause a lot of confusion. The Passage Length Cloze
In this exercise only one fourth of the sentences are used for deletion. This is to give the readers plenty of semantic information to identify the words. This exercise would look like this:Babu had a frog. His name was Leap.Leap liked to sit on a log. Babu fed fl to Leap.But Leap was sad often.He wanted a frogfriend. :’Babu e ~ ght one m e frog. Leap was now h ~ py .
Even very good young readers also appear to go through several phases as they develop into fluent readers. In the initial stage, they begin to read in two and three word groups and only occasionally word by word. During this stage most of the children refuse to pronounce or guess a word that they do not know, because they know it must be pronounced correctly and must make sense. I1 is better to notice such situations and not insist too much on their saying such words. The second stage is when they begin to insert structure words to compensate.for word grouping predictions that do not sound like language.

13)What criteria would u need to follow in evaluating writing of young learners suggest atleast four strategies for evaluating with their rationale Evaluation is a necessary educational process that helps students recognise their strengths and weaknesses, thereby improving future writings. Some of the ways a teacher can help create a positive attitude about writing are as follows:
1. Communicate the idea that each student has good and relevant ideas to share.
2. Provide students with many writing activities to give them the security that familiar- ity brings.
3. Instill confidence by finding positive things to say about each writing and by showing appreciation of it through displays, reading and sharing.
The actual evaluation of writing can be done by using several methods, some of which we will look at later on.
While evaluating a child’s writing a teacher needs to look at the following:
Evaluation of Written Work
a) Accuracy i. e.                the grammatical and lexical stnrctures spellings/ punctuation/ handwriting.
b) Appropriacy i. e. (or fluency)   the suitability of the language and formatto the function of the writing                                                                                       as well as to the writer’s  purpose,and whether the layout is appropriate
c) The range i.e.                 the amount of language available, and whether the child is able to express her/himself clearly through the choice of vocabulary.
suitable
d) Complexity i. e.the extent to which a child is able to produce a coherent piece of writing with a logical order in the flow of events.
Asmentionedearlier,studentsneedapositivefeedbackontheway theirwritingis improving. This may be given through comments at the end or through a grade. If the only feedback the students receive is negative, in the sense of corrections, with no encouragement or appreciation for trying, the children may not want to write. A number of teachers have begun to feel that correction after the writing is over, is not very useful, instead children should be encouraged to revise and edit as much as possible during the writing. This helps the children to internalise the corrections as much as possible.The process of improving through correction, comments and revision can only work if there is a consistent methodology and scheme for marking throughout the school.Designing a marking policy involves making decisions about how to note correctness or suggestions for improvement, so that the child’s ideas are respected and the writing is not mutilated with red marks. One effective way of arriving at such decisions is for a group of teachers to mark some scripts together and discuss the options available.
Some possibilities:
Replacing part of the students’ work with the correct form.
Indicating an error by underlining and allowing the students to self correct.
Indicating an error and identifying the error with a symbol, eg. ‘sp’ for a spelling mistake. If the teachers are going to use a marking code then it is important that the children are familiar with it. It could be displayed on the wall.
Indicating that there is a certain kind of error in a line, by writing in the margin, but leaving the students to locate the errors themselves.
Exercises in proofreading, and other self correction procedures which would equip children to correct some of their own, or other children’s work.
Once a school has arrived at a marking policy it is important that it is shared with the students and parents. They need to know that evaluation is not just conlined to pieces of writing corrected by the teacher, but includes all of the following:
Some whole class feedback, where the teacher responds to the class w a whole, and based on this the children correct or revise their work.
2) Peer correction, based on a set of criteria which are displayed on the board. It is important that these are within the grasp of the children and at a level where they have meaning for the children.
3) Feedback through discussiohs of either individual or group work through conferencing with the purpose of enabling children to redraft or revise their writings through self correction.
Variations in the teacher’s correction. The teacher may be correcting the writing with 9 particular focus in mind. The teacher would decide each time what would be the most important thing she would be looking at, it could be the use of the correct tense or using a form of writing suited to the purpose. This would be corrected in particular, and other aspects of the writing would be secondary for that particular time.
Indicators for self correction through revising, such as, the underlining of an error, which has to be corrected, or a note in the margin which suggests a better way to express something.

14) What is the role of the teacher in developing writing skills in elementary level learners draw up a writing programme describing the activities you would use to develop the writing skills of young learners In the real world of classrooms, there are often rigid guidelines imposed by state educational policies, by school managements or other policy makers and educators. Teachers’ performances are measured by the “syllabus coverage”and performance on achievement tests. Teachers’ struggle to mark all the checklists, covet all the books and workbooks and prepare children for their examination. Children are busy studying about reading and writing and focusing on specific skills, rather than actually practicing reading and writing in meaningful ways. We continue to search for ways and means of implementing a language programme based on sound theory in our classrooms. We need to make adjustments in our existing curriculum to find a place for meaningful reading and writing activity. If a teacher is convinced that it is important it can be done. To develop a meaningful readindwriting programme one requires:
A daily time slot of preferably 45 mins. to 1 how. A calendar of experiences.
Parental support
Conviction
Some Practical suggestions
a An activity based programme is not more expensive if one taps the available resources effectively. Walking trips to the neighbourhood, parent help, old magazines books and calendars are all resources that help. Use the wasted paper from photocopiers and printing presses to write on.
b. A class of 50 students is certainly daunting. To ensure that the teacher does not back out from activities and revert to rote teaching, the school climate needs to be supportive Wlen all their colleagues are taking the children to the local market or the nearby post office or planning unusual creative work, the new teachers are quickly caught up in the atmosphere. Such an atmosphere however, cannot be created by a single teacher, it has to be the joint effort of the entire school, and needs to be reflect- ed in the schools policy. Parent volunteers are a wonderful resource. They can be tapped to accompany the children on field trips, celebrations, cooking experiences. A register can be maintained to ensure that parents are available whenever an experience is planned. In fact some functions can be planned and organised entirely by parents. This has been found to be very effective as parents also begin to get actively involved in the learning processes of their children.
c. Some activities are not possible to conduct with 50 students. Dividing them into smaller groups becomes necessary. By the time they are in Class three, a group of four children can satisfactorily complete an activity on their own. The teacher must give clear instructions and then move from group to group helping and supporting. For younger children, parent volunteers or senior students would be required to help, otherwise the teacher is compelled to stick to more structured activities.
d. Any activity based learning is noisy. We know that language cannot be learnt silently. So we simply have to accept the fact that if we are to use the language- experience approach the noise level will be high.
e. A calendar of experiences needs to be worked out and planned within the timetable.It can bc linked up with other subject areas and project work. Children need to get clear instructions. There must be a discussion before and after. The experience must be followed up with activities which lead to writing. Volunteers must be contact- ed and all arrangements made in advance.
Correction : It is not possible for the teacher to look at every piece of writing that every child does, particularly if the class is large and the children are going to write at least four times a week, if not daily.Children need to be actively involved in the process of correction and evaluation, in fact these skills are an essential part of the writing process. Children at the elementary school level can be taught these through a writing programme which allows them time for drafting, revising and proof reading. Suggested ways of doing this in the class have been discussed in the unit on evaluation.
While correcting written work, the teacher would need to look at the content, the format, the appropriateness of the writing style to the type of text, lexical and gram- matical items. She would take up individual discussions whenever required.She would not put red marks all over the writing, but would write comments in the margin in pencil. She could also use a coded systems of correction with W e r e n t symbols to indicate different kinds of corrections. The children should be made familiar with this, and could also use it while doing self correction. The teacher would base formal instructions on the insights she gains about the children’s linguistic needs after she has gone through the children’s writings. Children requiring special attention would be taken up separately.The teacher needs to perform wrious roles, in order to create a stimulating classroom environment which promotes writing.The teacher needs to:1. Help students think about their topics before they write by talking about them with her or with one another. Exploring their topics through talking helps students:a discover the meaning they want to expressb. organise their thinking about what they want to say.2. Encourage children to write about what is meaningful to them. Keeping diaries and journals helps children to choose topics which they care and feel about 3. Move about the room as students write, responding to their work while it is incomplete. Ask students questions that help them discover where their meaning is incomplete or their content disorganised. When they have communicated well, show them your appreciation. Encourage children to talk about their writing, it helps them to clarify their thoughts and ideas.4. Help students to see one another as writers and assist one another with their work. Even very young children can listen to or read someone else’s writing and respond to it intelligently. We need to help children respect each other’s writings and offer helpful suggestions. This process helps children to develop critical abilities. Occasionally it’s a good idea for a teacher to have a demonstration for the whole class, where some children’s writing is discussed. This helps children to know what to look for in a piece of writing.5. Prepare a writing folder for each student. Preserve all drafts of all the students’ work in their individual folders. Children can see their own progress when their writ- ings are arranged in a chronological order. This is very encouraging for students as the begin to view writing as a growth process.
6. Provide real audiences. This has been discussed at length earlier. Sometimes children write for themselves, but more often they write to communicate with others. Writing is more likely to be improved when it is written to be read by a real audience. This also generates a greater involvement in the writing.7. Relate language study to real language use. When children have a need to use something they are more apt to remember and use it. Writing for a meaningful purpose emurages children to make sure that their writing serves the purpose it is intended for or in other words the target audience is able to receive what the child wants to convey. This pushes children towards learning the conventions of standard language use. The teacher also needs to draw children’s attentions to these conventions from time to time either through formal instructions or informally through individual discussions.8. Use a variety of evaluation tools. Students improve as writers when they write frequently. The teacher needs to evaluate the children’s writings in a variety of ways. First by noting the characteristics of their writing while it is developing and by keep- ing copies of all their work readily available, so that it is possible to note each child’s progress and instructional needs. Responding to children’s efforts as they write helps to improve their writing.

15) What questioning strategies can be used to develop the ability of young readers to make inferences what questions should the teacher ask herself in planning a reading programme for young learners?


The ability to reason and to draw inferences is the distinguishing feature of the human beings. While the prcccding excrciscs prepared the children to use “Context” while they arc rcading, these cxcrciscs will prcparc them to become familiar with formal thinking operations such as to compare, contrast and infer. If we could help children to combine thcir knowlcdgc of the every day world with the specific content and events stated in the tcxt, then we would be giving them a strategy to organize and infer meaning from a text. Thc children should be taught when to make use of their knowledge of the world and when to rely solely on the information given in the text in order to draw inferences in answering questions about a story Using Divergent questions: Divergent questions require the children to imagine, using the information givcn in thc text, to predict what might happen or reconstruct how something might have happened. To do this the children will have to m’ake use of thcir knowlcdgc of lllc wvorld :~nclII~c’il. own experience. For esample we can change the questions “Why did unclc Abdullah come into the store?” into a divergent question by saying “Supposing you were Rafiq’s uncle and had left Rafiq and his lamb at the store to go nest door to buy a magazine, what would you have thought was going on in the store? In this question the readers are
given an’ additional text to be processed with their prior knowledge of how an uncle might be prompted to enter a store under the specified circumstances.
Usually a “Why” question is confusing and does not indicate the requirements for a correct response. For e m p l e the question “Why did uncle Abdullah enter the store?” can start off a number of possibilities such as “Does the answer require knowledge of information stated in this story?” or Is there more than one acceptable answer? or is the reader to give his or her opinion? Although the most common form of questioning is through the “Why” question, this does not help children to know about what kind of thinking or response is expected from them. A well formed question will speclfy the response requirements for answering the question. Quite often young readers do not understand the language of the questions. Therefore, the teacher will have to help them to understand the questions. It is true that even young children have a good deal of world knowledge, know a lot about how things happen in the world and can imagine various situations within the limits of their experience. But they will not readily do these things if the teacher does not tell them the difference between the requirem~ntsof a literal question and those of divergent questions. To do this, the teacher will have to form questions specifically and link them up to draw out the desired responses.Young children can profit from being trained to realise that, understanding literal ques- tions requires them to use the information in the story; to arrive at the correct response, infcrential and divergent questions require them to use their personal knowledge of the world along with information given in the story and that divergent questions and those requiring an opinion have no one right answer.
Young readers should not be subjected ro answering an endless string or literal questions. They should be frequently asked to imagine new situations as well as give their opinions. These tasks will give great satisfaction to young children who are naturally inclined to be csploratory and quite open in their preferences. Lack of opportunities for using their knowledge and experience of the world in analysing situations given in the passage, will make them ignore the possibilities of meaning and attend only to the literal meaning or wail for the teacher to work out the answer.OpinionElicitingQuestionsQuestions which require children to give their opinion tell them that their point of view is important and worth consideration. These also indicate how children are using their k~~owlcdgocr the world. At the same time such questions indicate how the points of view licld by olhcrs are also important to listen to and to understand. Opinions cannot be
judgcd to be right or wrong. They can be judged as more or less relevant to the situation bci~igdiscussed. Opinion eliciting questions are different from divergent questions. While o pinion eliciting questions require world knowledge that is relevant to the ‘topic, divergent questions challenge children to reconstruct how a character might feel by imagining themselves to be that character. These divergent questions challenge children to predict whatwill happen in the story. All these responses reveal the inferences drawn by the child using thc litcral information and his or her knowledge of the world. DRTA Method of QuestioningIn 1969 Russell Staulfer developed a method of questioning which can be used to teach young childrcn strategies for combining script and literal knowledge. T h s method is known as a directed reading-thinking activity (DRTA). By using this method of question- ing the children will be trained to predict and reconstruct the relationships between the setting, the story episodes and the goals or actions of the main characters. It will also help them to predict what a story will be about, predict what will happen after each episode, learn to select important information needed to revise or reject previous predictions and develop sufficient knowledge of how stories are commonly structured. The teacherss role is to act mainly as a facilitator for thinking about a story rather than as a controller who decided on specific questions to direct the childrens thinking. This role of the facilitator can best be carried out by asking such questions as : what do you think a sotry like this might be about?
2. What do you think now? What makes you think that?
3. What do you think will happen next?
At th, elementary level the DRTA method can be adopted by first allowing the students to k e n to a story rather than read it silently. The advantages of this procedure are:
it allows children to concentrate on the meaning of the story than on decoding words;
it removes the slow rate at which.the lesson wculd have to progress, becausc of the variations in reading within a group;
it enables teachers to select interesting stories and not be bound by the selections in prescribed texts.
The story selected should be short and should be easily divided into two or three natural divisions. By being exposed to several such stories the children would learn the function of a story setting and plot. Children need not have to be told about these functions, but are allowed to discover them from their experience of processing these stories and in turn they become familiar with the strategies for reconstructing or reenacting the story with puppets.
The teacher begins the lesson by distributing to the children 3″ x 10″ strips of Paper or Cardboard on which the little of the story has been written. Then the teacher says, “I am going to read the title again. Now close your eyes and listen to the title as I read it. Think ofallthethingsthatcometoyourmindasyoulistentothewordsinthetitle.” The teacher reads the title with the appropriate expression and thcn quickly calls on thc children to say the words they associate with the titlc. This is a spontancous brainstorin- ing of freeassociations with the title from all childrcn. Thc tcachcr rcvicws cvcrything mentioned by the children.
The second step is to show the book cover of first 1 ,gc with a picturc on it and thcn asks the children to guess what the story migh’ be, bascd an thc pic1:lrc and thc titlc. ‘l’llc teacher appreciates all the suggestions made by  the children then goes on to add let us read the beginning and see if our gucsses were corrccl cr whcthcr it is about somctlrilrg else.
The third step is to read the final part ofthe story that dcscribes the setting, introduccs the main characters, states or implies the main problcm of the story. Generally children’s stories do not involve a problcm but spccify thc topic around which the story is built (wnditions during winter, what one docs whcn sick, going to another region and so on). After reading the section the teacher repeats the gucsses made by the children and says, “Is this story about what we thought it might by about?” This question just requires a “Yes or No” answer. Ifthe answer is “No”, then the teacher asks, “What do you now think the story is about?” On the other hand, if the answer is “Yes”, the teacher reinforces the good guesses and explains why the guesses were correct.
The fourth step is to say, “What do you think will happen next in the story?” If the story hasjustone part, the teacher reads the story and then invites the children to explain what was different about what happened when wmpared to what they thought would happen. If the story has two parts then the teacher reads the first part and asks “What do you think will happen now?”
In a story with just two parts, the children will have to depend mainly on their world knowledge to predict the ending. But when the story has more thantwo parts, they have a chance to combine the clues from the story with their prior knowledge of the world from their experience and other stories they have read or heard. So, before reading the third part the teacher asks the children either to explain their predictions or react to each other’s predictions. That is done by asking children who have given reasonable predic- tions to explain why they think so. The teacher also tells the children who have gone off thc mark in their prediction. “Rajini what do you think about what Priya said?” It is during this part of the method that children come to realise that they should have reasons for thcir predictions and that the best reasons for their predictions combine information in the story and knowledge from one’s own experiences. This is learned naturally. There is no need for the teacher to explain that they should have reasons. The children learn about this from each other and from what happens in the story.
In the second and third standards the same DRTA method is used, but the better students arc allowcd to read the story silcntly for themselves. While allowing silent reading, the tcachcr tells thc childrcn what pages to read as they move to the section of the text which has bcen divided by the teachcr,
Teachers ought to be very careful in thcir selection of materials for using t k D R T A method. The storiedpassages ‘havc to be interesting and should involve the readers pcrsonally. In the third standard the teacher can increase the time allotted for discussions of predictions about the events in the story. But the teacher should not force predictions or csplanations from children.  Trade-off Method of Questioning
Anothcr mcthod for helping childrcn to use the literal information is called the Trade-off mcthod. This is uscd with second and third standard chldren. They are asked to generate litcrill questions on a story, to be answered by the teacher. The emphasis here is to train thcnl how to write literal questions and to organize such questions to generate inferences, opiilions and divergent thinking.
First, thc children are asked to read a story silently and then to write questions which whcn answcrcd by the teacher will deal with the setting of the story, the major characters and the most important events. The children can work in pairs using a question sheet labclled “Setting”. ”Major Characters”. “Important Events”. Each pair canwrite say, four quc~~ionTsh. cn they bring them to thc reading gioup and the teacher writes each ques- lion on lhc Blackbo;trd as it is askcd and answers it to the satisfaction of the team. Afler cach pair has had a turn, thc teachcrs does a trade-off i.e., the teacher asks a divergent qucstion, a comparison or contrast question, an opinion question which can be answered on thc basis of the answers to the childrens questions. In this case, the teacher may or nlay not ask the children to react to each others responses.
This method involves the children in selectively choosing literal information and then seeing how it can be used. It makes the children aware of the Literal information which can bc used in divergent thinking. It teaches them to realise that some literal information is much more important than others. It sets the scene for a fruitful and stimulating discussion of the story. The children can be taught the information of literal questions by showing how these begin with who, what, when, where ,which and sometimes why. But nlore inlportantly they have to be told that literal questions are to be answered solely on thc basis of the information provided in the story. This can be done by considering the “wh” questions which can or cannot be answered from the information on a single page of a story.
 PreviewMethod
Teachers can use previewing questions to help students to activate and use their knowl- edge of the world through personal experiences so that they can draw inferences as they rcad. Through preview disclssions of the major topics or events to be read, the teacher hclps to eastablish what is already known with a view to using it with what is new in the tcxt. These questions are aimed a1 changing the quality of cognitive activity whch children use spontaneously during reading or after reading.First, the teacher selects three main topics, events or episodes central to understanding the story to be read. The teacher prepares a question about each main aspect of the story which may be related to the experiences of the children. Next, each main aspect of the story is introduced.
The children are required to imagine an experience similar to thcir own that might happen in the story. If there is a story in which a little girl gets lost in the woods, thcn tlrc teacher might ask, : “In the story we are going to read about a little girl who gets lost. Have you ever been somewhere, for at least a short period, where you felt lost?” The children respond orally and thcn write down thcir experiences .Now the teacher asks thcm to predict what might happen to the little girl based on their own experiences. Various predictions are discussed and later written dowvn. Aflcr treating each of the three major aspects of the story in this way, the children are allowed to read the story for themselves. The follow-up discussion should focus attention on what was predicted and what really happens in the story.

16) Activities to help build scemas in learners minds Piaget identified 4 stags in which cognitive change takes place First, the sensorimotor in which development is entirely through the senses and through movement (0-2 years); second, the pre-operational (2-7 year), in which children become more able to represent images of their world through language, through make believe play and through art. Piaget stresses their lack of logic and their egocentric perspective at this stage; third, the concrete operational (7-1 1 years) in which the child’s thought processes become much more logical and organized, and fourth, the formal operational stage (11 years and older) in which children are able to think logically, frame hypotheses, etc.
How does the change take place? Piaget takes the help of biology to explain this. The body has physical structures which have evolved in adapting to the environment. Similar- ly the mind too has structures which are developed as the child gradually learns to interpret experience in ever more complex ways. These structures of the mind Piaget calls schemas. All the time the mind is interpreting the world in terms of its current schemas. At the same time the schemas are being modified to take in information which does not match its currcnt schema.take little Alok out on an animal safari with his parents: “Doggie,” he called excitedly, as he spotted a giraffe. Not “doggie” said his mother, “giraffe”, “gir-affe”. “Doggie” insisted Alok. “And all were doggies,” said his mother with irritation, “deer, lions, the lot”. Alok is obviously interpreting the animals in terms of what he knows. At the same time the differences will also have registered in some way and slowly schemas for giraffes, deer and lions will also be among his increasing array of schemas.
Piaget’s theory (which has been substantially tested on children) is extremely relevant
from the point of view of the primary (and the pre-primary school teacher).
Different Piagetian stages: “I want more juice, I want more juice,” screamed six year old Reena. “Don’t be a silly baby,” said her elder brother, aged 10. ‘We’ve got the same amount. Only your glass is fatter so it looks as though you’ve got less.’ Reena according to Piaget is in the pre-operational stage but her brother is in the concrete operational stage. His reasoning is more sound. The primary school teacher has to deal with two different stages of brain maturity and cognitive ability.
Different types of learning experiences needed: The early primary school years will need classrooms or learning areas where children can actively explore their world and build up schemas, for it is on the simpler schemas that more elaborate ones are built up later. Sand play, water play, make-believe play which may of course include the first two, drawing and colouring, are all the ways in which the child is building up schemas and reinforcing them.

17) Cognitive development in children piaget’s theory Piaget identified 4 stags in which cognitive change takes place First, the sensorimotor in which development is entirely through the senses and through movement (0-2 years); second, the pre-operational (2-7 year), in which children become more able to represent images of their world through language, through make believe play and through art. Piaget stresses their lack of logic and their egocentric perspective at this stage; third, the concrete operational (7-1 1 years) in which the child’s thought processes become much more logical and organized, and fourth, the formal operational stage (11 years and older) in which children are able to think logically, frame hypotheses, etc.
How does the change take place? Piaget takes the help of biology to explain this. The body has physical structures which have evolved in adapting to the environment. Similar- ly the mind too has structures which are developed as the child gradually learns to interpret experience in ever more complex ways. These structures of the mind Piaget calls schemas. All the time the mind is interpreting the world in terms of its current schemas. At the same time the schemas are being modified to take in information which does not match its currcnt schema.take little Alok out on an animal safari with his parents: “Doggie,” he called excitedly, as he spotted a giraffe. Not “doggie” said his mother, “giraffe”, “gir-affe”. “Doggie” insisted Alok. “And all were doggies,” said his mother with irritation, “deer, lions, the lot”. Alok is obviously interpreting the animals in terms of what he knows. At the same time the differences will also have registered in some way and slowly schemas for giraffes, deer and lions will also be among his increasing array of schemas.
Piaget’s theory (which has been substantially tested on children) is extremely relevant
from the point of view of the primary (and the pre-primary school teacher).
Different Piagetian stages: “I want more juice, I want more juice,” screamed six year old Reena. “Don’t be a silly baby,” said her elder brother, aged 10. ‘We’ve got the same amount. Only your glass is fatter so it looks as though you’ve got less.’ Reena according to Piaget is in the pre-operational stage but her brother is in the concrete operational stage. His reasoning is more sound. The primary school teacher has to deal with two different stages of brain maturity and cognitive ability.
Different types of learning experiences needed: The early primary school years will need classrooms or learning areas where children can actively explore their world and build up schemas, for it is on the simpler schemas that more elaborate ones are built up later. Sand play, water play, make-believe play which may of course include the first two, drawing and colouring, are all the ways in which the child is building up schemas and reinforcing them.



18) Types of listening tasks at the elementary level on thebasis ofthe typeofresponseexpected.the listening tasks can be divided into
two categories:
a Tasksrequiring productive responses
b. Tasksrequiring non-productive checks.
Listening comprehension exercises, range from very passive ones, where the child simply Iistens, making very limited responses to very “active one, where the listening is only the basis for more sophisticated activities involving other language skills, imagination or reasoning. Some listening exercises demand no response until the end offairly long stretches of speech, so that when it comes it is very largely a test of memory rather, than of comprehension. Short, active responses during the course of the listening am preferable as they ensure a greater degree of attentiveness and active  involvement of the child. The evaluation of each of the activities is based on the response given. It is for the teacher to decide whether to have an individual/pair or group response.
a Tasks requiring productive responses include: Listening and following directions
Listening and marking or labelling a diagram, map, grids, family trees, etc.listening for words and then making sentences. reconstructing stories listening and answering questions
listening and classifying or categorising
listening and drawing
listening and using the information for a follow-up writing task
b. Tasks requiring non-productive checks include:
information gap or cloze – the child uses a context to fill in the missing informa- tion or words a s/he listens
listening and numbering
listening and ticking off items listening and crossing out items
listening and lettering

















































19) What are the some of the learning disabilities that may affect students how can their problems be resolved? Childrenwith VisualimpairmentThere are children who are totally blind and those with low vision. The totally blind do not have sulXcient vision and cannot find their way while walking. They need the Braille script (reading through touch) as they cannot read the usual text. These children also experience difficulties in learning due to problems in understanding concepts, processing information and establishing social relationships.
The low vision children do not require braille. Their vision may be corrected through a lens. Some can read only large print of 18 points and above. Some require magnifying glasses to read. A few children with low vision have a restricted field of vision. It is necessary to identify such children and provide special help towards their education.
Identification
Observable deformity in the eyes). Rubs eyes frequently
Frequent reddening of eyes
Covers one eye and tilts head fonvard
Holds objects including the book close to hidher eyes


asks other children for help when taking notes from the blackboard Blinks frequently
Eyes water
Squints eyelids together
Frequently complains about headache following close eye work Bumpsinto people or objects
HowYOU ‘CanHelp
Practice in listening comprehension in order to reduce the reading load. Using auditory aids.
Use of more tactile and three dimensional aids.
No differential treatment after children have acquired mobility training.
Using proper contrast and large print for low vision children and braille for the blind.
Minimising sound when teaching.
Reading aloud while writing on the blackboard.
Ask a classmate to work together with the child realising hislher $rengths anc underscoring the lack of vision.
Giving clear and specific directions and verbal clues while giving instructions and teaching.


Children with Hearing and Speech Impairment
Ifyou observe learning in children you realise that listening plays a significant role in learning. The inability to hear interferes in the learning and performance of children. These children may also develop speech problems, and problems in their writing and spellings become more visible. Reading correctly also becomes difficult. It is therefore necessary to identify such children with not as visible an impairement as visual or orthopaedic. For identification, salient observable behaviours displayed by such children are as follows;
Has observable deformity of the ear(s). Frequent dischargefrom the ear(s). Complaints of pain in ears frequently.
Scratches ear(s) frequently. Turnshead on one side to hear better.
Frequently requests teacher to repeat directions and questions. Makes many errors while taking dictation.
While listening to the teacher watches her face carefully. Display speech difficulty
If you identify the above observable characteristics, refer the child for medical assistance to a doctor and tell the parents that appropriate corrective action needs to be taken. In your classroom you may also help to educate the child by carrying .-ut Functional Assessment and incorporating the points given below.
HowYouCanHelp
Seat the child in the front row.
Work on improving hidher listening skills.
Talk clearly, slowly and loudly enough for the child to understand. Face the child as much as possible while talking and teaching.
Do not speak with your face towards the blackboard.
.When you talk to the child see that there is sufficient light on you.
Make extensive use of teachingAearning aids such as charts, objects while teaching.
Encourage peer teaching.
Provide opportunitiesfor drill and practice for teaching children with speech defects.
Use action-oriented situations while teaching.
Avoid moving in the class while speaking.
Use of a lot of visuals individually or in groups, to supplement general teaching inputs.
You as a teacher need to make sure that you plan the education of these children on the basis of curriculum adjustment, use of aids and appliances and keeping in mind the above mentioned hints. It is essential to ensure that the hearing aid functions properly, otherwise no amount of planning or improvisation will be of any use. The child often needs practice and time in order to adjust to an aid.
Childrenwith Low IntellectualFunctioning
Some children consistently show low academic achievement. They may have no physical problems. Often they are poorly adjusted in the classroom. Short attention span, poor memory and slow in following instructions are other visible sips. Some observable behaviours for identifying such children are:
Identification
a Displays poor academic achievement. a Forgetswhatislearntafterashorttime. a Isinattentiveanddistracted.
Shows too much reliance on presentation of concrete objects. a Seeks immediate reward.
a Displays fear of failure.
a Haspoor self-image.
a Lacksinself-conbidence.
a Has nstricted communication.
Has poor muscular ca-ordination. a Seeks fepetition and practice.
Has diiliculty in doing things for h i m s e ~ e r s e l flike eating, dressing,bathing and grooming.
When the child is told to do something, s h e seems to have a proble in under- standing what s k e has been told.
Compared with other children of hidher age, the child appears to be dull or slow. a Compared with other children, the child faces difficulty in learning to do things.
.a
Has difliculty in understanding abstract things.
Seeks more qetition and practice compared to other children.
Takesmore time in learning a particulr skill as compared to other children.
a Avoids participating in classroom activities like other children of hidher age do
HOW YOUCan Help
To make your task of teaching these children simpler, you can take up the following action points:-
a Provide concrete experience to these children while teaching.
a Use repetition, practice, and drill procedure, till mastery is acquired.
Educating Childrenwith SpecialNeeds
Be flexible in transacting curriculum. a Give rewards from time to time.
Break up the task into small steps.
a While teaching, adopt a developmental sequence.
Use a variety of activities to hold the childrens’ attention and interest Children With Learning Disability
These children are of average or abwe average intelligence. They do not have any hearing, visual or physical deformity. But they have specific learning problems in reading. writing, spelling or arithmetic. These problems are due to impairments of their physiological processes, like perception and memory. They may frequently read ‘b’ as ‘d’, ’21’ as’12’ and confuse ‘+’ and ‘x’ signs.
These children need to be identified carefully and helped. Some observable haracterisitics
are:-Identification
Does not read well although hidher oral answers are intelligent.
Makes mistakes in spellings, especially omits letters in words or changes their
place e.g. ‘pat’ instead of ‘tap’, or ‘felt’ as‘left’, ‘rember’ in place of ‘remember’. Writesnumberswronge.g. 12′as’21’.
Acts distracted and cannot remember hidher timetable.
Is always untidy and late in submitting homework and coming to class.
Does not do well in examination although s h e is clever and has no physical disability.
Is so excited that s h e is unable to complete any task
Omits words or lines in reading.
Reads individual letters in the words but has difficulty in putting the sounds of the letters together. For example, s h e may say the sounds WeJg and pronounce ‘bad’ or say the sounds flolg but pronounce ‘frog’.
In reading guesses the words. Readsthenumberswrong’6′as‘9’ and’3′ as’8′.
These children need a lot of training, encouragement and practice to improve their attention span, perception and visual motor coordination. The following suggestive steps can prove to be useful. Try them out.HowYouCanHelp
Make the learning activity interesting and challenging.
Break an activity into smaller steps.
Do not teach together letter/words/numbers that resemble each other. Use lot of activities to reinforce each learning step.
Keep the child busy in activities that interest himiher.
Have frequent starts/stop in an activity.
Use multi-sensory approaches.
Provide different coherent experiences with learning aids.
Give credit and rewards for correct responses.
Encourage participation.
Be flexible in transacting the curriculum.
Provide exercise for improving time concept.
Very often children with learning disability are confused with the educable mentally retarded children. However, they are different. The differences lies in the fact that the educable mentally retarded child faces difficulty in all aspects of learning, unlike the learning disabled child who shows a discrepancy in performance. The learning disabled child is normal in all aspect of learning except for a particular area.
Locomotor Disability
Children with some physical disabilities have locomotor problems. These may relate to the muscles and joints. They may affect mobility of limbs and extremities. These chil- dren may find it difficult to move around. The learning capacity may often be like other children. The physical disability may result in problems with their posture bringing fatigue and limits to performing certain activities. A writing problem may result because of rigidity in the finger muscles. Adjustment problems because of non-acceptance or ridicule by peer may however exist. Since the disability is visible, identification becomes
easier.
Identification
Observable deformity in any part of the body, such as the neck. hand, fingers, wrist, or legs.
Has difEculty in sitting, standing or walking
Has difficulty in picking up, holding and putting objects on the ground Complaints frequently of pain in the joints
Has difficulty in holding a pen to write
Walks jerkily
Involuntary movements of limbs
Hasamputated limbs
If you observe any locomotor disability refer the child to the doctor and tell the parent. In order to move about and function properly the child may require aids.
HowYouCanHelp
Firstly, it is important that you accept the child. Call him by hidher name. Avoid sarcasm and taunting the child for hidher disability as other children also notice it.Involve the child in all learning activities as an equal partner with the peers.
Encourage peer interaction on the basis of mutual respect.
Make suitable seating adjustments in the class.
Seat the child keeping in mind the need for more space for wheel chairlcrutches, etc.
Allow ample space for movement.
Let the child participate in physical activity, games and recreation.
With proper aids and appliances, and positive reinforcement these children can be dealt with easily.


20) What steps and tasks would you teach composition using the process approach to writing? A process writing is a work on one piece of writing which continues through a series of writing classes, through which the child will get a chance to review, and refine a piece of writing. To ensure continuity it is important to set aside some time every day for writing.This approach to writing needs to be distinguished from one where the child is given a topic to write on, and the produced piece of writing is correctedby the teacher The children are introduced to process writing by undertaking at least one piece of writing as a whole class, teacher guided activity so that children understand the different stages of tho writing process. Here the teacher keeps the entire class synchronised and working in unison. Later new fonns of writing may be introduced in a structured, whole class, teacher-directed mode and the actual writing could happen independently with the teacher “conferencing individually” i.e. having quick discus- sions with each child (or in small groups) to try and help the writer understand histher own process and from that try and find ways of working through problems. While we spend a year or may be two years doing process writing in fairly structured classrooms, our ultimate aim of taking children through this process is to lnely children become independent thinkers and writers. Once children have internalised writing as a process it becomes important to allow them to proceed at their own pace, in the’
way. Therefore in later years, i. e. at the middle school level, one would possibly find each child working at a different writing forms and at a different stage of the writing process within the same class. We shall discuss this in greater detail in the next unit. While it is tempting to view the writing process as discrete, linear steps this may not be so. There are often overlaps or sometimes children repeat an earlier stage or add on one of their own.  We need to first, be very clear of their relevance, especially in the context of a language class for second language leamers. We also need to keep our multicultural, large class and fairly structured context in mind, and see how we can use these methods effectively, within these contextsWe also need to be aware that a great advantage that process based methodologies can offer is to allow each child her own way of expressing thoughts and ideas. Within a multicultural context it means that it provides an opportunity for children to write in their local idioms, and tap the richness of their social and cultural backgrounds. Such an approach gives recognition to the child’s cultural heritage, and adds to the child’s strength. This is in contrast to an approach where there is only one single accepted form and style of writing, which may be unfamiliar to a number of children in the class, who come from different social backgrounds. Such a class-makes many children feel unsure and insecure . It gradually makes them feel completely alienated and rejected. Children often internalise negative feelings about themselves. They feel they are incapable of writing, that they are stupid and dull. These feelings become very deep and cause great harm to the child. They germinate and find roots in schools and classrooms which are not sensitive to the special needs of a multicultural class. There is need to acknowledge and provide space for each child to write in meaningful ways about things that are important for her. This is the biggest advantage of process writing. It has tremendous relevance to our social and cultural context. We need to see how we can absorb it into our writing classrooms in workable ways.
Within the context of our large classes for second language learners the most effective ways of looking at the stages of the writing process has been to break it into prewriting, choosing an idea, drafting, revising. proofreading, making a final copy and publishing or sending it to the intended audience. In such classrooms with second language learners, it becomes necessary to first develop a fblnctional competency in the second language by taking all the children through structured or controlled writing experiences in the initial stages.This means that the exercises which require filling in functional words like auxiliaries, prepositions, articles and conjunctions. It would also involve exercises, as well as games and activities to enhance the child’s vocabulary. THE WRITING PROCESSReckoning the fact that the children we are working with are very young, we are limiting our story to one paragraph. At a later more advanced stage, when the children are ready for it, they are introduced to the different aspects of story writing and the different parts of a story
Step one: Choosing an idea
Explain to the children that they will be choosing an idea from their list. Emphasize that choosing an idea is a very important part of writing. Later on they may be writing on their own and they would need to know how to choose an idea that is suitable. If their choice is not interesting for them, they will not enjoy writing about it.
Let the children answer the following questions a Would we like to write about this idea ?
b. Do we remember enough about it ?
Let the children narrow down their list. Encourage discussion. Help the children amve at a conclusion. If the children are not able to decide on one final idea, have a class vote.
Let each child draw a picture about the idea. Although each picture will be different it will help the children remember details. This could be done at home.
Step two Writing the first draft
Explain to them that writers write a first draft just to get their ideas on paper. Then they make changes later on to improve or correct their stories. Emphasize the fact that it is not important for a first draft to look neat. Words or sentences may be added or crossed out, or rewritten, if the writer thinks of a better way to say something. If you like, you could actually show the class samples of first drafts of reports or papers you or anyone else has written to illustrate the fact that a first draft is not a finished piece of writing, but it is merely a start.
When you begin the class story, tell the children to think of information and details that would help someone else “see” a picture of what happened. List all the ideas that children come.out with, even the ones that do not tell us about the story. Let the children find these and circle them. Put up some discussion questions.
-What is the story about? (the main idea)
-Which sentencelsentences do not tell us about the story?
-Is there anything else someone would like to know or need to know? -What other interesting things can we tell?
-How can we make the story seem real?
As the children continue to contribute to the story, write the sentences on the board where they will not be erased, or on a clurt paper. If possible this first draft should show words and sentences tlut have been crossed out as the children change their mind. It need not be neat. As the class story develops, emphasize that this is just the first draft, and that changes can ‘be made later. Let the children decide on a suitable sentence to introduce the story.
Step three: Revise the story
Write the word ‘revise’ on the board. Explain to the children that ‘revise’ means “to change”. Tell the children that they will now read their story again to look for ways in which they can change it to make it clearer and more interesting. They might need to addchange or take away words or sentences to make the story better. While revising put up the following discussion questions
-Does the story have one main idea?
-Are the sentences in the right order?
-Does it have enough detail? Do we need to make it clearer or more interesting? How? -Is there anything we need to describe?
Ask the children specific questions : for example, you may need to focus the children’s attention on some information that is missing. Ask the children to supply the iniorma- tion, use the words that the children use. Emphasize that there is not just one way to revise the story. Point out to the children that there is a special mark to show where to add a word or words. It’s called a caret.
Some writing researches have given a great deal of importance to the discussion that leads to revision. Gradually over time children would learn to discuss their writing in small peer-groups. Each child shares an emly draft, or a paragraph and other children receive the piece by responding to the details. Slowly over time the children are helped to look beyond the content and formatting to the style of writing.
4). Step Four: Proof reading
After the story has been completely revised, everyone in the class copies it out. Tell the children that there is one more step before they are finished with their story. They need to proof read it. Explain to the children that when they proof read, they check to see if they made any mistakes when they copied their stories. Children will want to make sure that their stories are neat and the sentences are written correctly so that everyone can read them easily. Explain to the children that when they proof read they should look for misspelled words, mistakes in capital letters and mistakes in punctua- tion.
Later on when children do their writing individually, they could do the proof reading in pairs or small groups. Two pairs of eyes are better than one! Children should be taught to use beginner dictionaries to check on spelling of words that they are unsure of.
Step Five Make a final copy.
compliment the children on the good work they have done. Tell them that now each one of them would have a chance of making their stories look special. Each child could think of different ways to show their story. It could be pasted onto an interesting shape in coloured paper. It could have some interesting drawings, it could be written on a cut out shape and so on.
Display the childrens’ stories, and let them admire each others work.

21) Define listening and describe its sub skills what activities would you use to enhance auditory perception at the word level in young learners? Listening has been defined in itiaily ways. Linguists and language learners view listening as
The first language skill. It precedes speaking, reading and writing and is used more than the other three together.
more than just hearing, good listening involves an active conscious effort to understand, to evaluate and to appreciate what is heard.
a powerful communication tool that puts us closer to being incharge of our lives by enabling us to make decisions based on evaluated information, insight and under- standing.
a vital mental capacity that involves both social and cognitive processes. In second language instruction for children or adults, the consistent and systematic use oflistening practice, through the useoftapes and ond interaction, by itself. constitutes a holistic approach to language teaching. Linguists have however, also taken a more analytical view of the kinds of s p e S c listening skills that learners need to develop. (see Michael Rost, 1994). Some of the important component skills for listening have been listed as follows:
discrimhat@ between sounds (audito~yperception)
recognizing words
identifyingsttessedwordsand groupingsofwords
-i’ functions (such as greetings, apologies, commands, questions) in a conversation
connectbg linguistic cues to paralinguistic cues (intonation and etress) as well as to non-linguistic cues (gestures and relevant objects in thesituation) in order to construct meaning
using background knowledge (what we already know about the content and form) and the context (what has already been said) to predict and then to confirm meaning.
recalling i m p o m words, topics and ideas. giving appropriate feedback to the speaker reformulating what the speaker has said
Succesful listening involves an integration of these component skills. The integration of these skills constitutes a persons’ listening ability. The child needs to develop the skills of coping with a wide range of situational and performance factors which are outside her control. For example:
The child will need to understand sp&h in situations where communication is made di£Ecult by physical factors such as background noise, distance, etc.
The child must become accustomed to speech which is not perfectly planned, but contains the false starts, hesitations and so on which characterise most everyday speech.
The child will need to understand different accents, especially regional variations in pronunciation, as well as variations in intonations.
There are so many sound around us that children need to develop the skills of becoming selective in their listening and only hear that which is important and relevant to arriving at a meaning. Children also need to know how to listen. Depending on the situation, listening can be intensive i.e. the child is required to be highly attentive, normal, the child can spread his attention over the entire spoken matter.The important thing to remember while planning suitabletasksfor auditory perception at the word level is, that we are concerned primarily with the sounds of the words these could be beginning sounds. medial sounds or ending sounds. The activities may require the children to discriminate between different words on the basis of their differences. or to group words with similar sounds, etc Sound-alike words
SkillsListening to a speech sound and recognising it when it is heard again. The listening experience
The teacher needs to make it clear to the children that since this is a strictly oral activity (i.e oral-aural), the children are not required to spell the words, but rather to identifL the sounds. The teacher accepts matching sounds regardless of their spellings- salt and cirhe for Id, sugar and shells fqr Isht, tea and greet for Id.
The teacher says “we’ll pretend we’re in the bazaar. I’ll name two things that I can see that begin with the same sound. If I say bangles, bananas and papaya, which two begin with the same sound? Let the children add two or three things that they would see in the bazaar, which begin with the same sound. The teacher would then read out her list. And ask the children to raise their hands or clap for an odd sound or write the word they feel does not belong. Initial consonant sounds.
1st salt
/ch/ cheese Ipl potatoes /W csrrots
soap (slippers, cycle, straw, shoes) chutney (chips, chocolates, shampoo, chair) pear (packets, buckets, plates, blankets) kites (cream, candles, charcoal, gold)
Add on more items to the list.
To make the activity more diacult, ask the children to listen to the initial vowel sound of the word you will say. Then from the list of four or five words you call out, the children have to say which words have the some medial vowel sound 4.e. the same vowel sound in the middle of the word.Let the children note the odd one out. Some examples: Initial vowel sound. Medial vowel sounds
/a/ apple ant, lamb, carrot, cake
In this case cake is the odd sound. Make the children sensitive to the fact that we are not looking at alphabets or vowels, but we are listening for similarities and differences in sounds.
Some other words you cauld try
Listening for Perception-Auditory Discrimination Activities
/el egg
/el cheese meat, 101 soap soda, /i/ icecream
bread, pepper, be4 pan. pet, thread pea, bin, heels, ring
coke, bowl, boat, look
rice, bike, iniilt
The words can be taped, and the children asked to listen and respond. Evaluation
Check the number of words each child gets correct. If a child has too many words wrong, you may need to work individually with him.
Variation
Think of an object beginning with a particular sound. Then say “I spy with my little eye something beginning with say p”. Let the children guess. Whoever guesses gets the next turn. Limit the number of guesses.
2. Ear Shnrpeners
Skill- distinguishing betwce,n same and diirerent initial sounds. Listening Experience
Ask the cluldren to stand beside their chairs and tell them.”I will say four words while you listen. Listen to the souild that starts the first word. When you hear a word raise your right hand. Ifyou raise your hand for a word that doesn’t start like the first word, you must sit down.”
Use any of the suggested word groups below or make up your own.
1. dog             boy               day           deer
2. lamb           like               mine         little
3. town          table             duck         touch
4. wall            war               elephant   wasp
5. ape             ate               army         acre
6. eat             egg               east           eel
7. ill              important    ice               igloo
8. October    open            occupy       octopus
9. see           sit                cereal           kite
10. ocean     over           open             october
Variation
Ask the children to distinguish between like and different ending sounds, example, sip, zip, rat, soap, hope, rose. You can also give initial sounds blends like stink, stick, slime or green, grass, glisten or sharp, shoe, chick.
Evaluation
Check the number of correct words each child gets. This will give you a good idea of the child’s ability to discriminate sound.
3. Think fast
Skills Hearing commands and responding quickly, recognising and matching sounds.
One child becomes the leader and come to the front of the class. Slhe calls out a particular initial consonant sound. W e points to any child, who has to stand and say as many words as s h e can beginning with that sound. The other children listen to detect errors. When a child detects an error, s h e takes the next turn. Once again our emphasis here is on sounds and not on spellings. For example for the /h/ sounds we would accept who and horse but not honest. And for the If/ sounds we would we accept phone and photo.
Evaluation
The teacher should note down the number of words each child is able to call out correctly.
4. Clapping on signal
Skills listening attentively for particular words
Responding with an action. Listening Experience
Read out or tape someone reading the following poem about farm animals. Tell the children to clap their hands whenever they hear the name of an animal.
A Walk on a Farm
Lets pretend we are walking
on a farm
And see what we see
Around the barn.
There’s old Motia cow
Who gives milk and moos,
And on the grass she quietly chews. Then the snowy white duck,
Gives a waddle and a quack,
As he watches water roll over his back. See Raja the black horse ?
He likes to neigh
And gallop around
In his pasture all day.
Our friend Mr. Bhondu Cock Struts in his pen
And crows “Cock-adoodledoo” At 5 a.m.
Look at lazy pig I
Oinking and squealing
He wallows in the mud What a slippery feeling I
And here’s Rani Hen
Who clucksallaround
And lays her eggs
Right on the ground.VariationsRead “The three Bears” to your class and ask the children to make a sound or sign whenever one of the three bears is mentioned for example a big grrr for father bear, a middle sized grrr for mother bear and a very faint gm for baby bear.
Use animal stories from the Panchatantra.
Sing “Old Mac Donald had a farn1” and ask the children to do an action every time
they hear an animal sound.
Sing or play the song “There was an old woman who swallowed a fly” Let each child draw a picture of one character in the song such as the spider or the fly or the cow or the horse. Since the song has a lot of repetition, the children need to listen carefully, and have a lot of fin doing this activity.
5. Rhyming clues to riddles
Skills Being able to rhyme words Listening Experience
The object of this game is to fit the clue given by the leader with a suitable rhyming word. Here the clues pertain to sound and meaning. For example, the leader might say “I’m thinking of a colour that rhymes with chew. What is it?” (blue).
The child who answers correctly becomes the leader and presents the next riddle. If a child’s answer satisfies the requirements of the question, it is considered correct, even if it is not what the leader had in mind.
It’s a good idea to give the children a few minutes time before starting the game to prepare one or two of these rhyming riddles. You may want to act as a leader for the first few times, especially with younger children. Here are a few suggested rhyming riddles.
Variations
In his pasture all day.
Our friend Mr. Bhondu Cock Struts in his pen
And crows “Cock-adoodledoo” At 5 a.m.
Look at lazy pig I
Oinking and squealing
He wallows in the mud What a slippery feeling I
And here’s Rani Hen
Who clucksallaround
And lays her eggs
Right on the ground.
Listening for Perception-Audibv Discrimination Activities
I’m thinking of an animal that rhymes with hat. (cat, bat, rat)
I’m thinking of a flower that rhymes with hilly (lily)
I’m thinking of somethingtoeat that rhymes with lake (cake)
I’m thinking of a colour that rhymes with sack (black)
I’m thinking of an ocean animal that rhymes with tail (whale)
I’m thinking of that part of our 24 hour day that rhymes with fight (night)
6. Wordendings
Skills Listening attentively to the word endings.
calling out words beginning with a specific sound. Listening Experience
Divide the class into two equal lines facing each other. The teacher designates the first child to play. Slhe calls out any word eg. kitten (To make the game more challenging, words can be limited to particular categories, for example names of animals, or names of countries). The child directly opposite himher in the next line must say a word that begins with the ending sound of the word kitten i.e. ‘n’ and the game continues. A word cannot be repeated. A player sit down if s/he repeats a word or is unable to think of a word. When all the children in one line are down, the other line wins.
7. Happu hathi and Gopu the goat
Skill Perceiving the direction of sounds. Listening Experience
The children form a circle and choose one child to be Happu hathi and another one to be Gopu the goat. Both children are blindfolded and placed in the centre of the circle. Happu hathi tries to catch Gopu the goat. He calls out “Gopu, where are your’
Gopu must reply, “I’m here Happu.”
Both children depend entirely upon hearing to determine the location of the other- Happu in trying to catch Gopu and Gopu in trying to elude Happu.
When Happu catches Gopu, both children choose replacements for themselves and the game continues.
8. Rhyming words
Skill To be able to identify words that rhyme
To be ahle to discriminate words that do not rhyme. Listening Experience
Read out each horizontal line of five words after directing the children to listen for one word that does not rhyme. Children may call out the non-rhyming word or write down the non-rhyming word.

Spotting the sound-alike words Skill developing attentive listening
beingabletodiscriminatebetweenwordsthatsoundalike. Listening Experience
Read out a simple story for the children to hear. The children could be made to hear the story on tape. Tell the children to listen very carefully to the story, as you will repeat it again, but thenexttime you will changesomeafthewords inthestory with different words which sound like the earlier words. The children will have to spot the changed words. Let the children number the words and tell you how manywords have been changed. Let them note the words that have been changed.
In the story given below, the words in bracket are the words that have A n changed. You can use any suitable story. Do not make the story too long.
The Best’timeof the year
It was winter. It was cold (bold)
How unhappy I am” said the Donkey (Monkey). “It is cold, I have no green (clean) grass to eat. Ohl when will spring comet”
Spring (Bring) came. It was warm. The sun (been) was bright. The Donkey had plenty to eat. But he had to work very hard. When night (flight) came he was tired.
“When will summer comel” said the Donkey “In summer I will not have so much to do”
Summer came. Days were long (strong) and nights were short. It was hot (not). The Donkey had no time for sleep (creep). He was tired.
“I don’t like summer. Oh when will autumn comel” cried the Donkey.
Autumn came, the crops (drops) were harvested and the Donkey carried hay (gray) and
straw upon his back (sack) all day long. He had no time for sleep (sleet). “Oh,when will winter comel” cried the Donkey.
“In winter I have not must work to do. Oh,how happy, Ishall be in winter1 It is the best resttime ofthe yearl”

22) What factors need to be kept in mind for selecting texts for guided wrting suggest some activities based on guided writing?While selecting suitable texts for linguistically guided writing, one needs to keep the following factors in mind :-.
Variety
Children need a wide exposure to different forms of written texts, which are appropriate for different communicative purposes. If the children have only seen descriptive and narrative prose in their text books they cannot be expected to produce other varieties of the written language, such as letters, poems or reports.
Contest
We need to not just teach different kinds of writing, example: narration, description: etc. but we need to see that these are practised within the wider context of a text. For example, a letter may involve some description, and some narration, while a report might provide a setting for writing. Writing of a horoscope, or making plans for a school trip would give practice in writing in the future tense.
Realistic or authentic settings
All too often writing tasks lack reality for the children because they do not give them the feeling that they are writing for somebody. The writing is done solely for the benefit of the teacher who ”co~~ects”it. It becomes important to identify those forms of writing which are most likely to be relevant to the needs of primaq school children such as various types of personal communication (diaries,
journals, notes, messages, greetings) and more formal communication – such as writing simple stories and poems.
Interest
Writing tasks should suit the children’s interest. Fun and humour interest little children. Allow them to use nonsense words in rhymes. Let them imagine and describe impossible events, for example, what would happen if the school went up into the sky? Children enjoy make-believe. Allow them to write about things that matter to them. Provide them with language which they really need
in their daily lives. Begin with the child as a centre then choose tasks that would concern and interest the child.
5. Support
We should remember that writing task are generally imposed on children. Chil- dren who are beginners may not have the relevant ideas, or be sufficiently stimulated by the task to think of ideas. This is further compounded by their inhibitions in using the second language. Writing activities therefore, wed to be supported initially by providing controlled, structured tasks. Gradually the tasks should give children more oppormnity to do their own thinking. At this stag the tasks are linguistically guided. i.e, the children are given some stimulus such as a visual or notes or a framework, and using that support they do their own writing. At a more advanced stage when children are ready to t&e on free- writing, they should be introduced to the writing process, initially through guided, whole class writing in which every child in the class is involved in one piece of writing, which is produced with the participation of every child. Later the chjldren start doing individual process writing, and support is given by the teacher at the pre-writing stage in two ways. Firstly by creating a suitable climate through discussing experiences, displays. or brainstorming sessions. Secondly, by equipping the children with suitabic: vocabulary, g r a m and organisational skills such as linking devices or formatting which is specific to that form of writing. We shall go into this in detail in the next unit.
6. Sympathetic attitude
We cannot expect a high level of proficiency from second language learners particularly at the initial stages. We should not look so much at what the children have failed to achieve, but rather .at what they have succeeded in doing.
7. Flexibility
Handling a large class of 40 or more young children in an active learning
situation is not easy. Especially in the case of very young children , as the are
not socially equipped for group work , and need constant individual attention.
We also find that the class dynamics varies from one secuon of the same class to another, or in the same class from one day to another. On one day the children
will work in a very focused manner, and on another day they will be vely
distracted. We need to set rules with the children and see that these are enforced,but more importantly, if an activlly is just not working out on one day or the children are too hyper, drop the activity, and switch to something more suitable.
This kind of flexibility is required particularly when we are dealing with large numbers.
Activities to practice sentence linking and sequencing
Our goal through these types of activity is to familiarise the children with cohesive devices which are used in composing a text. They can then begin to combine struc- tures which they have learnt orally to form an acceptable sequence in writing. For this purpose, in order to make any headway, it will be necessary to introduce a selected number of linking devices and to practise these through writing. It is upto the teacher to decide when and how many of these devices to teach. These might include
Types of Writing in the Primary School
conjunctions sequencers linkers
until although, so, when.
then, first, next, after that
moreover, however, therefore, so that
The teacher would initially give some sentence level practice
Ask the children to combine simple sentences using the given linking device. I went home. I had dinner (then).
I want happy. I heard the sad story (until), and so on.
This kind of activity is largely mechanical and does not require the children to think
abut the meaning. little thought
For example
Rahul sat waited
watched played
Next they may be asked to choose linking devices which need a
2)
until
it became dark
the sun had set
the bell rang
his mother called him
The child has to think of a meaning relationship between the two clauses.
To make the activity more meaningful, short texts like these can be embed- ded within the context of a longer one ( e.g. a letter, a dialogue).
For example
Ask the students to complete a short text, using suitable linking words or phxases from the given list. (choose a letter, a joke, a short.one paragraph story, etc. so that while choosing the word, the child has to keep the meaning of the whole piece in mind).
5, Nehru Place Geeta Chowk New Delhi 6. 10. 94
My Dear Buchi,
You have begun to write in a very neat handwriting.In your last letter you asked me
why I never wrote in my own handwriting. Well my handwriting in very scrawly ……………….I never bothered about it in school, ……………………….. one can read it. I have to type write my letters.
……………………. the other day, I wrote a message for my neighbour’s daughter. It said ‘tomorrow is a holiday’, ……………………………she read it as ‘tomorrow is a pollday’. Do you know what poll day means? …………………..she didn’t, she decided to find out the next day in school. Can you guess what happened?
Write soon. I am looking fonvard to hearing from you.
All the best

Manu
Complete the ietter given above. Use suitable words or phrases from the list given below :-
however, by the way, so, because, well, therefore, although, maybe, perhaps.
Notice that ‘exercise’ like the one given above, in the form of a complete text, also serve to introduce the students to such points as the layout of a letter, different modes of address and salutation. This could be done as a whole class a e v i t y on the black- board, and then children asked a copy it out into their notebooks.
C) Activities to practise sentence linking and sequencing
The students are asked to form texts by reordering sentences given in a ‘scrambled list’. While the purpose of this activity is to get students to think cuefully about the most appropriate order, it must not be allowed to become a simple puzzle. To help students the opening sentence may be indicated. They should work in pairs to discuss various possibilities.
Dogs love to fetch things
Besides, it doesn’t matter very much if the stick gets lost.
It is the right shape and size to fit across the dog’s mouth.
A stick is the best thing for a dog to fetch.
Most people love to throw things for a dog to fetch.
It is better than a bone, because a dog does not want to give the bone back to the thrower.

23) What are the difference between grammar games and grammar practice  activities suggest some specific useful games and activities for the elementary classroom with broad guidines for using them Grammar games are similar to play way methods of teaching. Practice in important areasof grammar is provided through games. So while students think they are just playing a game, in fact they are unconsciously getting practice in a particular grammatical strcture. Learning becomes fun.Grammar games are similar to play way methods of teaching. Practice in important areasof grammar is provided through games. So while students think they are just playing a game, in fact they are unconsciously getting practice in a particular grammatical strcture. Learning becomes fun.Game 1 Super Duper.
Level BeginnersIElementaq. Grammar Parts of speech: Verb
Procedure Ask one child to leave the classroom. Let the others choose a verb. (eg)snore. Now ask the child to come back. He has to guess the verb
by asking questions, where, in the place of the verb he uses “super duper”.
(eg) Do we super duper at
all times of the day ?
Do we all super duper
?
Can you super duper when you are eating
? etc.
Make
sure that the questions require only “Yest” or “no” as answer. Do not ask “Why”question (eg) WhenWhyIHow do you super duper ? When the child makes the correct guess, he has won. Now ask another child to go out.
Compare this with
a traditional exercise on verbs : (eg) Fill in the blanks with suitable verbs.
the sun     
in the east.
Many people       heavily when they sleep.
Game 2 Noughts and Crosses
Level Secondary
Grammar Determiners
Procedure Most of your students should be familiar with the game ‘noughts’ and ‘crosses’. Drawthefollowingontheblackboard.
some       all      both

much     any        an

many      the          a
Divide the class into groups. The
first group should choose one of the words and construct a sentence with it (eg) Some people love grammar.Now the second group should the selection of words so that they win the game
and not allow the other group to
win. That is, they should select words across a row, down a cloumn, or diagonally.
This game
can be adopted to apply to any grammar area.
(eg)
Partsof speech, prepositions, conditionalsetc.
P (adapted from Rinvolucri M.)
Game 4 Silly Stories
Level
All lwels
Grammar
Past Simple, Past Progressive
Procedure The teacher beigns a silly story with the first sentence and then
asks the learners to continue.
(eg) Teacher
: I saw a horse sitting in the kitchen. It was eating…. Student 1: a piece of cake
Student 2
:anddrinkingacupoftea
Teacher : I asked the horse
Stud@t 3 :Don’t you have milk in your tea
? (Adapted from Wright et al)
Grammar practice activities

a) Level : Primary
Grammar
: Prepositions
Draw a picture with a no. of chuldren hiding in different places (eg) behind the door, on the roof, under a tree, in the basket, near the window etc. Also draw the picture of a mother looking for them. Tell the students to help the mother to
search for the children. They will come out with sentences using different prepositions.
Level
:Primary
Grammar : Future Tense.
Imagine that you are in charge of organizing a ‘Lucky dip’ programme for the school fete. From the Lucky dip basket, people would pick out pieces of paper which would foretell their future. Prepare
20 statements about the future.
You will win a prize today.
You will have a surprise visitor this week. etc.
e) Level
: Primary Grammar : Adjectives
Many advertisements
are catchy. Children love them. They c a i be used for teaching grammar. For example consider the advertisement ‘Goldspot is a Zing Thing’.
Askthestudentswhatwordstheycouldsubstitutefor’Zing’ Theywouldcomeout with adjectives (eg) delicious, tasty, etc.
Guidlines for using grammar games/practice activities

To begin with, when learners are not familiar with the new approach, games could be used to supplement the main course. Later as teachers and learners acquire greater familiarity, they may be used as substitute for parts of the course.
We must remember to choose a game appropriate to the level of the learner. The instructions should be clear. We may also use the mother tongue to explain the rules of the game, if necessary.
At the beginning all learners may not participate enthusiastically. Some may feel shy and inhibited. Do not compel them to participate. A time will come when they would feel willing to participate.
d) The teacher should be alert and note when learners begin to get tired of a game. At this stage, he should stop and change aver to another activity. Otherwise there is the danger that learners may develop grammar game fatigue.
In the course of playing the game learners are sure to make mistakes. However the teacher should not stop the game in order to correct the mistakes. He should quietly note down the mistakes without interrupting the game, and take them up for discussion later.
Grammar games could be used in three ways
before presenting a structure
to diagnose learner’s knowledge
ii) after presenting a structure
as feedback to find out how much learning has
taken place.
iii) as revision.

24) Receptive or assimilative language skills Reading and listening are the receptive or assimilative language skills. They are both means of getting information second hand, yet both are active processes and require effort. In reading the individual determines her own rate. The child has time to pause and evaluate ideas, to organise her thoughts, and to reread and compare. In contrast the spoken words or sounds define the listening rate. There is also a sense of finality to the spoken word, for there is usually no chance to relisten to and little time for reflection on what has been said. Yet listelling lias the advantage over reading by being a kind of personal experience between the listener and the speaker or between the producer and consumer of language. Voice inflections, gestures, facial expressions and body postures help the listener to hear what the speaker is saying. Listening is thwefora the assimila- tion of aural plus visual clues, while reading is the assimilation ofvisual clues alone

25) Writing across the curriculum The uniqueness of a school is that it is a place where a whole community of learners can be given opportunities to be reflective about what and how they are learning. It is a place where the learning which occurs in the present can act to give new life and vitality to the past and create new possibilities for the future. The organisational means for this empowerment is the curriculum. In order t~ construct a curriculum that empowers children to be actively involved in the learning process, we need to be able to look at:
the way children learn naturally;
what conditions support and enhance learning;
how learners become active participants in the learning process.
While we shall not go into these three points in detail, it is perhaps enough to say that we have plenty of research evidence to show that in real life children do not compartrnentalise learning. In fact learning progresses from simpler, concrete, general and more holistic forms initially, to more complex, abstract, speciiic and fragmented learning at a later
advanced stage. This has great relevance to the development of writing skills in the initial years of school. Before we look speciiically at writing tasks from ‘across the curriculum’, let us take a glimpse at the phiIosophy of integrating the curriculum through what may be called ‘holistic teaching’. Holistic teachers endeavour to place the children’s learning within the context of their own experiences. There is a fundamental belief that when learning is meaningful, children learn. In fatt in a meaningful environment it is difficult to stop children from learning. Within the constraints of the formal syllabus, such teacherstry,asfaraspossible, not to fragment learning or divide and subdivide it into artificial time periods or subject areas. They recognise the fact that boundaries between subject areas have been artificially created, purely for convenience. There are overlaps and a flow between subjects. In the child’s mind there are no compartments. These are artificially created. Whether the writing happens in a mathematics class or a writing class, it draws upon the same writing competencies and skills. What may need as much focus in a science or maths class is the reading and writing skills that are available with the children, and whether they are adequate fo_-$e child to be able to do the required task. Sometimes the difficulty in solving a word problem in mathematics, is one with understanding the language. It is essential for teachers to encourage reading, writing, and speaking in all areas of the curriculum. They attempt to integrate all areas of the curriculum. They are likely to take advantage of an opportunity to teach a geography lesson during a reading class, if the need arises, or the other way round. They are aware that natural learning that continu- ously takes place in the real world is not fragmented. They make efforts to integrate the children’s learning across the various subject areas, to the extent possible.Language naturally pervades all areas of learning. It is for us teachers to use every opportunity that the curriculum offers, for developing language skills. In this section we shall focus our attention on how writing skills can be integrated with other areas of the curriculum. However, similar attention needs to be given to the other language skills, namely reading, listening and speaking.

26)Suggest some  practical ways in which you can encourage a healthy self esteem among learners illustrate them with activities Self concept (how you see yourself) and self esteem (evaluation of self i.e. what you think of your own worth or value) slowly develop from early childhood. At first children tend to describe themselves in terms of what they can do and later in terms of what they feel. They also begin to absorb what others think of them and so their self concept slowly develops. Self esteem grows in the same way. By age 7 they know how good they are at doing things.Self esteem is negatively affected by overly strict parenting as it conveys the message that the child cannot manage her own behaviour. Self esteem is also aected by a competitive school environment in which stress is placed on performance. The situation is worsened by humiliating remarks or public comparisons of one child with another. Teachers who subtly convey that low achieving pupils perform badly because they lack the ability to do well also affect self esteem negatively.Self esteem and behaviour: High self esteem leads to better behaviour. Low self esteem is associated with low self image and can result in low grades, aggression and violence.Self esteem and learning: When Raju fails at a task does he attribute his failure to a lack of ability? And when he succeeds at a task does he believe that his success was only a matter of luck? Psychologists would say that Raju has developed ‘learned helplessness’ and that he has a low expectation of success. Children like Raju will avoid challenging tasks only to protect themselves from feelings of failure. Over time such children do not pursue tasks which they are actually capable of mastering and can fail to realize their potential. Even when they are making career choices later in life they will choose a less challenging alternative.Shaila responds to success and failure differently. If she fails she thinks she should have tried harder and when she succeeds she credits it to her own ability and effort. Children like Shaila tend to focus on learning goals rather than performance goals. when Shaila failed in her factorization test she went to her teacher and asked for help with understand- ing this concept and began to practise more problems. Naturally, in the next test she performed better. What do you think Raju would have done in the same situation? Children like Shaila are said to be ‘mastery oriented’How did Raju develop this ‘learned helpless’ style? Adult feedback has a powerful impact on developing this style. Teachers can show a low opinion of a child’s ability. Parents who set very high standards but actually believe the child is not very capable also foster this style. Shaila is fortunate to be mastery oriented for girls are especially prone to develop ‘learned helplessness’. This is true also of children from minority groups, and low income groups. In India,, children from lower castes will tend to develop this problem.Can we turn a Raju with his ‘learned helplessness’ into a mastery oriented child? Yes, this can be done effectively if the task is begun in middle childhood. The technique is called ‘attribution retraining’. Children are taught that success is due to both ability and effort and also to focus on mastering the problem area rather than on securing better grades. They can also be taught metacognitive and self regulatory strategies. One very powerful motivator is the presence of adult models of success.



































































27) Do the underpriviledged learners need special english language learners programmes how are those different from mainstream programmes?The underprivileged learners’ need for education is greater than their privileged counter- parts. So also their need for learning english is greater.Learning English in India, because of historical and practical reasons, has become essential for every educated person. It has developed into variety in its own right ‘Indian English’. Besides, English in India plays an important role in education, particularly in Science and Technology where it is the medium of instruction. It forms a major subject for selection tests for prestigious jobs both at the state and the national level. An adequate command of English is also necessary for getting a good j’ob in the private sector. In view of all these factors, the need for learning English on the part of underprivileged learners is really great if they are to join the mainstream. It is largely because of their poor command of English that their representation in class I jobs is very low. In fact underprivileged learners joining All India Institutes of Science and Technology on the basis of reservation are found to dropout partly because of their poor command of English.Underprivileged learners have some special needs for learning English. English in India is associated with elite culture. It has a high status symbol. Thus, an adequate command of English on the part of underprivileged learners will raise their social status. It will act as an agent of status equalisation for them.While the underprivileged learners’ need for English, is great, their proficiency in English is found to be very low in comparison to their privileged ocunterparts and they have more problems in learning it. Some of their major problems in learning English are as follows:-
i. Fear of English as
a subject of study
For various reasons underprivileged learners have a great fear of English which comes on their way of learning it. Their fear of English is partly due to the associa- tion of English with the elite culture in India and partly due to the inappropriate, ill- prepared text-books and teaching methods. The teachers of English who are often the members of the privileged class are also responsible for creating this fear in their underprivileged learners.
ii. Language load and poor reading skills
Underprivileged learners in India are often the speakers of a non-standard variety of a language or of a minority language. Education through their language and dialect has not been possible-so far. Reading skills are easy to develop in learners though their first language. As this has not been possible for most of the underprivileged learners’in India, they are poor in reading skills. But reading skills in English are very important in India as reading constitutes the most important resources for exposure to English.
iii.. Inappropriate textbooks, teaching methods and testing procedure English textbooks are biased in favour of the privileged class. So also the methods of teaching and testing. The content, characters and even the pictures in English textbooks, for example, are all biased in favour of the privileged learners. The families and characters one finds in an English textbook are from upper class culture. Similarly the test, test materials and testing procedures are based on upperclass culture. Underprivileged learners, as said earlier, lack test-taking skills

28) What conditions will enhance a child’s language acquisition?the development of language may play an important part in the child’s inJellectual or cognitive development. As a child hears arid uses words she is helped to see some kind of order in what she is experiencing, and is able to recognise those instances which have some basic qualities in common. In this way language helps the child to begin to classify objects, actions and situations which make up her experience. It also becomes a way to fixexperiences in memory, and to think about similarities, differences and relationships, and through this process create an order in the world that the child experiences.
Another important use language is concerned with the speaker’s own actions. As a young child talks to herself it i s almost as though’ it helps to bring her actions under control, so that the action is learned and becomes familiar , until the point when the actions are so wellrehearsed and automatic that the use of
directive language is no longer needed
While the child’s’experiences provide the basis from which meaning, and therefore language can develop, at the same time what other people around the child say to the child also plays an important part in stimulating the child’s actions and setting value on them. The child’s language is extended by the parent’s responses to her statements and questions. Adults tend’to use words so fieely and easily that they teach them to the child at almost every opportunity. They encourage the child to say the word aloud, correcting her when she says it incorrectly or applies it to the wrong object, and rewarding
her when she uses the word or symbol comdy.
What is shown to be worthwhile by others is likely to become worthwhile to the child. During r e n t years a body of evidence has grown which seems
to indicate that the way in which the child learns to use language is dependent upon early experiences in the home. We can assume that while all children hold some experiences in common from which everyday concepts can be built, there will be differences between children, in the specific knowledge they have built up from living in particular environments. Ail children learn to get along with others around them, and adjust to some extent to what is expected of them, in order to fulfil their need for acceptance and to gain love
and recognition. But what is expected of them may be very different and so what they l m is very different. Differences in the way children use language, thus stem fiom the experiences in the social environment of their homes. Although the ability to imitate soundsplays a tremendous part in the child’s ability to acquire vocabulary and struc- ture for her utterances, learning to use language is clearly much more complex than being able to imitate sounds. Imitation is not enough to explain how a child gains meaning and gains the adult’s way of using language. Most adult’s seem to help the child quite intuitively as they talk, sometimes simplifying what they say to accommo- date the child’s immaturity, and sometimes speaking almost as they would to an adult or older child. Often they take what the child has said and repeat a corrected version, which sometimes the child will repeat immediately. In this way it seems the child gains the experience she needs for distinguishing the more ambiguous aspects of structure
in talk, and gradually more and more talk gains the character of the adult’s.
The young child goes through two phases in learning to speak: The first stage is the passive stage in which the child comes to understand much of what is said to her but makes little use of the language herself; the second stage is an active stage in which the child begins to use words and word groups. So by listening to language the toddler learns language and through language, about the world she lives in. By the time the child comes to school her language patterns are largely set in her native or first language. She has already learned to use the sound system, grammar, and vocabulary which is characteristic of her home and neighbourhood. In general, research in language development indicates that that a supportive, non- threate~ngenvironment, which provides for vocabuhy growth and a variety of experiences in the formative years,may makt the difference between a child who is able to do school work and one who is unable to do so. The early years are the root years during which children meet the challenge of knowing who they are in relation to people outside the confines of the home and family. They build their strategies of rejection, of acceptance, of domination, of submission, and of leading ,
of following, of compromising.

29)How do we decide that a given writing task is suitable for a particular list parameters that can be used to decide the suitability of the tasksThe writing task that has been selected should be suitable for the developmental level of the children. It also needs to the take into account the amount of language available with most of the children in the class. There is no point in giving a class of beginners a report to write. They will not be able to do it. They need something like simple instructions or notes to write. These may need to be in a guided form. The teacher should focus on the needs of the learners while selecting a task, so that it helps them to acquire greater functional competency and gives them practice in the areas where they are weak.The writing tasks should be given in realistic contexts, so that they are meaning
and language learning takes place in real life situations. This makcs the children see the usefulness of these tasks as they cater to their real needs. This greatly motivates children to write. It is however, very important to make these tasks interesting and provide variety. Language learning takes place very efficiently when it is relaxed and enjoyable. Games are found to be very effective. The tasks should not be in the same form every time. Children need variety. They need to do different kinds of writing, with
different functions. This equips them to deal with real situations.The writing tasks should take the interest of the children into account. There is no point in asking a class of six year olds to write a report on eve-teasing, it is not something they know or care about.While selecting suitable writing task we need to do an analysis of the language demands and language needs of our learners.Language demands refer to a learning activity irrespective of the learner, and are a statement of the language skills any learner needs in order to be able to perform the task successfully. Language demands are established on the basis of the analysis of school learning tasks. This kind of an analysis is oilen done adhoc and inadequately in the course of daily or weekly preparation and teaching. From time to time, howev- er, it needs to be done carefully. For example, if the children are vyriting speeches for a class debate they may need support or reinforcement of grammatical structures which would enable them to give opinions such as: ‘in my view’, ‘I feel’ ‘according to me’, etc. They may need practice in logically presenting views. They may also need to differentiate between facts and opinions.Thus the language demands refer to the language requirements of the whole class, as viewed together.language needs refer to the individual learner and are a statement of what she needs to be able to do with language in order to perform a given activity or range of activi- ties successfully. In other words, different learners will have different needs with respect to the same activity. Normally, the term ‘language needs’ refers to those areas of school language use in which the individual learner needs support. For example, spellings, or in the use of the past tense. The teacher in this case would give extra practice to the individual child either through dictation or a worksheet or by directing the child to a suitable exercise in the workbook. Language needs are established on the basis of the analysis of a child’s performance in an activity or a range of typical activities. Language needs are visible, for example through errors for example ‘I am came yesterday'( in such a case the child requires additional practice in the use of simple past tense); they are also visible through omission or lack of variety in speechor writing. Second language learners often.tend to repeat the same sentence patterns particularly while writing. With young children we often find over generalisations of a newly acquired grammatical structure or patterns, for example when children just learn the ‘ed’ form of regular verbs in the past tense, we often come across words like ‘bringed’, ‘knowed’, ‘gived’ and so on. The learner in this case needs special reinforce- ment in the past tense forms of irregular verbs.
Language demands and needs can be expressed in a varigty of ways. To assess the language demands of a class or the language needs of a child we need to look at
:-
Skills
: the ‘classical’ four language skills i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing.
-the combinations in which these skills occur naturally i.e.
talk (LS), or note taking (RW)
-lower order skills and sub-skills, for example grammatical accuracy, letter formation, word recognition.
Function
: i.e. the communicative purpose of a given piece of writing. For example defining, describing a process to a friend, writing a stoly for a younger. child. The communicative function often determines the choice of the writing form.
Concepts
: in young children language plays an important role in developing basic concepts of number, shape, size, spatial relationships, time, direction and so on. Lack of understanding of basic concepts is often due to misunderstandings on account of i n s d c i e n t language. Diaculty in maths are often due to this.
Style
: i.e. the degree of formality and their characteristics e.g. more formal academic writing, less formal personal language. It also has to do with the appropriateness of the language to the particular form of writing, as well as the child’s own particular way of expressing ideas.
Grammar
: i.e. accuracy in the use of grammatical rules as well as conventions. Children often need additional practice for example, in the correct usage of irregular verbs or frequently confused words or commonly misused forms.
6. Lexis : accuracy in word recognition and in the productive use of the word, as well as richness in the variety of available vocabulary.
7. Sounds/spellings : accuracy in the production of sounds and sound patterns, spellings and spelling patterns.
8. Discourse : the ability of a child to understand or produce a stretch of language through the control of linking devises so that there is a logical flow in the writing. In other woids, the ability to organise a piece of writing appropriately with attention to sequencing and correct order in the flow of the writing.

30) How does prior knowledge help us construct meaning out of a passage give examples of some prereading activities that can involve the prior knowledge? A
ll human beings store in memory a large amount of information about the world. They draw on this store to help them in acquiring new meaningful information, drawing inferences and constructing meaning out of bits of information. These cognitive resources play an important part in the way readers understand and remember whatever is read. All readers must be able to bridge the gap between information presented in the text and the knowledge in their heads,Reading comprehension is the activity of relating the knowledge the reader already possesses to the meaning in the text, assimilating it and then accommodating it with the existing knowledge. It is the activity of constructing and reconstructing meaning as the reader interacts with the information in the text, before, during and after reading.The skills view of reading shows what the reader understands by responding to a particular task or a series of tasks. For example, answering questions about what is read indicates what is understood but doe: not explain how the reader arrived at the correct response. The Process view of reading is primarily concerned with the acquisitioil of information during line-by-line reading. It does not go on to explain how readers are able to understand or remember an entire text, such as a story. The view of reading as comprehension tries to show how the reader’s knowledge of the world, knowledge of the structure of texts and the capacity to infer enable a reader to understand and remember information presented in a text.One source of prior knowledge of particular importance to the understanding of narration is script knowledge, This knowledge consists of ordinary every day informa- tion stored in memory. It is derived from repeated experiences and associations with places, events and situations in day to day living. Examples of script knowledge -are knowledge of what happens, at post offices, banks, railway stations, football matches and so on. Each of these situations shares a whole series of common associations of people’s roles, basic contexts, typical relationships and basic events. People who share a common culture tend to acquire a good number of common scripts. Consider the example:
Raghu went into National Cafe. He ordered
J chappathies and a tea. The waiter served him and gave him the bill. Raghu left some tip for the waiter and walked out.
Questions such as (1) Did Raghu eat the Chappathies?
(2) Were the chappathies served on a plate? (3) Did Raghu pay the bill at the countcr or to the waiter? and many more can be raised and these can be answered on the basis of the shared knowledge of a culhual group.
Script knowledge is a powerful resource for understanding
a text. It is especially usefirl in understanding narrative material. Most stories contain dialogue, descriptions and events whose meanings need not be explicitly statcd by the writcr because readers already have the script knowledge to fill in the details in the narrative. Script knowledge enables the readers to predict, infer as well as to selectively sample the informa- tion in the narrative material.Besides using script knowledge, readers often engage in script elaboration. This involves the generation of associated ideas or embellishment of ideas which are consistent with the script knowledge a reader has but are not necessarily true. Readers engage in script elaboration when reading the title of the story, names of characters/ places, specific scenes, specific dialogues descriptions of characters and so on. Such an activity permits the reader to get more involved in relating to the text and to make conjectures beyond what can be normally derived from the information explicitly stated in the text.Reading comprehension is intricately related to the knowledge of the structure to the text. Text structure refers to aspects of the text that signal how the context is related. It deals with cohesion and coherence.Children must learn to use these signals and other structures in ordet to follow and weave together the meaning of the text.Children aquire increasingly complex knowledge of story structure with age and exposure to stories. Studies have revealed that there is a considerable growth in story structures among children between 4 and 9 years of age.
The categories that
are commonly included in a simple story are Setting (introducing the main character, the physical, social. temporal context) Initiating ‘Event (an event, or natural occurrence which initiates or causes a response in the main character) Internal Response (an emotion or goal of the main character), Attempt (an overt action by the main character to attain hidher goal), Consequence (an event, action, or end which signals the attainment or non-attainment of lthe protagonist’s goal) and Reaction (an emotion, action or end state).
older children
are better than younger ones in filling in missing details. Older children are also able to produce more detailed retelling of stories with discrepant structures than younger ones. Both first and fifthstandard studies best recall the setting. initiating events and story consequence. Middle episodes are usually forgotten. Younger children also have considerable difficulty in comprehending pictures and stories ihat do not use a forwardardered, logical sequence. Pictures accompanying stories aid all children in the elementary school in remembering stories.Oh the other hand, the knowledge and use of expository text structure to understand and remember a text is acquired rather slowly by the elementary school children and requires considerable help from the teachers.The knowledge of general text helps the reader in constructing and reconstructing the referential relationships among units of information in a text.Reading comprehension depends very much on the reader’s capacity to draw inferences. Inference involves perceiving relationships between units of information, based on what the reader already knows, information explicitly stated in the text, information implied in the text or any combination of these sources. Readers will have to use either backward or forward inferences while reading a text. Since sentences are always part of a larger context, the reader will have to make the inferences necessary to connect the sentences for working out the meaning of the text. “Babu ate an orange. It was juicy”is an example of Backward Inference and “They drove too fast. The police did not care about the emergency” is an example of Forward Inference.When inferences are made, it i s the semantic content of the text that determines which sentences are most important to connect in order to understand the information in the text. Connections between all the sentences allow the reader to get the literal meaning. But sentences whose referential relationships are lexically and topically ambiguous cannot be understood so easily Therefore prior knowledge of text structures and inferencing must be used by the reader to bridge the gap between what is already known and the new information given in the text. As soon as a young reader is able to decode a series of words, or a word occurring in a meaningful context (such as the word Book Store on the door of a place to buy books), then these three resources are in operation. The use of these three resources continues throughout one’s life.

31)Variations within the same class PrimarylElementary school  signify  Class 1 to Class V. In a few States it signifies Class I to Class IV. It encompasses therefore a wide age group right from the age of 6 to the age of 11 the situation becomes worse because of the ‘private’ schools which are rapidly multiply- ing in India both for the rich and the poor. Here you will see children as young as three years old in schools. And in these schools there is no guarantee that you will teach only the ‘prima~y’level learner, you must understand how to cope with the pre-primary level aswell.B. Variations within a classIn one class there will be children at different levels of development i.e. although there is a norm for every age group there are variations within that norm. You must be as sensi- tive to these variations as you are to the variation from one class to the next. In fact, variations within a class need very careful preparation on the part of a teacher.
Very often these variations arise because of different input from the home. In one class you will get children from homes where learning is a tradition, and where parents give enormous support to learning at school; and you will get children where there is no learning support available at home and children are sent to poor quality cram schools or take private tuition to
make up for any lack in education. Still other children have no one else but you (the teacher) to support their learning endeavour. How would you view the performance and abilities of these three categories of children? Again there is need for sensitively responding to individual differences

32) Learner’s special needs in reading and writing bilingual children seem to acquire two sets of lexical items (one of their first language, and the other of their second language), and one syntactic system. This has been noticed more so in cases where the second language is being developed under natural conditions. Slowly, however, with greater exposure, children begin to acquire the second syntactic system. The important issue has to do with the transition from the mother tongue to the second language. For children who do not have support in the second language at home, acquiring functional competency in the second language may not be so easy. This situation gets aggravated by the fact that ‘English’ is given an added social value, while the native language of some of the children may be considered socially backward, particularly in the case of children using non- standard languages or dialects. The teachers’ own attitude towards such children is of great importance. Children need to feel proud of their own language and cultural back- grounds. This comes from a feeling of acceptance. The transition to the second lan- guage happens gradually. Until the child feels confident in the second language, she is going to’keep drawing support from her mother tongue. Since we function in multicultyral classrooms, it is a challenge to us teachers, to make sure that all the children in*the class feel confident to use their mother tongues, whenever the need arises. Not only does this enrich the class environment but it also gives the children a strong foundation from which to launch into the second language. Acceptance of
dialetical renderings or metaphorical usages not
known to English, are important However sometimes first language (Mother Tongue) interference often leads to the incorrect placement of the verb in a sentence, for children who come from a Hindi speaking background. The teacher in this case should give the children additional practice to overcome this problem.The transition is gradual, and if we do not allow children to use the mother tongue we might completely block the children from being able to express themselves. We need to facilitate the transition, by providing suitable vocabulary or structures, as well as motivating children by creating a real need to communicate in the second !anguage.

33) Special listening tasks for developing auditory perception While planning suitable tasks for developing the child’s auditory perceptions, we need to keep the following factors in mind
a Interests of the children
Nowadays, children are extremely dependent upon stimulating visual approaches to learning. Television exposes them to a constant parade of visual and auditory escite- ment. Magazines filled with pictures present the111with opportunities of viewing interesting aspects of life. Therefore, quite often clildren do not seem interested in an activity which does not offer the escitenlent they seek. It is important to make the activity interesting for children, so that they are actively involved.
b. The attention spnn of children
It is not easy for children to sit quietly and concentrate on sounds for a long time. They will begin to get restless and inattentive. Start with listening exercises of short duration i.e. upto 2
or 3 minutes, then gradually increase the time span. The attention time span will naturally vary with the age level of the children.

Preparation for the listening experience
Distracting objects should be
put away and the room settled before a listening activity begins.
Background sounds should be minimized.
The children should be made to sit comfortably and as i~liom~allays possible. Each child should be within a reasonable distance of the speaker or the source ofthe sounds(i.e a taperecorder or cassette
).
Children should be niade aware that they’re expected to remain seated during the
course of the listening activity.
Children should be told not to intemipt while the activity is on. They can raise their hands and clarifl their doubts at a
later stage, after the tape has been played or the speaker has finished speaking.

f there are any materials required for the task, these should be collected before hand.
7. If you are using the
cassette recorder make sure it is working.
d
Clear indructions
The instructions for the task should be simple, clear and brief. Children should know exactly what to do while listening, as well as after listening. For example, they should know how they are
expected to check their response.
e. The role of
the teacher
The teacher needs to be accepting. Children are often unable to pay attention. Some- times they arc untdned in their capacity to follow directions. Through a carefully planned programme, they can be gradually made to acquire these skills. One of the most important things a teacher can do is to be a goad listener. The teachers’ facial exp~ts8ionswill show the childrenjusthow interested and attentive she is when talking and listening to a child. As a good listener, the teacher should be interested in the child as
an individual and concentrate on comprehending the incoming messages from children. This makes her a good role model.

34) Resources that children bring to the learning situation There are really two teachers in the elementary classroom. One is the adult profession- al teacher who designs and coordinates the activities which we recognise as reading in the classroom. The other is the child who is learning to read through experiences which print provides in the classroom, home and day-to-day social environment. Children have their own learning agenda and exhibit marvellous learning capabilities. Before formal schooling they have learnt to speak, to solve a wide variety of personal and social problems, and have selectively stored a large amount of details of the everyday world. They have come to acquire these skills and knowledge through the opportunity to explore, to discovt;~meaning from actions, language and thinking patterned for them in their environment. This process has been greatly accelerated by the immediate and positive rewards they receive for what they can do with language. With so much of printed matter being displayed everywhere, children also learn a great deal about print on their own. The resources that children possess are much more than what we normally credit them with and we must remember that they bring these resources with them to the classroom. A careful appraisal of what they bring to the learning situation will help us to draw up a realistic progyammz of action for them.The teacher has three very powerful instructional resources in teaching reading. These are experiential reading, time and communication skills.
Experiential reading
To be able to provide experiential reading and exposure to language means involving children in various reading, writing and thinking experiences. The first step in this strategy is to highlight the significant aspects of the experience that the children have to understand in order to participate in the reading activity. These include reading, questioning, predicting, analysing word meaning in context, reading in phrase groups and so on. The teacher should demonstrate how these are done and then provide sufficient opportunity for the children to interact with print or thinking experience.
Experiential reading is quite different from giving children verbal rules to follow. You cannot “tell” the uniqueness of a good story or the way some stories are typically structured. Children must experience good stories and discover why the stories were enjoyable. You cannot also tell children how to read words in phrase groups. They must learn by example the difference between word-by-word reading and reading words in groups. As children listen to the teacher reading out aloud, seeing and listening are co-ordinated as they try to simultaneously see and listen to the text. You cannot tell children when to draw inferences and how to use questions as an active aid to constructing or reconstructing meaning. The teacher shows how this is done and the role of the questioner must then be experienced by the learner. After these experiences, some guiding principles may be given for inferencing, for formulating questions and answering questions.
Time
This is a very valuable resource which is within the control of the teacher.Usually this is not recognised as a resource at all. How teachers plan their own time in interacting with children and the way children use their time alone and with other children are important determinants of what is learned. A teacher who uses most of the instructional time to maintain order and give directions has little time for demonstration, individualised work, feedback or directly teaching the reading skills and strategies. Children should be given enough time to interact with print so that they learn to reador learn how to use reading for personal, social and academic purposes.
Communication Skills
This resource involves knowing about how to talk, when to talk, what to say and how to say it. , People vary in their ablility to use their communication skills. Consequently they relate to one another in more or less cooperative or productive ways The teacher who uses communication skills effectively is niuch morc likclv to carry out the plans set for the course and thereby ensure the produchve use of pupil- time in the classroom. An overenthusiastic teacher may actually prevent the learner from learning by doing most of the talking, generating most of the questions and providing all the answers. The learner is, unnecessarily, passive during most of the class time.Active listening is one of the communication skills which the teacher can use profit- ably. It entails listening for what the speaker intends to say rather than merely hearing how something is said. By doing so, the teacher can judge quite specifically the strengths and weaknesses of the learners and adjust the programme suitably. Requests for refonnulation through questions such as “Can you say that another way?” and the ability to paraphrase implied in questions such as “Do you mean reveal one’s capacity for listening actively. The teacher will also have to exercise extreme patience in trying to find out what the child is saying.The teacher’s communication skills are important for one more reason. Language is a highly personal and valued part of the child’s self-concept. The teacher who does not respect the children’s dialect or ignores their attempts to use language to control the environment and explore meaning prevents them from believing in themselves as persons capable of knowing what there is to know in school. We should realise that learner helplessness can sct in quite early due to Ihe leachcr’s lack of sympathy lor the learner’s world view and hidher capacity for communication. The teacher by using language that signals the proper attitudinal meanings can aid children to become more confident of their reading abilities, to be more effective participants in the classroomto be more willing to respond to challenging questions and to be more willing to participate freely and actively in discussions. By tactful communication the teacher builds trust in the children which encourages them to participate in the learning opportunities provided by the teacher.

35) A good teacher can contribute significantly to the moral development of the learner ilustrate your answer with examples  When does a child learn that one tiger attacking another tiger is not ‘bad’ but that one man attacking another man is wrong. Are children born with this knowledge? Or do adults give it to them? Psychoanalytic theory regards emotion as the primary basis for development. A warm and powerful model is very good for children for they are drawn to such models and can pick up desirable traits like helpfulness. It is even better if the model explains her choices e.g. No, I won’t come for the movie. I promised Farooq that I’d help him with his homework and he will be disappointed if I’m not there. According to the cognitive developmental school the child actively participates in moral develop- ment by weighing different aspects of situations and deriving new moral insights. Another interesting finding is that children pick up the most lenient standards of behaviour given by adults.Moral development begins in early childhood and according to most theorists continues well into adulthood. Children first begin to show guilt reactions between age 3 and 6. They gradually begin to adopt moral standards and begin to be sensitive to goodhad intentions when judging an issue.how can an adult help in conscience formation? Conditioning children with rewards and praise for good betcviour and modelling desirable traits has been suggested already. According to Laura Berk a special type of discipline called ‘induction’ supports con- science formation. It involves pointing out the effect of the child’s behaviour on others: If you push Renu she will fall down and cry. The explanation can be simple or elaborate according to the ability of the child to understand. Perhaps this method works because it encourages the child to empathize with others. Another interesting technique is the ‘time out’ technique where the child is sent away from the scene till s h e is willing to cooperate and behavr better.On the other hand, discipline that relies on threats and punishment is not so effective. It promotes fear and anxiety such that children cannot think clearly to figure out what they should do. Harsh punishment does not foster long-term goals. It supplies children with social sanction for violence and adult models of violence. Another sad consequence is that even if the adult is well-intentioned and loves the child, the child will be frightened away from that adult and this will reduce the opportunity for interaction through which the child could learn more acceptable behaviour.

36) List some ways in which spoken skills can be developed in the classroom?speaking is more than merely talking. It iilvolves thinking, imagination, sensitiveness in listening, aiid understanding. Speaking may include only one person the one involved in speaking. A listener is not necessary, but is highly desirable. But the communicationprocess is completed only when the speaker gets a response by word, look, ge’sture, or even silence, which enables her to judge the attitude of tlrc listener and the degree of success or failure of the communication. To complete the circular responseboth speaker and listener are needed. The importance of developing oral skills in a language classroom cannot be undervalued. Speech allows the user to express ideas without getting bogged down by the mechanics of their usage. It is therefore much more accessible to a second language learner than writing. Errors in language usage are overcome with greater ease in spoken language. However it may be more threatening to a new learner than written language, as the learner may feel exposed and vulnerable, particularly if faced with a large group. To develop fluency in oral expression it is essential to ensure a non- threatening environment. Children are very sensitive to ridicule or being laughed at by their peers. It is important to spend time in the beginning to discuss and generate suitable rules with the class children, to ensure a suitable classroom climate in which children are not afraid to make mistakes. Children need to know how to learn from their mistakes, and treat mistakes as a natural part of the learning process.
Learning a second language to the point at which it can be used effectively is a difficult process unless it is learned in ordinary social contact as the first language was learned. In general, the difficulty increases with the degree of isolation of the learners from natural contacts with those who use the language well. When the English- speak- ing child first comes to school, she has a mastery of the language structure in English that sometimes proves to be difficult for the child who speaks another language to attain for years to come. Learning a second language does not mean that the child must give up her own language and culture, but rather that she must be so educated that she will be able to operate in English when the situation demands English, arid in her own language when the situation demands the use of her own language. This is the real
challenge for the teacher. It is a well known fact that the closer one comes to teaching young children a second language in the manner in which they acquired their first language, the faster and more permanent the learning will be.
Any teaching of a second language must allow for ample opportunities for using the spoken language. Linguists consider the spoken form primary, for various reasons:Children learn to understand and speak their native language for several years before they learn to read or write it –
if they learn to read or write it at all.Although all normal humans can understand and speak, many cannot read and
write.Writing is a secondary system’ derived only from what people say. Writing is &en called “symbolisation” since the symbols (letters in the alphabet in English, for example) used in writing “represent” the words of the language.

37) What are the requirements of process writing class what is the teacher’s role in it? aftertheinitialstageofcontrolledandthenhguistically guided writing which wouldlastforabouttwoyears,thechildrenarereadytotake on their own process writing activities. Before getting down to the actualwriting, the teacher needs to help the children to know:
A) The function or purpose of writing example,isitaletterofinvitationto a friend ? Is it a report which the child hopes will be persuasive and stimulate action ? Is it an explanationofhow something works, which needs to be careful,detailed and clear? Is it a descriptionofan experiencefor someone close? and so
on.
B) Theaudience or in other words,whoisthewritingfor?Thepurposeofthe writingaswellastheaudience will idluenathelanguageused, choiceoforganisation, formatandthestyleofwriting. Inthebeginning letthechildren work on the same kind ofwriting though the actual content of each individual piece can vary. Onct the choice of the writlng form has been made, the teacher needs to focus on specific writing skills which are required for that particular form ofwriting. The teacher also needs to inte- grate the gmmatical structures that the children may
need to know.some specific writing forms: 1) Paragraphwriting
writinginstructions Writing a descriptive paragraph
2)
Letterwriting
3) Writing a’story
4) Writing a
simple rhyme or poem
These are being taken up as examples ofthe classroomtransactionsofdifferenttypesofprocess writing and the kindofsupportthat may need to be given. It is, however, ultimately upto the teacherto decide what support
togiveandhowtoprovideit.
1) .Support for Paragraph
writing
We have already discussed the pre-requisites ofparagraph writing in the last unit. We shalljustquickly recapitulatetheseoverhere, without going into details. The children needtobetoldthataparagraphisagroupofsentencesthatareallaboutoneidea. A paragraphhas onlyonemainidea. Eachsentencetellsusaboutthatonemainidea Thefirstsentenceofallparagraphsisindented. Thechildrencanbeaskedtolookat differentparagraphsandstatethemainideaofeach.Makesurethattheparagraphs you give the children have a clear main idea. They could also be given some sentencesabout one idea and asked to arrange these in a paragraph. Ask them to identify the main idea. The children need to be told that a topic sentence tells us the main idea and that usually, the topic sentence is the first sentence.Each ofthe other sentencw addsasupporting detailsuchas an example, a description, a reason and so on.The teacher then highlights . the importance of correct order and sequencing to get a logical flow, particularly in a paragraph giving instructions or describing an event. Suitable ‘order’ words are intro- duced for example first, then, after that, next, finally. Give children practice in readingandwritingparagraphs, itisaformofwritingthattheyarelikelytouse quite of
ten.
a) Writing instructions
ina paragraph
Tell the children that you often give them instructions, but now its their turn to give inshuctions. Thisactivitywilldemonstratetothechildrentheimportanceofgiving completehtrudionsandofgivingtheminthecorrectorder. Askthechildrentogive simple instructions for some simple everyday activity like peeling a banana, making a phone call,or emptying a sharpener. Write these on the board exactly as they are given. Donotgivesuggestionsormakecorrections. Aftertheinstructionshavebeengiven,ask thechildrentonumbertheseinthecorrectorder. Whenthechildrenaresatisfiedfollow their bhuctions exactly. Do not assume any missing information . If the instructions cannot be followed, ask
the children to improve them.
Stress the factthat there aretwo important things
to remember
1. Be sure
to tell enough.
2. Tell the
steps in order.
You could tell Che sardents to write in the present tense. Show them why and how. Also reinforceactionwordsorverbs. Afterthispre-writingexperience,childrencanbeasked tolistpssibletopicsforaparagraphofinstructions. Theycanchooseh mthelistanddecidewhothesearefor. Afterthetaskiscompletedleteachreceiveractuallycarry outthe instructionsandgivea
feedback1
b) Writing a descriptive
paragraph
The children would be asked to write a short paragraph desuiiing an object, a person or an animal. The primary focus is on using rich and exact descriptive language. The childrenaregivenpracticeinlistingand classifyingsense
words.Give  the children a paragraph in which the descriptive words are missing. Let the children add a word that describes colour, shape size, sound, smell, touch or taste. Let childrenmakelistsofwordsthatcomeundereachoftheabovecategories. Thisisan effective way of helping children use all their senses when they are describing some- thing.
Next tell the children that when they write a description, it is important to try and use exact words, that give a clear picture. Give the children some practice. For examp:e, ask children to change the underlined word in each of the sentences given below to a more exact ward. You could provide the exact words in a
box.
1. The apples F e d good (sweet)
rainy,      
2. The flowers are red
(roses)    soft
3. The dog’s ‘fur is nice (soft)    raced
4. Irfan went after the ball (raced)  sweet
5. The bad weather lasted a
long time (rainy) roses
Tellthechildrenthatwriting exact wordshelpsthereadertogetadetailedpicture. Words like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘nice’, arc vague or fuzzy words Sometimes we need to ask the questions, what 7, how 7, where 7, when 7,who 1, to make sure that we areusing exact words. If you want to describe a new toy how will you describe it? What if you say it is a nice toy? What pjcture will the reader have? If you say it is a large, red, soft,hy,toywillthereaderhaveaclearerpicture? Youmightaskthechildrentoask such questions about each sentence they write. Ask
the children to play guessing games, where one child describes an object, and the others guess it.
After these experiences the children will be ready
to write a descriptive paragraph. 2. Support for Letter-writing
You would need to
:
review Werent kinds ofletters, for different purposes and occasions. For example a friendly letter, a thank you letter, a get-well letter or an invitation. It’s a good idea to actuallybringinsamplestoshowanddiscusswiththechildren. Letthechildrenknow that they will actuallybcposting the letters they write, so they would need to think carefullyaboutwhatkindoflettertowrite. Youmaywanttotakethechildrenthrough all the steps of writing a letter as a
group, before they write individual letters, in which the whole class would need to decide who they want to write to and what they want to
*Y.
b) The children need to identify the parts of a letter and
be able to write these in the correct places.
the date (which tells us when the letter was written) The greeting
The body (i.e. the main part of
the letter)
The closing or salutation (i,e. saying good
bye) The name (i.e. who wrote the letter).
The children could discuss different types of greetings and closings. They would need to know which words in the greeting and closing begin with capital letters. Where are the commas used?
As practice, children could be given a letter with some blanks which they would be required to fill in. The children would need to be clear about the purpose of each part of
the letter.
3) Support for Story-writing
In the previous unit,we had explored story writing with beginners,where we had confined ourselves to a story written in one paragraph, because
we were working with very little children. With a more advanced group of children, we can introduce the different elementsofa story. First ofall, children need to know that there aremany typesofstoxies. Therearemake-believestories,likefairy-talesandtruestories. There are sad, funny, scary or exciting stories. somi stories have a lesson to teach us, while some stories are very old and come to us from our grandmothers, these are called folk tales. Try and make connections with the stories children have read or heard The children could be asked far examples of each type. You could make a class chart. Actually writing down the names of some stories children have read under each of these categories. Thiscouldbemadeintoanattmtiveposterandputupintheclass.Such activities greatly motivate the childrentoread and become excited aboutbooks.In addition to this they help children to make connections between their reading and writing.
Once the children are clear about different types of stories, they would need to know the -rent partsof
a story, namely that each story has:
a) Characters it is about a person or persons or animals or other creatures (may be from outer space) The characters have
names.
b) Setting it has a place and time. The story happens somewhere. It could be in a forest, in school, in outerspace, in a village, on a holiday trip, in a palace. It happens at some
time.
Plot it has action. The plot is in three
parts.
The beginning where the characters and setting are generally introduced and
the
readers’ interest is captured.
The middle where something happens or in other words there are
some events.
Generally there is a problem that needs to be sorted out. The end
which tells how things get sorted out.
You may want to take the children through the process of choosing a story idea or ideas by making a class chart. Write the headings shown below, on the board. Then have the childrengiveyousbnyideas. Listthese
onthechart.
Sample story chart
Characters     Setting         What happens
If children prefer to make individual charts, they could do so. They should discuss their chartsinsmallgroups. Theyshouldtaketimetothinkadidlyabouttheirideasbefore they write. Grammar reinforcement could focus on action words and their correct usage, as well asdescriptive words. You may for instance want to reinforce the useofthepast perfect tense. You may want to reinforce linking devices and order in the organisation of ideas. Writing of stories would provide a suitable context for actually practising such grammatical
structures.
4) Support for Writing a Simple Rhyme or Poem
Students must first be able to identify rhymes in the spoken form before they can be expectedtofindtheminthe,writtenform. Youmaywanttoprepareexercisesof
the following kind to be done orally and then in writing.
Telthe children that you will saycertainwords. Theyareto identify the one thatdoes notrhyme.Usefamiliarsetsofwords. Forexample

1.
pot,hot, tree, got
2. pan, man,can,
table.
Read & samples of funny poems, rhymes, descriptive poems. Let the children get a feel of different kinds ofpoems. Let the children know that poems are primarily foi enjoyment. Letchildrenbringandsharepoemstheylike. Letchildrenlookatimages in poems. They could draw pictures of what they imagined when they head a poem. Children need to feel the music in poems. They could actually give tunes to some poems and sing them. Give them a feel of the rhythm. It’s a good idea to give a frameworkforwritingapoeminthebeginning

38) Tips for teaching underpriviledged learners Given below are some tips for teaching English to underprivileged learners. Although these tips are equally useful for teaching any other subject or other kinds of learners, they are especially important for teaching English to underprivileged learners.
Take your underprivileged learners into confidence and try to understand their problems in learning English from their point of view.
(vii) Provide them with more clues when your underprivileged learners fail to answer: For example, ‘The answer is in the fourth line.
Be generous in giving them feedback. Praise them for partly answering a quesiton. Move close to them, touch and pat them to encourage them to learn. They need your help most.
Allow them to answer in a word, a group of words. Do not insist always on full sentences. To begin with, ask them easy questions which can be answered by ‘yes/ no’.
Allow them to answer in their first language when they fail to answer in English.
Do not concentrate your attention only on the privileged learners. Rather the underprivileged learners need your attention and help more.
Underprivileged learners tend to occupy back benches. Encourage (but do not force) them to occupy front seats. Make them sit close to some of the best students of the class and encourage them to learn from these students. Prot
ectyourunderprivilegedlearnersfrombullys.Seethattheprivilegedlearners do not make fun of them.
Tolerate their errors. Instead of public”correction, choose a time and place where you can correct their errors privately

39) Key criteria for developing assessment scales for listening scales Several assessment scales have been developed to show the range of listening abilities within a group or class. These scales look at aspects of listening comprehension, commonly used strategies and appropriacy of interaction. While the first two look at cognitive and intellectual skills, the third deals with social skills. Most scales are able to only roughly categories where a person should be placed . They are useful only because they are able to highlight areas of knowledge, not performance, in which the child needs to concentrate efforts for improvement.
One common way of assessing the development of listening skills is by rating or marking children on suitably designed listening tasks. These tasks need to be carefully planned so that they assess childrens’ performance in various aspects of listening.
Based on the type of response that is expected from the listener, listening comprehen- sion and listening perception, activities can be classified into two types.
a) Activities which require.productive
checks as responses write words or sentences make notesreconstruct the story
Here the listener is expected to listen, comprehend and recreate what was’heard. It therefore involves active mental processing on the part of the listener. Such activities measure higher order listening skills such as comprehension and understanding.
b) Activities which require on-productive
checks as responses tick markscrossing
numbering lettering
raising of hand
showing a picture or object.
Here the listener is expected to receive the auditory input and respond to the correct sound quickly in one of the ways mentioned above. These tasks ineasure lower order listening skills such as attentiveness, sound discrimination, concentration.Children’s responses can be marked and each child’s progress assessed. If a child. has a specific problem, the teacher would need to deal with it individually. Children enjoy listening tasks and these should not become fearsome things simply because they are being marked. Children should be able to see evaluationas indicatoroftheirownprogressaswellasanindicatoroftheirstrengthsand weaknesses, so that they are able to make efforts to improve their listening abilities.

40) Echoic reading Echoic Reading is a special manner of guiding oral reading in order to teach children that what is read aloild, and silently, should sound like language. When does reading sound like language? Reading that sounds like language obeys the grammar of the native language and involves grouping words and giving some w ~ i d groups more stress than others. Echoic reading offers a simple way of demonstrating these principles, The teacher says, I am going to read some sentences, now. You follow along with your eyes and just a little whisper. I will read a sentence twice, then I want you to read it out loud just like I read it. The teacher may allow the children to use a marker to show that they are on the correct line.
In this process the children learn something that cannot be just told to them. They experience ianguage iq a highly individualistic manner. They learn how printed language should sound when it is read, and that they can make it sound that way. This does not happen easily. It may take many weeks before they learn to synchronise what they hear with the word groups they see on the printed page, They need plenty of practice in learning how to group words by allowing children to reread materials which they have read several times before. As the children begin to reach an automatic sight vocabulary of about 20 to 50
words, echoic reading begins to have a noticeable effect on them.
Echoic reading can be done in several ways. The teacher can read a linetwiceand then call on a child fo read it in the same way. This is done until the storylpassage is complet- ed. Then the teacher asks the children to volunteer to read the lines they would like to read and then choose someone to read it just like they did. This allows everyone to participate at a rather low risk level. Another way is that the teacher read the story echoically and has all or half the class read together in the same way. This procedure works well when a half page is reread which has already been read line by line echoically. Thls is somewhat close to choral reading, but it is done for a different purpose. It allows the teacher to find out the children who are having problems. These children will
be slightly behind the others, they will stop in the middle, or they will sound different.
Through echoic reading, chidlren are taught how to apply their native knowledge of syntax to organise words in groups as they read. It also trains them to self-correction on the basis of whether what is read sounds like language. It reinforces the idea that a text is not read word by word but in groups. When a child consistently reads in phrase groups, echoic reading is no longer useful. For some children it occurs before or by the end of the First Standard, but for others it takes two or three years.

41) Types of grammar games  Rinvolucri divides games into four types :
Competitive games These include traditional games like “noughts and crosses”. “snake and ladder”, “double or quits* etc., which have been adapted to highlight a specific grammar point. Here students are asked to think consciously about grammar. These games pose a cognitive challenge.
Collabarative games In accordance with the humanistic approach, these games require warm co-operation among students rather than competition. The teacher generally remains in the background and plays the role of a facilitator.
Awareness Activities Here the students engage in activities which require them to think and feel about human relationships (eg) their childhood, fkiends, etc. Indirect- ly they practise grammar points. The students’ focus is on what they are
saying, not on the form they are using. On the other hand the teacher’s job is to control the structures.
Grammar through drama During these activities, studnets are
active; they practice grammar through movement,shouting or writing on each other’s backs. When the class seems to be dull or disinterested, these games are ideal. Or when you have a set of lively youngsters with a lot of energy to spend, this is the best way of channelising it.
Given below is a sample for each type :
a) Competitive games
Game’ : Find who
I
level : s
econdary
Grammar : Past simple
ActivdPassive
Give such student the following sheet, which they have to complete: Find a person, who. when aged between 3
and 10.
a) rode a bike
b) bit his father
c) broke his leg
d) had mumps
e) fought with other children
f) slept in the afternoons
g) was sparked for stealing cookies
h) was
uften made to stand in a corner
i) disliked birthdays
was
forced to drink milk.
Now the students must go around and find various people to whom these things hap- pened. They should then write the name of the person on their sheet. Make sure that for each item they enter a different name. The winner is the person who gets the most names
soonest.
b) Collaborative games Game ,:
Sentence Collage
Level :
Any
Grammar :
Word order. Take a long sentence
(eg) Look dad, if you let me have my dress stiched the way I want,
I’ll have it done ny your tailor.
Put each work on a separate slip of paper. Divide the class into groups of seven. Give each group a complete set of words. Ask them to form a sentence into which all the words fit grammatically and intelligibly. They may come out with a different sentence. which is fine. (Rinvolucri)
TeachingGrammar :New ActivitiesAnd
Games
c)
Awareness Activities
Game :
True name and False professions
Level :
Primary
G r a mmar : Sentences with copula; vocabulary (professions) Organise the students into groups of fiften. First give your real name and a false profession, beginning with the first letter of your name. (eg) I am
Peter the painter.
Now ask the student next to you to repeat your name and profession and then add his own.
(eg) He is Peter the painter. I
am Tina the Tailor etc.
The last person will have quite a few names and professions to remember
I
d)
Grammar through drama
Game :
One idea at a time
Level: PrimaryJSecondary
Grammar :
Adjectives
Ask a learner to volunteer. He should think of an adjective and mime it. Others should try to guess what he is miming.
(Eg)
Learner 1 : Are you tired ? Mimer : (shakes head) Learner 2 : Are you lazy
7
Mimer : Learner 3 : Mimer
:
(shakes head)
Are you bored
7
(nods head) (Write et al).

42) Teaching children how to write descriptive paragraph The children would be asked to write a short paragraph desuiiing an object, a person or an animal. The primary focus is on using rich and exact descriptive language. The childrenaregivenpracticeinlistingand classifyingsense words. Give the children a paragraph in which the descriptive words are missing. Let the children add a word that describes colour, shape size, sound, smell, touch or taste. Let childrenmakelistsofwordsthatcomeundereachoftheabovecategories. Thisisan effective way of helping children use all their senses when they are describing some- thing.
Next tell the children that when they write a description, it is important to try and use exact words, that give a clear picture. Give the children some practice. For examp:e, ask children to change the underlined word in each of the sentences given below to a more exact ward. You could provide the exact words in a
box.
1. The apples F e d good (sweet)
rainy,
2. The flowers are red
(roses)
3. The dog’s ‘fur is nice (soft)
4. Irfan went after the ball (raced)
5. The bad weather lasted a
long time (rainy) roses
Tellthechildrenthatwritingem* wordshelpsthereadertogetadetailedpicture. Words like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘nice’, arc vague or fuzzy words Sometimes we need to ask the questions, what 7, how 7, where 7, when 7,who 1, to make sure that we areusing exact words. If you want to describe a new toy how will you describe it? What if you say it is a nice toy? What pjcture will the reader have? If you say it is a large, red, soft,hy,toywillthereaderhaveaclearerpicture? Youmightaskthechildrentoask such questions about each sentence they write. Ask
the children to play guessing games, where one child describes an object, and the others guess it.
After these experiences the children will be ready to write a descriptive paragraph.

43) How do we plan listening tasks for auditory auditory perception?It is usefulto divide the actual listening task into three stages i.e.
The pre-listening While listening After listening
Pre-listening This is the stage where the child’s interest is built-up and she is motivated to listen. Children’s attention is focused on the topic or subject matter ofthe task through disc&sions, stories or related visuals. This will help to familiarize the child with the theme of the task and on the necessary vocabulary. This stage is generally a warm up. It could be an activity like giving out a set of words from the task you will be using and ask the children to make stories; or giving rhyming words, associated words or opposites; or find words they think do not belong in the group or try to guess where these words have been taken from.Whiie listening This is the stage where the child’s attention should be totally focused on listening. The children may be required to listen for something specitic, in which case they would be doing intensive listening. Ifthe children arerequired to make any responses at this stage these should be very simple and non-produc- live. It should not require too much effort so that the child does not get distracted from listening. These responses could be in the form of asking children to number words in the sequence in which they are heard. The children may be asked to tick the words that have been changed or circle words that did not appear. Another possibility is to ask them to show the picture related to what was heard.To keep the children’s attention level high it helps to sometimes stop during a listening activity and ask the children to predict what is going to come, and then listen to see whether they were correct.3. After listening These activities are based more on memory, i.e. recall or recogni- tion. It may be a response based on the task, it may be a reconstruction or point- ing out the mistakes. At this stage the children can if required check their respons- es. The children can also be lead on to follow-up activities which enable them to give personal expression to what they hear either through questions, dmnatisations, or expressing their ideas with paper, paint and clay.

44) Why is prediction important in acquisition of reading skills? Describe some close activities to construct meaning through prediction?First of all, students must be fully aware that there is another way of reading other than word-by-word. They should be given plenty of opportunities to read silently and aloud as well as indulge in prediction of syntactic forms and semantic information in the text that they are reading. Once they realise that reading is an active, not a passive search for meaning, then they wil give up word-by-word reading and feel the necessity for grouping wordsaswelasmaking use of all availablesources of informationto make senseout of what is read.Sincethe language experience story is generated from the childs language, its semantic context is simple, familiar and meaningful. The syntactic patterns are the most frequently used by children. These two factors make such stories easier for the reader to predict what will come next when reading the printed version of the story. As a story is dictated by the teacher, there is a good chance for the child to reread each line of the story. Once the complete story is generated, the teacher reads it as the children follow along silently. Again rereading occurs. Next the teacher and the children simultaneously read the text together, or the children read each line immediately after the teacher has read it aloud.By this time at least five readings of the story have occurred. Many children would have memorized short dictation passages hy this time. Finally any follow-up using it for word identification in the text class, writing using words or related ideas from the dictation passage &ers repeated reading that helps internalizationof the syntactic and semantic cues in the original dictation passage.Predicting shows how children process given information with the information/ knowledge they possessZIP Cloze Method
The
ZIPCloze method was developedby BlachowieZand field tested with second standard students. Blachowicz reported that young children frequently experience a complete loss of context somewhere in the middle of standard Cloze passages which delete every fifth or tenth word in a selection. These readers get frustrated and stop reading, rather than reread previous sentences or go ahead to get further cues to the meaning. This problem during silent reading occurs even in reading passages where all the words are printed and among older readers too. Even good readers in the second and third standards are usually reluctant to correct their oral reading errors based on the cues which occur after the
point of error. It is a common tendency among young first standard students to use the context only upto the pojnt of error.
The ZIP Cloze method supplies feedback in the construction of meaning to young readers while introducing them to the process of prediction during silent reading. The teacher take0 a storytpassage and makes an overhead transparency of it. The text lines should be an inch apart to enablp students to read the lines easily. Content and structure words which are easily predicted are deleted by covering each word with strips of masking tape. The lesson is projected on the screen and the teacher ask the children to read the entire passage quickly to get a general idea of what is said in the passage. TIUSis briefly discussed. Then the children are directed as groups to reread orally or silently the passage and predict each deletion one at a time. After the possibilities for each deletion are predicted and discussed, the tape is pulled off (zipped) by the teacher to give an immedi- ate feedback from the text. In the beginning, only a few words which are hlghly predict- able are deleted. Later, every fifth or eighth word can be deleted.In the ZIP procedure children get more and moze opportunities to look for features of redundancy which can help in their predictions. Once a
lesson is finished, the same transperencies can be used again with different words covered with tape. In fact this repetition is desirable because children get to understand the text better and the predic- tions become increasingly accurate. The final step is to give written copies of the text to children in pairs or small groups who will prepare their own cloze texts for other pairs or groups to work out.
Content Word Maze and Synonym Cloze Methods
In these two methods children are introduced to predicting content words and self- correcting them using syntactic and semantic cues. The teacher should take care to make the semantic context rich enough to the enable children to predict deleted content words.
Maze Cloze Procedure
In this exercise only nouns and verbs are deleted. Instead of just leaving a blank, three choices are provided for each deletion. One choice is the right word, the second is syntactically correct but semantically incorrect and the third is both syntactically and semantically incorrect. This exercise is appropriate for the second standard.
The teacher should devise their own maze exercises based on the one given below: The man on the road waved a red

The rich man’s house had more than ten
flag house how
boots rooms the
The child circles or underlines the correct word. It is important to note that only every tenth content word is deleted to reduce the difficulty of prediction.
Synonym Cloze Procedure
In this exercise each deletion is provided a synonymous word or phrase as in
The little girl looked for her ()
before going
)
to play. It used to follow her. outdoors
The words kitten and outside have been deleted and shown by brackets. The children cover the synonym given below the bracket as they read each line and predict. The synonym is then used to verify the first prediction. The process of prediction here is similar to independent reading where a child may corret-Jq substitute a synonym for a cbntent word that is dmcult to be pronounced, because it sounds right and makes sense with the entire sentence. This exercise can be used with
the second and third standard students.
12.4.4 Structure Word Cloze Procedure
This exercise is appropriate in second and third standads. It deals with prediction of all forms of structure words. In this exercise only every tenth structure word shouid be deleted. No deletions are made in the first sentence. Begin
with the second or third sentence by deleting a structure word, If the nex-t tenth word is not a structure word, then delete the next available structure word. Leaving ten words between each structure word, ensures that sufFicient context is available to the young reader to make the necessary prediction. It also provides for reading more than one sentence before encountering a suucture word. It encourages the children to rnake use of the sentence surrounding the deleted word to find out what the omitted word might be.Each choice should be discussed in the class. In this way the teacher can prompt children to explore when it is desirable to reread or to go ahead for a few sentences before reach- ing closure on deleted word. Individual practice can be arranged by giving students to work on familiar passageslstories in which every tenth structure word is deleted. From’time to time these passagedstories should be those which the students have not seen before, in order to create challenges to the readers. The tenth structure word cloze exercise might look like this :
In far off India the mountains are high and cool. Down below them stretchesthe hot, dry plain. Here ……………………………… sunshines down with all its force. Few creatures come out ………………………………the shrubs, trees and bushes on the plain. But …………………………….. one of those days when the bright sunwas ……………………………..h.ot.as it couldbe, a tiger carelessly walked ……………………………… a trap.
This exercise may be made easier by listing the correct structure words below the passage. It should be noted that the first and last sentence of a passage should not have any deletion.

45) What difficulties do students face in learning spelling describe the formal and informal approaches in learning spelling?

Looking at children’s writings at various stages of development helps a teacher to understand the developmental nature of learning to spell.S t a ge 1 : The Spelling babbler : This is the pre-communicative spelling stage. Children learn about 6 letters of the alphabet and combine them to form words. This is done purely for the delight of writing words. Letters of the alphabet are conlbined into word-like units. Tlie sounds do not nlatch the letters. The words are not readable because the letters do not rcpresent sounds, but the child knows that print represents words. For example: wfthuk olnlgot rt ftggh dfgth swzxtk Ardghjhtgll and so on.
From this early pre-communicative stage the child slowly progresses towards conceptualising letters that represent sounds. This brings us to the nest stage.
Stage 2 : invented spellings : This is the point at which letters are used more consis- tently to represent words. Five general stages of invention have been noted:
Use of the initial consonant to represent a word. For example G (GRASS).
initialand final consonant GS (GRASS)
Initial, f i naland interior consonant GRS (GRASS)
Initial, finaland interior consonants with a vowel place holder i.e. the vowel is incorrect, but in the correct position.
GRES (GRASS). The spellings at this stage are semi-phonetic. Transition to conventional spelling GRASS
This stage occurs as children become independent in reading and writing, and they attend more and more to printed words. When children at this stage recognise the differences between their own invented spcllings and the conventions of literacy toacquire the desire to attain the conventional forms.Thosewords that are not familiar continuc to be represented with the prior invented approach. More and more words however begin to be spell conventionally. The child constructs a phonetic system initially but soon this gets replaced by new spelling strategies with a greater reliance on visual memory.
The Informal
Approach
Spelling is not considered a passive process. It is dynamic and complex. Purposeful writing is considered to be an imponant key to learning LO spell. As a child engages in more and more meaningful writing activity she begins to invenl spellings. In order to invent spellingsthe child uses what she already knows.The child thinks about words and genelares new words. The child is actively involved in the process of spelling.
Some Guidelines for an Informal Approach
*Teach spellings as a part of the whole curriculum. Capitalize on opportunities to have children write and spell in other situations than the writing class i.e. in maths or science lessons.
*Have children write frequently. Children invent and refine spelliilgs using the skills they acquire when they write. Spelling practice occurs through free writing when children wrile labels, lists, stories, songs, recipes. The important thing is to make the writing activity purposeful.
*Encourage childrcn to invent spellings for words they may no1 have learned to spell. Inventing spellings nllows children to engage in thinking about how a word sounds, and learning to transfer those sounds into alphabets. As they progress with these skills they begin to include vowel blends such as ea, ee, oa, ou and so on. They also begin to look at consonant blends such as br. cl, st, etc, as well as diagraphs th, wh. ch, sh etc., which represent a single sound. They begin to demonstrate their acquired skills, of processing sounds in the words they write.
*De-emphasize correctness, memorizationand writing mechanics. Adjust your expectations for
correctness to fit the child’s level of development and make allowances for inexperience and mistakes.
‘Respond to children’s writings in ways that help them discover more about spelling. In your response build interest in words, make word study fun, play spelling games, answer questions about spelling and teach spelling skills. Help young writers develop a positive spelling consciousness. Poor spellers need to be provided with a broad reper- toire of spelling strategies. Among these are
:
Being able to learn to sense when words are
misspelled
Being able to use a beginner’s dictionary
Making lists for high-frequency words that are often misspelled.
Seeking adult help.
Being able to use the context and meaning to determine the spelling.
The following practices create problems for poor spellers.
Too
many red marks and corrections
When help is not given in context i.e. attention is not given to the context or subject matter of the written task, but only spellings are corrected.
When the child does not get enough opportunity to do meaningful writing.
The informal approach towards spelling is based on the premise that spelling is for writing. Children may achieve high scores on phonic inventories or weekly spelling tests. But the ultimate test is what the child does within the writing process. If a child writes daily, the teacher can concentrate on the content and once or twice a week, on spelling. But if the child writes only once a week then spellings become the teachers’ primary focus. More time for writing gives the teacher more time to help children take responsibility for their writing. Children are helped to re-fine their first drafts.
The first draft should be looked upon only for its context. It’s in the final draft that spellings need to be emphasized because by then the child is eager to share her writing with an audience and has a high stake in her writingSpellings become important for two reasons. The first is that the writer may then put it behind her to focus on the content. The second is that when the spelling is paor, the audience may not be able to go beyond the irregularities to view the main force of the message.
Beginning spellers should be freeto invent spellings when they write.There is no evidence that invented spellings become habitual. Poor spellers may however,habitually misspell certain words. Children who are encouraged to invent spellings refine those spellings and progress developmentally towards correctness. It is perfectly acceptable to display a young writers piece of writing with some invented spellings. As a speller matures, emphasis on correctness should increase, Final drafts of compositi~n@or s t ~ i e s
should ensure correct spellings.
It is important to make parents observe children move through the developmental stages of invented spellings. They should understand that invented spellings do not lead to the formation of bad spelling habits. When children encounter nmv information about standard spelling, they readily modify their hypotheses and have no difEculty in adopting standard spelling. Ultimately the speller is able to llse information from visual memory, as well as the knowledge of phonetic, c o n t e ~aind meaning relationships to determine the correct spelling of a word. But the process takes time.Important foundations of learning to spell are set with the use of
invented spelling.

46) Suggest suitable activities for integrating writing skills with science and mathematics at the upper primary level? It is a good idea to support specific subject teaching with ideas for making writing within their subjects more effective. Writing of the kind we will be looking at, has the twofold purpose of firsty clarifiling concepts or ideas within the subject area and secondly enhancing the ability to communicate these through writing. Some ideas are given below:
Maths writing
activities
a) Creating
Maths Problems
After the class has learnt
how to solve one step word problems in maths. Let them c m t e their own problems to give others to solve. An example is given below:
Ask children to use the price list given below to create threeproblems that can be solved by using one operation, and one problem whose solution requires two operations. Ask
the children to find the solution to their own problems before giving them to others.
ITEM sugar
rice
tea
biscuits
matchboxes
RICE
Rs. 10 per kg Rs. 6 per kg. Rs. 20 Rs.20

Rs. 10 per dozen
PRICE LIST
Similar exercises can be given using a variety of data, like the heights of children, scores in a match, distances of places and so on. The exercises can also be varied to allow children to use different maths skills and concepts. For example in the above task if you add a line saying ‘10% discount will be given on purchases of more than Rs. 2001.’ It increases the range of problems that the children can create. Naturally the kind of tasks are entirely based on the level of the children. It is up to teachers to create as many such tasks as they find useful.
b) Writing math
stories
Askthechildren to read the story given below. Inside each set of parentheses arc choices. Let the children circle the one that makes most sense. Now ask the children to write
similar stories of their own. They could work in groups or pairs.
Sbankar’s holiday.
Shankar, who likes to talk in riddles was telling his math class about himself and his holidays. He began by describing himself. “hts say I am x years old. My (younger, older) brother, Shekar, who is x+3 years old, and I went to spend our holiday with owfgnmdmother, muisin) Malini, who likes doing the same things as we do, although she is x+7 years old. Anyway on Saturday the t h e of us took the bus to a mela in the next town. Malini had to pay Rs.y for the bus ride. The driver charged Shekar and me only W1, y-1) because we’re younger. The journey usually takes 25 minutes. Since it wasSaturdaystherewas
very little traffic. The whole trip took (25% 25+n) minutes. It c o s t e a c h o f u s R s . a t o g e t in. I t c o s t M a l i n i ( a + R s . 2 , a R s . 2 ) . W e r a n t o t h e f erri s wheel, but we found that you had to be at least h cms tall to be allowed on the fems – wheel without a grownup. When they measured us they found I was h 20 cms tall. Sbelntrwash+lOcmstall,andMaliniwasexactla.cmstaH. Only(1,2,3)ofusgoton the ferris wheel. I don’t have to tell you who was unhappy, do I?Let the children devise a variety of stories using different mathematical operations and functions.
c) Writing about mathGame the children the following writing situation: Writingsituationfractions
and percentages
You have been studying fractions and percentages in your math class. Your teacher feels that your class is having problems because they lack an understanding of the usefulness ofthis knowledge in everyday life. She feeis that if the studentsrealisedthe importance of fi-actions and percentages in everyday life, their class work would be more meaningful and they would do a better job. Your problem is to convince your teacher that you understandtheusefulnessthis information. Soyou need towriteanessayconvincing your teacher that you understand the importance ofknowing&actions and percentages by giving examples their use in everyday life.
Comparing
Tell the children to pretend that you saw an animal that you had never seen before.
How would you tell another person about this animal? One way would be to
compare it to an animal you have seen before. When you compare things you tell how they are alike and how they are different from other things.
Ask children to collect two different flowers and bring them to their next writing class. Tell them to make the chart given below:-
Observations Flower A Flower B

Color

Shape
Width
Special
Where did you find it
Ask the children to look carefully at the flowers and complete the above chart. Then use the information to write a paragraph that explains how these flowers are alike and how they are different.
ii) Observing
Put the chart given below on the board

wind force
Name of Wind                          
What you can see    
Calm                                     Leaves are still. Smoke rises up straight. clothes do not mwe on a
clothesline
gentle breeze                      Leaves move a little The flag moves gently on the flagpole

Strong breeze                    Branches move on trees making a swishing noise.
Leaves, papers on the ground
are blown about. Umbrellas are hard to use
Gale                                Twigs snap off trees Difficult to walk
Askthechildrentolookoutside. Whatisthewindabletomove? Lookatthechart. What kind of a day is it today? Use their own ideas along with those from the chart to write a weather report for today. What other things would they need to look for?
i) Sequencing
Tell the children that there are some events or happenings that occur in steps or stages. Firstsomethinghappens,afterwhichsomethingelse,thensomethingelseandsoon. In real life we call such happenings a process, a cycle, or a flow. We also find that the steps in the process happenh a definite order. Can the children think of anything that occurs in steps 01 stages?
Draw 4 pictures of the stages of seed germination
or life cycle of a butterfly or formationofclouds
or blowing a balloon
or posting a letter
Maketheseinajumbleduporder. Letthechildrennumberthemintherightorderand fill up the flow chart on their individual sheets.
step 1 step 2
First I wrote
a letter and > addressed it.
step 3 Step 4
>>
Do the first one for them. Ask them to use sequencing words – fim next, then, finally.

47)Purpose of evaluation Evaluation as it has been traditionally viewed brings to mind words like “marks” and “exams”. It implies the process by which the teacher corrects a child’s work, and gives feedback. Recent works on the development of writing skills in children emphasise the need to give children a feedback on their strengths and weaknesses, and to allow them opportunities for “improvement”. Evaluation, is therefore seen as a process by which a teacher helps the child “improve”. Tricia Hedge, in her book on writing says, “marking is maximally effective in enabling students to improve only if it provides constructive feedback which can be channelled into the processes of redrafting and editing.” Teachers need to look at two aspects of the child’s writing. The first are the skills involved in the process of composing, that is having a sense of purpose, a sense of audience and a sense of direction. The second group comprises skills connected with “crafting”, that is the way a writer puts together the pieces of a text and chooses correct and appropriate language. Teachers can build up criteria which look into both these aspects. One possible way is to take four criteria: accuracy, appropriacy. range and complexity and analyse the degrees of skills at three levels ‘good’, ‘average’ and ‘needs improvement’. Within each of these, teachers need to spell out details of the expected writing skills. The child’s writing is then assessed against this criteria, and suitable feedback given.Evaluation, as it exists, in most primary schools in our country , today, looks at the end product, whether it is a paragraph, an essay or a poem or story. The child is given some predetermined topic, on which to write within a specified time period. The writing is then checked for spellings, grammatical structures, as well as for organisation of ideas, style, expression, vocabulary and so on. We often expect a young child, who is groping and exploring the world of written words, to produce a perfect piece of writing, without giving the child a chance to revise, edit or proofread. This is quite unrealistic, since even adults cannot produce a piece of writing in one go. Throughout the units on writing we have emphasised the need to allow children to go through the different stages in the writing process. This gives a greater opportunity to the child to identifL errors and correct them. It also allows the teacher to assess the developmental level of the child. Within this approach errors are a part of the process of learning and development. They are like little clues which tell us the stage at which a particular child has arrived, andhelp teachers to decide and plan teaching/ learning strategies which enable the child to progress to the next stage Since errors are a natural part of learning they are not something to be afraid of, instead they indicate areas which need extra support. Themost important aspect of this approach is that it emphasises positive feedback, by not only focusing on the child’s weaknesses but also on his strengths. It also provides ample opportunities for support and self correction. The child is guided towards self evaluation through the processes of drafting, revising, proofreading and editing before a final piece of writing is produced. This encourages critical thinking and self correction on the part of the child, and also helps the child to internalise corrections, since the child is actively involved in this process.

48) Characteristics of underpriviledged learners Present-day psychologists have shown that the idea of some races being more intelligent than others is false. According to them intelligence is learned rather than inherited. But they agree that the early years of a child’s life are very important for hislher intellectual development, to which the home and early social environment contribute a lot. As most underprivileged learners come from similar homes and social backgrounds which are not congenial to learning, they display certain common characteristics which create problems for their education. A number of research studies conducted on underprivileged learners have identified some of the characteristics of the underprivileged learners.
(i) Low motivation to learn
The parents of most underprivileged leamers are illiterate and, therefore, hardly encourage their children to learn. Their poor socio-economic background has made them more present-oriented, that is, most of their time, energy and means is spent to satisfy their present needs. They cannot think for the future of their children, and fail to have long term goals for them. This is responsible for their children low educa- tional and occupaional aspirations which, in turn, are responsible for their lack of .-tivation for learning.
(ii) Low cognitive abilities:
Underprivileged learners have low cognitive abilities. Cognitive abilities refer to the abilities of an individual which are necessary to function at a level of abstraction, and include perceptual, conceptual and linguistic abilities. Underprivileged learners, for instance, tend to learn in a physical or motoric fashion. They can think through a problem only if they can work on it with their hands, whereas most of the advantaged learners learn in a symbolic way-getting a picture of the task and then solving it in their heads. This is mainly due to the fact that the environment of the underprivileged learners lacks the richness required for the development of concepts in them.
(iii) Low self-esteem
Underprivileged learners are found to have negative attitudes towards their own people, culture, language and also towards themselves. One’s attitude to oneself, as you know, is primarily influenced by what others think of us. People from dominant cultures have negative attitudes towards underprivileged learners. Racial and caste stereotypes (fixed negative attitudes of people of one caste and race towards others) that exist in a society contribute to their low self-esteem.
(iv) Poor readers and slow learners
Underprivileged learners are usually poor readers. This is primarily due to the fact that their homes hardly have any books and they get few chances to develop the habits of reading. Their learning style is slow and cautious.
Greater sesse of independence and responsibility
So far we have talked about some of the negative learning characteristics of the underprivileged Icarners. But they have also some very positive learner characteris- tics. In contrast to the privileged learners, they are often found to possess a greater sense of independence and responsibility.Underprivileged learners from their childhood days learn to make decisions on their own and take up responsibilities. They share household chores with their parents, learn to take care of their younger brothers and sisters. But unfortunately the educational system has not been able to exploit these very positive characteristics of the underprivileged learners.































49) Role play importance and guidlines Most children love acting. Give them very simple situations from day to day life. For example a shopkeeper and a girl buying sweets. Let two children come to the front of the class, and have a conversation. Giving clue cards often helps to give these conver- sations a meaninghl direction. Let the rest of the class note the conversation. Theteacher could make positive suggestions after the role-play. Once the class has been exposed to the form of roleplay, these could also be taken up in pairs by all the children, and the teacher could go around, and help with some language where ever it is required. The children could then be asked to write a similar dialogue for a differentsituation a doctor a patient a shopkeeper and a customer two friends on the phone, a parent and a child, two sportsmen. Give some suggestions of the type of language which they may use. For example:- I wonder what, How about, Have you ever, maybe, please may I, thank you.One word of caution, we need to keep in mind that there are some very shy children, who would hate doming out in front of the class. Make sure you know the children in the class, and are sensitive to such children, by not asking them to come out in front.

50) conditions that enhance language acquisition The teacher nccds to realise that helping students inaster oral skills brings the classroom closer to the real world. We use these skills everyday at home, at work at schoof. Oral language patterns have been shown by research to be an important base for reading. It is important for the teacher to:
Realise the relevance andjmportance of activities which enhance oral skills and translate this realisation into actual classroom practice. Thus every classroom should provide numerous opportunities for oral language practice through discussion, reporting, and question and answer sessions.The teacher needs to consciously build in time slots for oral activities. These need to be organised keeping in mind the particular requirements of each class, and the learning styles of most learners.
The teacher needs to establish a non-threateniilg and coilgenial classroom environment.
To ensure workable noise levels, it is vital to set very clear rules and limits.
Help the children to listen to each other and appreciate the views of others even if
they are completely contrary to one’s own beliefs.
Be very sensitive to the classroom dynamics and if need be provide extra support to the shy, insecure child. Try and avoid opportunities at which such children can be belittled. Draw them out very gradually, in the beginning letting them participate in small groups, and slowly as their confidence builds up, drawing them into the larger group. At the same time try and ensure active involvement of all the children.
At the end of each activity discuss ( as a class) the e.xperience of working on the activity.
Always use a positive approach when evaluating students’ work Talk about the good points first. Talk about the child’s areas of strengths and areas that require strengthening, rather than areas of weaknesses. This approach shifts the focus from trying to find errors, to finding ways of improving. The thrust becomes more positive. Infact it is a good idea to allow each child to compete with her ownearlier performance. Children may actually be asked to keeporecords of their performances (such as graphs) and see their own progress. The visual impact of such an exe;Yfse, helps to motivate children to do better each time. They love to see their graphs move up.Never miss an opportunity to praise real improvement or any creative work. Encouragement goes a long way in creating the desire to learn and improve. At the same time be very careful not to compare children. Value each child’s work for itself.When monitoring individual or group work make specific suggestions for improvement.Listen carefidly and provide support or reinforcement as and when needed. Give the studenti plenty of opportunity to practise.


  51) What are the major differences between learning to read in one’s mother tongue and learning to read in the second/foreign language?


Tcaching rcading in thc mothcr tonguc (Ll) is different from teaching reading in a forcign languagc (L2). This aspcct is quite often forgotten and the methodology adopted in teaching reading in L2 is based on the assumptions about language con- sciousness of a learner in his or her L1. In L1 learners know already how to produce and rcspond to the auditory signals in their language and in learning to read in L1 they have only to learn to respond to the visual forms which represent the auditory signals. But in L2 they havc to be taught the auditory signals in that language how to produce and rcspond to them. Even though the basic requirement bf decoding print may be common to both L1 and L2 all the other aspects of L2 have to be lcarned afrcsh by thc lcarncrs. In this respect, in L2 the learners have to learn the process of reading itself. The exposure and reinforcement from the environment which is readily availablc for L! is restrictcd in L2 and so extra effort is needed to sustain the various correspondences, especially the graphophonemic one.in the L2 situation. thc learncr has to initially master audio-lingually the oral counter- part of the material to be read. Thc teacher must give audio-lingual exercises as a prerequisite to the introduction of reading. The ability to distinguish the various sounds in L2 and produce them without causing any confusion, will help students in lcarning to recognise the written forms.it is necessary that thcy should produce accurate responses automatically to visual signs and in construct- ing meaning through previously established oral language. They need a great deal of organised and intensive oral practice to sharpen their visual perception and discrimina- tion so that they can develop quick recognition of visual signs necessary for efficient rcading. The first rcading experiencc must be limited to the exercises and content materials which have been made familiar to the students aurally and orally. The tcachcr should hclp thc learncrs to recognise and respond quickly as they look at these visual symbols. Learners need intensive practice before they can transform print to speech patterns in L2.In tcaching students in thcir own language, little time need be spent in clarifying concepts conveyed by words and phrases. Native speak& already know the oral
languagc which they will learn to read. But in the case of L2, the teacher will have to cnsure that the concepts in L2 are understood unambiguously by the readers. The tcachcr will have to provide for linking sound and structure directly through the association between language and behaviour, something similar to the experience of the learners in their mother tongue.At the introductory stage of teaching rcading in L2, the teacher should give an inten- sive oral practice of vocabulary and structural patterns before introducing the graphic symbols in L2. A lot of emphasis should be given to the explanation of concepts. The same sequence Listen, Repeat, Practice used in the audio-lingual method, will be effective at this stage of reading. In order that the reading activity be meaninghl, the teacher should give beforehand an aural review of the necessary patterns and associate them with their visual referents.In the first stages of reading development, the leamers may be asked to repeat each sentence in the lesson, line by line. This would fix the sound patterns through which the meanings of the graphic symbols may be realised and established. During this stage, gestures, pictures, labels, and flash cards can be used to help the leamers to recognise the symbols.After the preliminary oral drills, the second stage of reading uses the LOOK and SAY method. For young children the tcacher follows the same sequential order used in tcaching the auditory forms of the oral language, i.c.. listening, repeating and practising in sentence patterns. Thc tcacher shows the printed symbol for visual recognition.During the drill for recognising the graphic symbols of words, the teacher may a refer to the configuration or general shape of the word;b. call attention to some peculiarity about the word; andc. use a context, such as allowing the pupils to supply the word when it is omitted from a sentence.Then drills must bc reinforced by making learncrs SAY thc word bcing prcscotcd as they LOOK at it carefully and apply it to the sentence patterns they are learning to read. It is a great help to the learners if the written forms of the words are placed near the visual referents they illustrate. The picture clues are an excellent aid in helping learners fix in their memories the graphic forms of new words. Activities such as Flash Card drills, finding words and forming them for the class to see and repeat, matching words to the pictures that explain them and matching words to words may be very effective at this elementary level.The objective of the Flash Card game is to collect cards by correctly saying the word printed on it. The teacher holds up a card which bears in large letters a word to be mastered visually. The one who says the word corrcct gets the card to kccp until the, end of the game. With a little practice and proper teacher control the game can be conducted quickly and quietly and with much enthusiasm. The child who collects the largest number of cards at the end of the practice wins the game.To supplement this activity the teacher could devote a short time during each reading class to the repetition of basic sentence patterns while students look at the written forms. For very young students this practice offers an oppottunity for repeating in chorus basic sentences from the prescribed text itself.In the elementary classes, the children should be encouraged to usemarkers line by line, as they read the sentences in the lesson silently. This silent reading should be followed by individual oral reading to check both comprehension and oral production.With very young children, this narrative reading may be varied by the use of “experi- ence chart” reading. The children form certain basic sentences from their daily experi- ences. The teacher writes the children’s sentences on the experience chart or the blackboard. The children then read them chorally, silently and then individually.At the advanced stage the teacher may present shorlcr and rnorc simplified sei)ucllccs from the longer sections in the reading text. The teacher must remember that in developing reading skills in the foreign language the students have not only to be taught reading but also the oral skills. The diffegnces in sound and structure between the native and foreign language should be highlighted and adequate oral pradice should be given to the learners to make the sound symbol correspondences as well as the wordconcept correlations familiar to them. The teacher of English as a foreign language should bear in mind the following points:
learning to read in the foreign language demands the initial activity of intensive oral preparation, familiarity with materials and correlation of sound patterns with visual referents to establish meaning through meaning bearing auditory patterns;
reading in the foreign languag= should not be introduced until the students have mastered all essential sentence patterns and lexical items in an automatic form both aurally and orally;
choral drills with books closed and open, with kinesthetic aids to ensure correct pronunciation and intonation help develop reading skills through word groups rather than through word-by-word transference;
silent reading should be introduced gradually as a sequel to oral practice, in the beginning stages of reading; and
frequent tests in both oral and written forms help students to consolidate their comprehension and oral production of the longer reading passages.

52) What are the key criteria in developing a reading readiness checklist? Traditionalpracticesof assessing readinessforreadinghave relied ontheuseofnorm- referenced, standardized&, reading readiness tests. But these tests have deservedly come under criticism in recent years.
Given these doubts, it follows that the use of standadzed reading readiness tests to out what to teach in the kindergarten cannot be totally accepted. What types ofreading assessment devices, then, should be useful to the kindergarten teacher ? But before deciding on these devices, the teacher needs preliminary information to decide on the extent of the child’s acquaintance with reading print Also, the teacher needs a more global estimate of a child’s overall cognitive readiness for schooling. Once these decisions are made, the teacher will know who should be taught what and can place children who require similar instruction needs into small groups.There are six kinds of information that are quite usdid in making initial decisions about the type of instruction most suitable for individual children at the beginning of the school year :
1. The child’s experience with reading books.
2. The child’s understanding of the concept of letter’ word, sentence.
3. The child’s ability to predict words ftom context and that language units made sense within a larger message context.
4. The child’s knowledge of letters.
5. The child’s ability to read any of the most frequent words in written language.
6. The child’s readiness to benefit from sight word instruction.
Informal Assessment of General Cognitive Readiness
Ollila (1976) has devised a thorough and well balanced checklist with which teachers can informally judge a child’s general cognitive capacities. This checklist is very useful in the early period of instruction when teachers tend to adjust instruction to meet the neds of students. The sections on social and emotional adjustment in the classroom, desire to read and visual and auditory perception are especially relevant to revising instructional decisions in the initial stage
Reading Readiness Checklist
Name of Child
Date :
Write yes or no or another appropriate answer for each of the following questions :
Physical consideration
What is the sex ofthe child 7
Havethechild’s general health, vision and hearingbeen examined7Ifso,hasany special restriction been imposed or has any special treatment been prescribed 7
Are there any signs of visual, auditory, or speech problems 7 Is attendance in school regular 7
Is she alert and responsive to instruction 7
Social and Emotional adjustment in the classroom
Is the child overdependent on the teacher 7
Does she interact well with other members of the class 7 Does she adapt himself easily to new situations 7
Can she assume responsibility and work independently 7
Does she complete assigned tasks 7
Does
she know when to talk and when to lisl.:r, to the teacher 7 Does she participate well and take tuns in group activities ‘?
How well does she cope with minor frustrations 7
Does
she have patience and show persistence in completmg activities.
Desire to read and reading concepts
Does the child enjoy hearing stories 7
Can
the child listen to a story w i i sukained interest for 10 minutes 7
Does
she volatarily look at school books in the library 7
Does
she seem to have established a sense of left-to-right, top-to-bottom orientation in experience chart activities ?
Does she show interest in words and messages in the classroom 7 Doesshebringbooksfrom home to school ?
Does she handle books with reasonable care 7
Canthechild write her own name7
Does
she seem to understand that reading is talk wyitten down 7
Reading : Preparing the Child

Intellectual factors has the child had an intelligence test 7 If so, what were the results 7 doesthe child seem to mentally alert 7
Doest the child interpret pictures effectively, seem to contribute pertinent ideas to class discussions 7
Does the child have a good memoly for past experiences 7 Can she memorise simple rhymes or remember simple messages 7
Does she show originality in her ideas and classwork 7
Does she understand and follow directions with a minimum of assistance 7 Does she seem to reason well and pick up new learning quickly 7
Does she show some ability in problem solving 7
Background of experience and language abilities
Is the child able to recite common nursely rhymes, and is she acquainted with well- known fairy tales 7
Has the child attended nursely school and/or kindergarten 7Does the child have knowledge about common concepts food, family, house,
animals, etc 7 Are the child’s concepts reasonably accurate 7 Is English spoken in the child’s home 7
If not English, what language .is spoken 7
Can
the child speak with reasonable fluency 7
Does she seem to have a reasonable vocabulary to communicate her experiences 7 Can the child use more complex language structures in addition to so-called simple
sentences 7
Does the child use and/or understand standard English 7
Does she use a nonstandard form of English 7
Does the child understand the school’s language of instmaion 7
Visual and auditory perception
Can the child see differences in pictures and geometric shapes 7 Can the child recognize her own name 7
Can the child match letters and discriminate words that have gross difkrences (o and x; see and hello) 7
Can the child discriminate between words that have only minor detail differences (wear, were) 7
Can the child recognize words that have been repeatedly presented to her 7
Can the child rhyme words 7
Can the child add to a list of words beginning with the same initial sounds 7
Can the child discriminate between words that sound vely similar (watch and which) 7
Does the child demonstrate knowledge of the sound-letter relationships 7 (that is, d. It makes the first sound in dog).

53) Write a detailed note on the steps involved in process writing with young children taking the writing of a story as an example? Reckoning the fact that the children we are working with are very young, we are limiting our story to one paragraph. At a later more advanced stage, when the children are ready for it, they are introduced to the different aspects of story writing and the different parts of a story 1).
Step one: Choosing an idea
Explain to the children that they will be choosing an idea from their list. Emphasize that choosing an idea is a very important part of writing. Later on they may be writing on their own and they would need to know how to choose an idea that is suitable. If their choice is not interesting for them, they will not enjoy writing about it.
Let the children answer the following questions a Would we like to write about this idea ?
b. Do we remember enough about it ?
Let the children narrow down their list. Encourage discussion. Help the children amve at a conclusion. If the children are not able to decide on one final idea, have a class vote.
Let each child draw a picture about the idea. Although each picture will be different it will help the children remember details. This could be done at home.
Step two Writing the first draft
Explain to them that writers write a first draft just to get their ideas on paper. Then they make changes later on to improve or correct their stories. Emphasize the fact that it is not important for a first draft to look neat. Words or sentences may be added or crossed out, or rewritten, if the writer thinks of a better way to say something. If you like, you could actually show the class samples of first drafts of reports or papers you or anyone else has written to illustrate the fact that a first draft is not a finished piece of writing, but it is merely a start.
When you begin the class story, tell the children to think of information and details that would help someone else “see” a picture of what happened. List all the ideas that children come.out with, even the ones that do not tell us about the story. Let the children find these and circle them. Put up some discussion questions.
-What is the story about? (the main idea)
-Which sentencelsentences do not tell us about the story?
-Is there anything else someone would like to know or need to know? -What other interesting things can we tell?
-How can we make the story seem real?
As the children continue to contribute to the story, write the sentences on the board where they will not be erased, or on a clurt paper. If possible this first draft should show words and sentences tlut have been crossed out as the children change their mind. It need not be neat. As the class story develops, emphasize that this is just the first draft, and that changes can ‘be made later. Let the children decide on a suitable sentence to introduce the story.Step three: Revise the story
Write the word ‘revise’ on the board. Explain to the children that ‘revise’ means “to change”. Tell the children that they will now read their story again to look for ways in which they can change it to make it clearer and more interesting. They might need to add, change or take away words or sentences to make the story better. While revising put up the following discussion questions
-Does the story have one main idea?
-Are the sentences in the right order?
-Does it have enough detail? Do we need to make it clearer or more interesting? How? -Is there anything we need to describe?
Ask the children specific questions : for example, you may need to focus the children’s attention on some information that is missing. Ask the children to supply the iniorma- tion, use the words that the children use. Emphasize that there is not just one way to revise the story. Point out to the children that there is a special mark to show where to add a word or words. It’s called a caret.
Some writing researches have given a great deal of importance to the discussion that leads to revision. Gradually over time children would learn to discuss their writing in small peer-groups. Each child shares an emly draft, or a paragraph and other children receive the piece by responding to the details. Slowly over time the children are helped to look beyond the content and formatting to the style of writing.
4). Step Four: Proof reading
After the story has been completely revised, everyone in the class copies it out. Tell the children that there is one more step before they are finished with their story. They need to proof read it. Explain to the children that when they proof read, they check to see if they made any mistakes when they copied their stories. Children will want to make sure that their stories are neat and the sentences are written correctly so that everyone can read them easily. Explain to the children that when they proof read they should look for misspelled words, mistakes in capital letters and mistakes in punctua- tion.
Later on when children do their writing individually, they could do the proof reading in pairs or small groups. Two pairs of eyes are better than one! Children should be taught to use beginner dictionaries to check on spelling of words that they are unsure of.
Step Five Make a final copy.
compliment the children on the good work they have done. Tell them that now each one of them would have a chance of making their stories look special. Each child could think of different ways to show their story. It could be pasted onto an interesting shape in coloured paper. It could have some interesting drawings, it could be written on a cut out shape and so on.
Display the childrens’ stories, and let them admire each others work.

54) Teaching whole word identification The methodsforteachingchildrentoread whole words is especially useful at  the beginning stages of reading. This can be done directly or indirectly. An indirect method of whole word learning is listening to a story and following the words in the book as you read it aloud many times.Another indirect method is allowing children to listen to a tape recording of a complete text and then to read along with the tape. After reading along with the tape once or twice, children can then try to read it by them-selves.in thedirect methodfor teaching whole word identification you teach the words in decontextualised settings first. i.e., as a group of sounds and not as an element convey- ing meaning in a sentence, a story ctc. Then, childrcn practice rcading the words in contcxt. There are many ways to practisc whole word recognition in context, Getting another child to monitor a student’s attempts to say words and to pronounce unknown words during oral, rcading is onen cnough to help the student to become accurate and automatic in identifying whole words. Games provide another source for reading in context, words which have bccn inilially taught directly by the teachcr.
‘The method of teaching whole word identification in decontcxtualized settings are uscful if they do not become the only methods to be used in the classroom.
This mcthod should bc followcd immcdiatcly by practising identifying words In contcxt.The kind of words that require to be taught through whole word identification instruction is the structure words (articles, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs and provcrbs).These words are important because they signal how words are ordered in phrases or sentences. Besides thcy cannot be brought within phonic instruction because thcy have highly irregular sound symbol correspondences. The words most frequently found in First Standard Readers are : a, above across, after, again, and, as, at, before, but, can, could, down, first, for, has, have, he, her, here, him, his, how, I, if,.~’m,in, into, is, it, its, it’s, my, never, now, off, one, or, over, really, so, some, something, soon, still, than, that, the, then, there, these, ihey, this, to, too, under, up, very, was, we, well, what, when, where. which. who, why, with, yet, you, your.
What are the other occasions whcn whole word idcntification instruction is useful’? Thcrc are some children who cannot grasp the principle involvcd in the phonics approach. In such cases whole word identification followcd by a lot of practice in rcading words in contcxt can be vcry hclpful to the studcnts. Bcsides, it is simply quicker and more desirable to teach one or more words occumng oncn in a story or sclcction through whole word idcntification mcthods, because the phonic or spelling pattern rules do not apply to the words.

55) Advantages of grammar games Games help to motivate learners and sustain their interest.As we pointed out earlier, grammar is serious study and requires hard work. Grammar exercises, grammar is serious study and requires hard work. Grammar exercises, though useful. may become monotonous and mechanical. However, when grammar is presented through games, learners become actively involved. The spirit of competition makes them participate enthusiastically. In fact they master language structures, withcut being aware of the fact they are doing so. As modem language experts say, language is best learnt when the focus is not on language, but on meaning.2. Games help the teacher to create contexts in which the language is useful and meaningful.While playing the game it is necessary for learners to listen to and understand what others say and also speak. In other words, games provide meaningful practice in real life context. By making the language convey informatioll and opionion, games provide the key feature of ‘drill’ with the opportunity to understand the working of language as living communication. The ‘quality’ of the practice provided by these games is much richer than the amount or ‘quantity’ of practice provided by traditional grammar exercises.3. Games provide practice in all the four skills: reading, writing, listening and speak- ing.4. Games are useful in all the stages of teaching/learning sequence that is presentation, practice, recombination and free use of language. They can also be designed to suit various levels” primary, secondary or tertiary.5. Gmaes also have a diagnostic role: while the students play the games, the teacher could quietly observe the students’ performance and identify their strengths and weaknesses. This feedback would prove very valuable to the teacher for fiuther planning in his teaching.6. Games provide genuine information gaplopinion gap. What is information gap ? We speak or write because we want to pass on information or convey an opinion which the listener might be interested in. If the listener is familiar with the information or is of the same opinion, there is no gap and he will probably switch off. It may seem terribly obvious. In many language classes. there is no information gap at alland opinions are rarely asked for. When the teacher asks the student, for instance. “Where is the b00k”? the student knows that the teacher knows the answer ! The teacher is nore interested in thk form than the content of what the learner says.
In grammar games, on the other hand, there is always a genuine information/opiniongap. This makes the game more interesting and life-like.

56) Teaching children with special needs The difference in handling these children lies in the methods adopted for curriculum adjustment and modification, classroom management, resources both human (such as use of child to child .methods), and teachingflearning aids and appliances used. It depends greatly on your own preparation, planning and innovation as a teacher. Remember teaching is a challenging experience; sometimes daunting and at other times exhilarating.When dealing with individual needs in the classroom, an important aspect to kecp in mind is that there are no special teaching methods or specific strategies, to be used for handicapped children only. When deciding on the teaching method or strategies base them on the needs, interests and requirements of the particular child in question.How, then, will you deal with the special needs of the mildly disabled, for example, visually impaired children including those with low visicn, hearing or locomotor impair- ment, learning disabled or those with lower level of intellectual fun-‘*oning?How will you help cater to their needs?The first step in dealing with children with learning problems refers to their identification. Do you think that only doctors or specialists can do this? Ifyes, then there is a need to change your decision, since the identification is much easier than you have been think- ing.Children with special needs have some observable characterisitics. Let us take one disability at a time and try to see how you as a teacher can identifjr the disabilities in children. This can help you as a teacher to teach them better and make their learning easier.

57) How would u assess listening skills? Describe a sample of a listening scale? Several assessment scales have been developed to show the range of listening abilities within a group or class. These scales look at aspects of listening comprehension, commonly used strategies and appropriacy of interaction. While the first two look at cognitive and intellectual skills, the third deals with social skills. Most scales are able to only roughly categories where a person should be placed They are useful only because they are able to highlight areas of knowledge, not performance, in which the child needs to concentrate efforts for improvement.
One common way of assessing the development of listening skills is by rating or marking children on suitably designed listening tasks. These tasks need to be carefully planned so that they assess childrens’ performance in various aspects of listening.
Based on the type of response that is expected from the listener, listening comprehen- sion and listening perception, activities can be classified into two types.
a) Activities which require.productive
checks as responses
write words or sentences make notes
reconstruct the story
Here the listener is expected to listen, comprehend and recreate what was’heard. It therefore involves active mental processing on the part of the listener. Such activities measure higher order listening skills such as comprehension and understanding.
b) Activities which require on-productive
checks as responses
tick marks crossing
numbering lettering
raising of hand
showing a picture or object.
Here the listener is expected to receive the auditory input and respond to the correct sound quickly in one of the ways mentioned above. These tasks ineasure lower order listening skills such as attentiveness, sound discrimination, concentration.Children’s responses can be marked and each child’s progress assessed. If a child. has a specific problem, the teacher would need to deal with it individually. Children enjoy listening tasks and these should not become fearsome things simply because they are being marked. Children should be able to see evaluationas anindicatoroftheirownprogressaswellasanindicatoroftheirstrengthsand weaknesses, so that they are able to make efforts to improve their listening abilities.An Assessment scale developed by Michael Rost (1990) which outlines how listening can develop in t e p of comprehension, commonly used strategies and interaction and appropriacy.
Competent Listener
Range of comprehension: able to understand all styles of speech that are intelligible to native listeners in the target community; able to understand abstract concepts.
Strategies for understanding able to seek clarification smoothly when speech is unintelligible able to note areas where own knowledge is lacking to achieve an acceptable level of understanding and to note where the speaker is vague or inconsistent.
Appropriate interaction: able to understand and display appropriate listener responses in a wide range of social and specialised contexts in the target cultural setting.
Applications: able to perform acceptably any task requiring comprehension of oral language.
Listener of Modest Ability
Range of comprehension: able to understand most styles of speech that are intelligible to native listeners in the target community; able to understand some abstract concepts expressed orally, but often requires repetition or reexplanation.
Strategies for understanding: attempts to seek clarification when speech is unintelligi- ble, although attempts are not always successful or appropriate; able to note areas where own knowledge is lacking to achieve an acceptable degree of understanding and to note where speaker is vague or inconsistent, but occasionally is confused about the source of diitlculty in understanding.
Appropriacy of interaction: displays listener responses in a wide range of social and specialised contexts in a target cultural setting, but often not appropriately.
Application: able to understand enough of the input to infer the gist of the communicative event and to participate adequately in many situations and many tasks.
Listener of Limited Ability
Range of comprehension: able to understand limited styles of speech that are intelligi- ble to native listeners in the target community; not able to understand unfamiliar abstract concepts expressed in target language without considerable non-linguistic support; usually requires repetition or reexplanation or multiple clarification exchanges.Strategies for understanding: most often not successfulor appropriate in attempts to seek clarification when speech is unintelligible; d l y not able to note areas where own knowledge is lacking to achieve an acceptable understanding and to note where speaker is vague or inconsistent; often expresses confusion about the source of diliicul- ty in understanding.
Applications: usually not able to understand enough
of the input to infer the gist of the communicative event.
Appropriate i n t e d o n : cannot sustain understanding in
an interaction; displays limited range of listener responses.
The above categories can be further broken down into six categories
as: Limited, Limited +, Modest, Modest +, Competent, Competent +.
The advantage of such a scale is its simplicity. It can be used to roughly categorise where a learner
can be placed. For a more precise assessment of a listeners abilities, we need to assess performance on several listening tasks over a period of time. The tasks should test various listening skills.

58)What is language acquisition how would u distinguish between language acquisition and reading acquisition? It is obvious that in the majority of the children there is a’keen naturalmotivation to learn language, to speak and to explore its functions. This trend will continue as longas the individual continues to acquire, organize and restructure the knowledge of the world since language acquisition seems natural, we tend to think that the other skills like reading and writing will also come naturally to the child. We think that if one can speak a language then automatically one can read and write well in that language. But this is not so. Although reading and writing deal with the same language that is used in speech, there are other dimensions which require perceptions and strategies quite difTeren: from those associated with speech. Being aware of these differences will help us in realising w h t characterises the reading activity and thereby be conscious of those features which enable us to acquire the skill of reading efficiently.Reading acquisition is different from language acquisition in three ways. First, the reader must get accustorncd to the idea that print is language, that it is marks on paper. To do so, the reader must transform the printed code into language. Second, while the motivation for language acquisition is natural, it is not so as far as reading is concerned. It depends on how children have become familiar with print i.e., whether they can decipher the marks on paper correctly, without confusing the different shapes of these signs. But more irnprtantly, motivation to read depends on the functions of the printed word in the child’s personal, social and acadcrnic interests. Third, the inteiaction between speaker and hearer always occurs in an actual situatlpn in which the non-verbal actions of the speaker and the immediate surroundings assist in making any necessary clarification of the utterances. But in reading there are no such extralinguistic cues to make meaning clearer to the reader. Moreover, in reading. unlike speech, it is always assumed that any lack of uriderstaiiding IS the problcn~ol’ the reader and not the writer.Initial experiences with reading should be based on children’s desire to imagine, to know things and to explore the world. The simplest method to acquaint children with reading, its uses and pleasures, is by reading to them and talking to them about books. The next step is to display the print being read so that children can see it and hear it transformed into sound. As the children’s overt knowledge of the language grows and their ability to read words quickly increases, then they will want to read by themselves, and choose what interests them. But, to reach this stage, the opportunity must be there. Teachers shouldprovide such opportunities and help children to learn to use printed nuteria! for acadsnfic, social wadpersonal purposes. Very often teacherstend to concentrate on the academic side of reading in the classroom. This creates theimpression that reading is something that is done only in the classroom. Instead children should be made to realise that reading is closely linked to one’s life and that a realistic approach to reading will help them to develop a positive outlook in life.










































59) What indicators would you use to assess the speaking skill? Since speaking is a social skill it is not so easy to evaluate it. It is important that any evaluation should occur in a natural situation, where there is a spontaneous flow of speech. Any evaluation in an artificial set up cannot provide a true picture of the child’s competencies in the spoken language. It can also be extremely threatening for a child and prove harmful for further speech development. It is therefore, essential that evaluation of spoken skilis is done very carefully.
Speaking is a skill which can be improved by practice and training. Given below are some indicators, which need to be looked at while helping a child to improve her spoken skills. It is suggested that theseare used as informal indicators, which give a feed back to the teacher in an on going way, rather than as indicators to be assessed formally.
1. Articulation: Articulate in Latin means “to join”. Sounds are the joints of words. Listen carefully to student.’ speech. Show them how to properly use their lips. tongues, jaws, and nasal passages to improve this technique.
2. Voice quality: The power ofpermation often depends on convincing voice quality. Teach and show students how to use the voice to show feeling and have maximum impact on the listeners.
3. Posture: A straight well-postured body fosters attention on the part of the listener.
Good poise gives the listener an air of importance. All 639 muscles of the human
body become actively involved. .1
4. Vocabulary: Talkto your students about “Word Power.” A strong, rich vocabulary makes the speaker more clear and persuasive. Use words which help to define and create clear picture in the mind of the listener. Children need to learn to use precise words.body language: Show your students how hand gestures and facial expressions are important assetsfor effective speaking.
6. Positivethinking:Stresstheimportanceofagoodselfimage.Throughpmirs:and an abundance of listening, attempt to build confidence in each student. Make each one feel comfortable and relaxed. This has a direct impact on effective speaking.
7. Appropriate volce volume: The children need to realise the importance of this. They need to know that everyone in the audience has the right to listen. Every speaker has the right to the heard. Physical distance fkom the speaker and auditory differences make this important. Children need to know how to change their volume appropriately.
8. Concentration: Children need to know that clear thoughts in an organised manner keep the attention of the listener.
9. Repetition: Repetitions need to be avoided as they c o d b e the listeners. They should only be used for emphasis.
10. Pacing: Tell children to avoid long pause. They need to make sure that they think first and then speak. Grouping for the proper word and creating stilted thouat patterns can make the listener ill at ease. In the case of prepared speech there is no substitute for good preparation and rehearsal. Involving children in the process of evaluation is often very effective. Given below is a sample of a student’s self- inventory. It may be changed or modified according to the needs of a specific class.

60) What do you understand by reading readiness of children? The term “readiness” is based on cognitive psychology. Accord- ing to Ausubel (1959), Cognitive Readiness is “the adequacy of existing capacity in relation to the demands of a given learning ta:k”. In other words it is finding out what the child must know in order to perform a nexttask quickly. It is what the child must know to transfer his or her existing 1-nowledg 2 a hitherto unexperienced situation. For knowledge to be transferable, it mdst be relational. This means that the readiness to perform a task depends upon the generalizabilitv cf the leamcr’s prior knowledge to thc specific requirements of a new task.
Readiness is not a state reached at a Eertain point of time. It is a relative state of continuing development. The child’s state of readiness changes according to his or her available knowledge, the extent to which it is integrated and the relatedness of the knowledge to a particular, not-yet-performed task. If a child can accurately and auto- matically perform a task, then the child-is no longer in a readiness state for learning the task, but has in fact learned it. If the child cannot perform the task at all, with or without instruction, then the child may not possess the relational knowledge necessary to perform the task. On the other hand, if the original task requirements were changed, then it may fall within the relational knowledge of the child and he or she may then be able to do the similar but revised task. This means that the teacher either has to teach what a child needs to know to do a task or has to alter the nature of the task so that it makes sure of what the child already knows and builds upon it.Now, in such a situation, it is clear that a teacher cannot judge how prepared a child is for a specific reading task without first observing how the child reads without any help or noticing how the child responds, during the early attempts of the teacher to teach him or her how to read. This is necessary for the teacher to do if the proposed reading programme is to benefit the learner. This implies that a beginning reading programme requires individualized instruction. So, in the kindergarten reading readiness may be seen as the extent to which a child possesses the relational knowledge either to perform a reading task independently or to meaningfully participate in learning a relatively novel reading task.Children in the Kindergarten are ready to be introduced to reading at some I-vel, so long as they can bring what they know about language and their own personal experi- ence of the world to bear upon the reading task. What children may know about language is how its grammar works and that the prediction and reception of speech are meaning centred acts. But what the children may not realise is that all speech state- ments are not literal in meaning, and that they depend heavily on pragmatic cues. Therefore, the transition from participating in spoken language to participating in reading printed language may not be direct because the printed text lacks the rich pragmatic cues found in speech.

61) Discuss the special needs of second language learners how will u create a simulating classroom environment which promotes writing?


The classroom is often called an artificial environment for learning and using a second language. However, linguists have &sed that the classroom is a real social context in its own right, where learners and teacbefs enter into real social relationships with each other. Language structures and communicative functions are not baund to specific situations, once they have been mastered, they can be transferred to contexts other than the one where they were initially acquired. Structures and skills acquired by a second language learner in classroom interactions can be transferred to other kinds of situations and the other way round. The important thing is for a teacher to tryand use all the opportunities that a classroom provides for real communication. In this way the teacher utilises the natural learning environment within the classroom.Given this general view it is important to realise that the natural language environment allows children to explore a variety of forms of writing, with a variety of different purposes. Broadly these may be categorid into three major categories
1 Transactional forms : This is speakinglwriting concerned with getting things done. It involves giving information, instructions, notes, giving messages, writing notices and other similar activities which attempt to advise, persuade or inform others.
2. Expressive form : This is language which is close to the self, used to reveal the nature of the person. It is a free flow to ideas and feelings.
2. Poetic form : Here the language used is fashioned in particular ways to make pattern. Language in this form is used as an art medium.
1. We need to builql our writing programme and the classroom environment around the child’s need to convey something to a reeipiemt audience. The primary drive for wanting to write comes from the need to communicate or convey an idea.In the process of exchanging written interactions, the child learns to under- stand other people’s writings while they begin to understand what the child has written.
2. We need to understand the importance of experimentation and risk-taking in the process of learning to write. In an environment where children are not anxious about making mistakes, they explore the language in various ways. Through invented spellings, imitations of adult writings and their own inner drives,children step into unfamiliar language areas.As they use the language,as they write and speak and read in it, they become better equipped they acquire new linguistic abilities.Their mistakes help a teacher to provide the formal instructions they need.
3. We need to understand that children progress in different ways and at different paces. Each child brings to her writings a rich background of experience.Whether this experience is supported by a literate background at home,or whether the child comes from an oral tradition will influence the child’s writing.
4. We need to support children’s experiments with the new language, watching for conventions as they creep into their writing. Children must feel comfortable exploring the written form of the second language. They must relate to it and feel a sense of ownership about their writings, without being afraid to make mistakes. It is through this that each learner discovers the strategies that allow her to be an effective language userSvery time a teacher sets a topic, asks for aparticular rhetorical form or expects accurate spellings and punctuations to take precedence over meaning, she is not giving children the opportunity for experi- encing and experimenting with the language.Children need to be gently led into the arena of writing in the second lan- guage. Since most children are reluctant to take risks and experiment with an unfamiliar language the teacher designs writing activities which begin within a structured framework.Gradually as the child acquires competency over the lexical and syntactical structure of the second language, more open ended communica- tive activities are taken up. Use of the mother tongue is also allowed with gradual insistence on second language usage as the child becomes more confi- dent.We need to recognise the importance of having audiences respond to the meaning of what the child has written. Writing involves a constant s haring with others; talking and sharing about ideas and getting a feedback onideas have worked or not.Children need to write for manyThey need to write for real audiences for themselves for both younger and older children, for adults they know and for some general unknown audience as well.We need to provide demonstrations of what is involved in being a writer. In order to help children develop as writers, we need to share in the writing process by being writers ourselves. By providing demonstrations of writing in action, by being partners in the creating process, we do more to help children figure out how to be writers in this way than all our correcting of their mistakes can ever hope to do. Some Underlying Principles
1. Whether the child is writing in his mother tongue or in the second language, the child writes best about something she knows or has experienced or cares about.
2. Once a child has acquired confidence in the usage of a language, she should be free to choose what she wants to write about.
3. There is no one correct style of writing.
4. Children own their pieces of writing. Teacher’s must respect this. Teacher’s do not
have a right to mutilate a child’s piece of writing with red marks.
5. The teacher must focus on the content of the children’s writing i.e. the ideas,the expressions, the details and the flow of ideas. These issues are more important than technical matters like writing conventions, or spellings and handwriting.
6. Children should be allowed to use invented spellings. The teacher and other children help the child to arrive at conventional spellings. The teacher however, needs to be sensitive to the special needs of non-standard speakers and provide the additional help they require. Formal structured reinforcement is provided from time to time.
7. There is no absolute level of proficiency that the child must attain. The teacher rejoices with each child at the progress she makes from any given point.
8. The teacher should also write some pieces with the children so that she can share the child’s di£ficulties and triumphs.



62) define the term underpriviledged learners?The term ‘underprivileged’ refers to the disadvantaged section of people who are econom- ically, socially and locationally in an unfavourable situation compared to the rest of the population of the society. Thus it is a relative term. They are underprivileged in relation to the middle class or upper class people of their society. Educatio~listsand social Scientists have used many other terms such as ‘deprived’. ‘psycho-socially deprived’ ‘culturally deprived’, ‘socio-economocally deprived’, ‘locationally deprived’, etc. to describe these sections of the pop~llalionof a country. On account of their poverty and low social status, they are denied the privileges available to the people of upper classes. Thus the underprivileged in India include the poor, the ethnic minority groups such as the SCs and STs, the refugee immigrants and the socially, economically and locationally backward learners.
Why are They Underprivileged?
The causes of the backwardness of the uilderprivileged are many. However, some very general causes of their backwardness are as follows:-
(i) Poverty
Poverty is common to all unprivileged groups. It is the root cause of their back- wardness. Most of the opportunities in life are denied to thcm just because they are poor. Take, for example, the case of education. Poor nutrition prevents unprivileged children from making full use of their intelligence. This is seen more during the early stages of development of poor children. This leads to poor performance in schod which in turn, reduces the chances of their employment.
Exploitation and discrimination by the privileged
Since the beginning of history, exploitation of the underprivileged by the privi- leged has been a very comnlon occurrence. With the progress of time, while the visible exploitation is on the decrease, the invisible exploitation of underprivileged by the privileged is on the increase. The education system, for example, is based on the privileged culture. History and other textbooks hardly ever mention the contri- bution of the underprivileged to the mainstream culture. This causes a negative self-image among unprivileged children and a negative attitude to their own culture which, in turn, contributes to their disadvantaged status.
(iii) Locational disadvantage
The underprivileged tcnd to live either in remote rural areas or in the slums in towns and cities. Their locational disadvantage denies them some of the opportuni- ties available to the Privileged people who live in better locations.
(iv) Urban-middle class and dominant-culture based education system
The existing schools are based on urban middle class culture. The textbooks, the teaching methods and the system of examination are more suitable for the middle and upper class students. The medium of instruction is often the language of the privileged group. The culture of the underprivileged groups, their life and learning styles are hardly taken into consideration. Thus, for learners who belong to the privileged culture, the school is a continuation of the home. But, for the underpriv- ileged learners there lies a wide gap behveen the home and the school. This is primarly responsible for their poor performance in school, which, in turn, makes it difficult on their part to rise socially and economically.One of the major means of transformicg the underprivileged into privileged is education But unfortunately the current education does not help them much in this regard. This is primarily due to the fact that the current system of education is based on the culture of the privileged. Let us discufs, in some detail, how the different aspects of the current educational system do not help the underpriviliged in their hope for Ilansforniation of their lives, inspite of the special incentives provided to some of the aderprivileged learners (S.T., S.C., and O.B.C) by the Government.
(i)
Textbooks
Textbooks play a vcry important r ~ l e31zeaching/learning, ~;articularlyin devel~p- ing and underdeveloped countries. But these textbooks are oftc,. written from the point of view of the culture of the privileged. The history texthooks, for instance, hardly ever mention the contribution of the underprivileged class to nation build- ing. There were not less than a hundred tribal uprisings against the British Rule before the first war of independence In i857. But most of the history textbooks are silent about these uprisings. Moreover, most of the textbooks are difficult and packed with too much information. Thus, most of them are suitable for the highly motivated learners. But, as underprivileged learners have low motivation, they fail to make good use of these textbooks. Besides, when learners of privileged class fail to make good use of these textbooks, they take the help of private tutors and teaching shops, but the parents of the unprivileged learners cannot afford such outside help.
Methods of teaching
Like the textbooks, the methods of teaching is also based on dominant, privileged culture. One of the principle behinds most of the methods of teachinaearning for example, is reward and punishment reward for doing well and punishment for not doing well. The children of the privileged class get trained in this principle as they grow up in the family. But this is not the case in the family of an underprivileged learner.
(iii) testing A major cause of the poor performance of the underprivileged learners in examina- tions is the dominant culture biases in the test and test materials. The content of the question, the instructions, the time factor, in other words, the total testing procedure is based on urban middle class culture, which creates problems for the unprivileged learner. It is found, for example that in the examination, students are asked to write essays mostly on urban-oriented themes such as “A Circus Show You Have Visited”, “The Bazzar You Live In”, etc. Setting up a strict time limit in tests create problems for tribal learners as they have not learned to give great importance to time while growing up in unprivileged families.
(iv) Teacher training
Most of the teachers teaching unprivileged learners are from the middle or the upper middle class. They share some of the negative attitudes of the privileged class towards the unprivileged. Some teachers, for example, consider the underprivileged learners or genetically inferior to the privileged learners. Existing teacher training programme do not help them become aware of their negative attitudes. Neither do these programmes help them identify the cultural biases in textbooks, method and test materials for the underpriviledged learners.
(v) Problem of learning language
The language of the privileged class is often used as the medium of instruction in education. But most of the underprivileged learners are speakers of dialects of a or speakers of some minority languages. In most cases, their language learning load is greater as they have to learn their own language/dialect and also the dialect1 language of the dominant groups. Because of all the problems mentioned above, the school appears alien to the underprivileged learners whereas it becomes an extension of home for the privileged learners.



63) How to develop the personality and social skills of young learners? Emotions The Wellspring Of All Human Activity
Do you think that emotions are the wellspring of all human activity or do you think that this theory of human behaviour is far-fetched? Certainly both Behaviourism and the Social Learning Theory claim that emotions play an important part in development through operant conditions and modelling. But are the emotions the central adaptive forces for all human behaviour? Consider the following:
a. Emotions and cognitive processing.
1. Expressions of fear and anger and happiness all show cognitive development in an infant. On the other hand, babies deprived of a warm relationship with a caregiver (as is common in institutions) show mental retardation within a few months.
2. The self-conscious emotions like pride, shame or guilt are experienced later and show a further stage of development.
3. Stress and anxiety according to research do not contribute positively to learning or problem solving.
b. Emotions and social behaviour
Social behaviour is learnt by emotional signals. Adult disapproval, praise or anger is the key which helps children to regulate their own behaviour and evaluate the behaviour of others.
c Emotions and physical health
It is a startling fact that emotional deprivation has a stunting effect on physical (and, of course,, mental development) in the infant.Emotional development in primary school By middle childhood, children feel embarrassed, proud, etc. (i.e the self-conscious emotions) even without adults to provide the signals for these feelings. They are also able to exercise some control over their emotions as the central nervous system matures. Sensitive parents and teachers also help this social maturity. Children also become aware of emotional display rules i.e. when it is acceptable to show emotion in public.Empathic responding i.e. ability to feel and respond to the happinessldistress of others increases during this period. It has been found that parents who are nurturing and encour- aging are more likely to have empathic youngsters. Children with harsh and punitive parents create disruptions in the development of empathy. Such children tend to respond with anger and aversion to the distress of others.


64) What are the various stages in the development of reading ? What should be the teacher’s role inhelping students to learn reading ?
The various stages in the development of reading in a child are marked by typical pattcrns of rcading performanceThe value of the developmental view of reading is that it provides a fraamework for relating the skills, pocess, and comprehension aspects of reading. This framework serves three purposes. First, it helps to indicate clearly the major sources of change in each dimension of reading that leads to new patterns of reading growth. Second, it marks the ability to read and comprehend complex reading material as well as manage a wider range of genres at a particular level of readability. Third, the typical patterns of gnwth serve as the basis for comparing the changes in the reading performance ofindividuals regardless of which class they are in school.
Skills Learning
The main sources of changes in skills learning are to be seen in the knowledge of print as a code, sight word and word identification  cues Althoughthe rate of reading and monitoring of the use of skills, strategies, cognitive resources and text knowledge do not seem to be of great importance at the initial stage, 3 must be recognised that the child is already beginning to activate all these sources of change to some extent even at this stage. Generally, the child, at this stage, is expected to pay attention to skills learning.
Sentence Processing
The primary sources of change in sentence processing may be seen in word groupingand in getting the meaning of each sentence as it is read. As these sources grow andare actively used, it can be seen that the child moves away from paying overt attention
to individual words during reading. The import:rnce of decoding words diminishes and the child begins to manipulate groups of words. This is due to the child’s goodworking knowledge of graphophoneme correspondences and a fairly good store of structure and content words.
Text Comprehension
The chief sources of change in text comprehension are the increase in the rate of reading, active monitoring of the use of skills and strategies and an increase in the knowledge of how different genres of text are organised. The ability to manage these resources will mark a fairly mature stage of reading development. The potential to make simultaneous multiple inferences, the possession of a wider range of world knowledge and the increase in vocabulary will facilitate the comprehension of complex texts.Re a d i ng development is perhaps the most critical aspect of reading because it takes into consideration the relative importance and functions of skills learning, sentence processing and comprehension aspects of reading. It gives us a sense of how changes in reading take place. More importantly, without realising how changes in reading are
related to the various patterns of growth in reading, it is possible to give undue importance to one dimension of reading to the exclusion of the others. For teachers and parents, this can lead to many restrictive, unproductive and artii3cial methods about the instructional strategies needed for individual children in the elementary school.Now, what are the implications of this view of reading as development for teaching reading? The developmental view of reading attempts to ensure that instructional goalk match the child’s patterns of reading. The level of instruction cannot be either too below or too fax above the stage of reading that a child has reached. there is a big gap between the child’s attainment in read;.ng Md the requirements for reading in the classroom, then motivation to read will be reduced and comprehension will be dimin- ished. All children contribute to changes in their reading growth. But the rate of such changes and the manner in which they are integrated into patterns depend very much on the quality of instruction given by the teacher.During elementary education, the child passes through three stags of reading develop- ment. In the initial stage, skills and processing strategies get the maximum attention in the teacher-directed instructional strategies. Also, it is important that the teacher provide time regularly to the children to read, engage them in language and reading related activities as well as allow them to read on their own for pleasue. Otherwise, their natural motivation cannot be kindled and sustained. Thus primary and beginning reading instruction should be based on carefully selected skills and strategies to be directly taught by the teacher. In addition, a well designed classroom environment will give the children good opportunities to listen to reading and explore the use of books through their own reading.in the interim stage of reading development, most of the teacher-directed instruction should be on processing strategies for constructing meaning. This would help impiwe the child’s use of word identification skills, predicting, confirming and sampling strategies. It also establishes consistent reading of sentences in phrase groups. Finally it permits children to use their prior knowledge of the world actively to relate cohesive structures in the text. Again, if the maximum advantage is to be derived from viewing reading as development, teachers should provide opportunities for children to read by themselves and other language activities such as writing, and discussion



65) What are the main features of a good writing programme ? How can a teacher utilise them to develop good writing practices among students ? In the real world of classrooms, there are often rigid guidelines imposed by state educational policies, by school managements or other policy makers and educators. Teachers’ performances are measured by the “syllabus coverage”and performance on achievement tests. Teachers’ struggle to mark all the checklists, covet all the books and workbooks and prepare children for their examination. Children are busy studying about reading and writing and focusing on specific skills, rather than actually practic- ing reading and writing in meaningful ways. We continue to search for ways andmeans of implementing a language programme based on sound theory in our classrooms. We need to make adjustments in our existing curriculum to find a place for meaningful reading and writing activity. If a teacher is convinced that it is important it can be done. To develop a meaningful readindwriting programme one requires:A daily time slot of preferably 45 mins. to 1 how. A calendar of experiences.Parental supportConviction
Some Practical suggestions
a An activity based programme is not more expensive if one taps the available resources effectively. Walking trips to the neighbourhood, parent help, old magazines books and calendars are all resources that help. Use the wasted paper from photocopiers and printing presses to write on.
b. A class of 50 students is certainly daunting. To ensure that the teacher does not back out from activities and revert to rote teaching, the school climate needs to be supportive Wlen all their colleagues are taking the children to the local market or the nearby post office or planning unusual creative work, the new teachers are quickly caught up in the atmosphere. Such an atmosphere however, cannot be created by a single teacher, it has to be the joint effort of the entire school, and needs to be reflect- ed in the schools policy. Parent volunteers are a wonderful resource. They can be tapped to accompany the children on field trips, celebrations, cooking experiences. A register can be maintained to ensure that parents are available whenever an experience is planned. In fact some functions can be planned and organised entirely by parents. This has been found to be very effective as parents also begin to get actively involved in the learning processes of their children.
c. Some activities are not possible to conduct with 50 students. Dividing them into smaller groups becomes necessary. By the time they are in Class three, a group of four children can satisfactorily complete an activity on their own. The teacher must give clear instructions and then move from group to group helping and supporting. For younger children, parent volunteers or senior students would be required to help, otherwise the teacher is compelled to stick to more structured activities.
d. Any activity based learning is noisy. We know that language cannot be learnt silently. So we simply have to accept the fact that if we are to use the language- experience approach the noise level will be high.
e. A calendar of experiences needs to be worked out and planned within the timetable.It can bc linked up with other subject areas and project work. Children need to get clear instructions. There must be a discussion before and after. The experience must be followed up with activities which lead to writing. Volunteers must be contact- ed and all arrangements made in advance.
Correction : It is not possible for the teacher to look at every piece of writing that every child does, particularly if the class is large and the children are going to write at least four times a week, if not daily.Children need to be actively involved in the process of correction and evaluation, in fact these skills are an essential part of the writing process. Children at the elementary school level can be taught these through a writing programme which allows them time for drafting, revising and proof reading. Suggested ways of doing this in the class have been discussed in the unit on evaluation.
While correcting written work, the teacher would need to look at the content, the format, the appropriateness of the writing style to the type of text, lexical and gram- matical items. She would take up individual discussions whenever required.She would not put red marks all over the writing, but would write comments in the margin in pencil. She could also use a coded systems of correction with W e r e n t symbols to indicate different kinds of corrections. The children should be made familiar with this, and could also use it while doing self correction. The teacher would base formal instructions on the insights she gains about the children’s linguistic needs after she has gone through the children’s writings. Children requiring special attention would be taken up separately.THE ROLE OF THE tEACHER
The teacher needs to perform wrious roles, in order to create a stimulating classroom environment which promotes writing.
The teachsr needs to:
1. Help students think about their topics before they write by talking about them with her or with one another. Exploring their topics through talking helps students:
a discover the meaning they want to express
b. organise their thinking about what they want to say.
2. Encourage children to write about what is meaningful to them. Keeping diaries and journals helps children to choose topics which they care and feel about,
3. Move about the room as students write, responding to their work while it is incomplete. Ask students questions that help them discover where their meaning is incomplete or their content disorganised. When they have communicated well, show them your appreciation. Encourage children to talk about their writing, it helps them to clarify their thoughts and ideas.
4. Help students to see one another as writers and assist one another with their work. Even very young children can listen to or read someone else’s writing and respond to
it intelligently. We need to help children respect each other’s writings and offer helpful suggestions. This process helps children to develop critical abilities. Occasionally it’s a good idea for a teacher to have a demonstration for the whole class, where some children’s writing is discussed. This helps children to know what to look for in a piece of writing.
5. Prepare a writing folder for each student. Preserve all drafts of all the students’ work in their individual folders. Children can see their own progress when their writ- ings are arranged in a chronological order. This is very encouraging for students as the begin to view writing as a growth process.
6. Provide real audiences. This has been discussed at length earlier. Sometimes children write for themselves, but more often they write to communicate with others. Writing is more likely to be improved when it is written to be read by a real audience. This also generates a greater involvement in the writing.
7. Relate language study to real language use. When children have a need to use something they are more apt to remember and use it. Writing for a meaningful purpose emurages children to make sure that their writing serves the purpose it is intended for or in other words the target audience is able to receive what the child wants to convey. This pushes children towards learning the conventions of standard language use. The teacher also needs to draw children’s attentions to these conventions from time to time either through fonnal instructions or informally through individual discussions.
8. Use a variety of evaluation tools. Students improve as writers when they write frequently. The teacher needs to evaluate the children’s writings in a variety of ways. First by noting the characteristics of their writing while it is developing and by keep- ing copies of all their work readily available, so that it is possible to note each child’s progress and instructional needs. Responding to children’s efforts as they write helps to improve their writing.