Alphonse Daudet's 'The Last Lesson' very prominently raises the question of linguistic and cultural hegemony of the colonial and imperial powers and their lust for controlling the world and influencing their cultures and identities.
The Last Lesson raises the burning question very innocently through the words of little Franz that "Will they make them sing in German, even the pigeons?" This raises the question of immorality of imposing imperial languages and cultures on the colonies. The child questions that when even the birds and animals can't be forced to abandon their language and speak others then what forces the man to think that it would be prudent force other human beings to forcibly accept any language other than theirs.
The language of a country is not only a medium of communication for the people but also the link for identity, once the native language is snatched away from the people. It's not only the loss of convenient communicating medium but also the loss of identity for people for what they have been and what they might become.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Is English Class Boring?
I used all the techniques which I had browsed from the library and net. But after the class I had to face the same old comment that Grammar Class in Boring. After a while even I started believing that boredom is a part of language teaching until I came across the book written by Hilda Taba. And I am here to share those exotic moments of teaching.
Language learning is a continuous phenomena. The students learn new words from their books and teachers. Later they start interpreting these words with the experience they come across. Inductive model of teaching is one of those techniques which offers a delightful insight into language learning.
Inductive teaching
Inductive teaching is a powerful strategy for engaging all learners in a structured lesson. The process is described here, and main questions that you will need to consider are raised as prompts through which a model lesson can be developed.
The students do the learning, however we teach. We design the environment to make it likely that the students will learn. We organise the kids, assemble learning resources, and provide tasks. We teach the students to work in that organization, use those resources (including ourselves), and respond to those tasks. We draw on various models of teaching to help us design those environments, to help us decide how to organize the students, how to arrange materials, and what kinds of tasks to provide and in what order. Always we have objectives in mind: the kinds of learning that we hope will happen.
Objectives of the Inductive Model
The inductive model is designed to accomplish some very broad purposes, but can be focused specifically as well. Some of the broader objectives occur over fairly long periods of time through many experiences with inductive processes: others can be accomplished quite quickly and efficiently.
Thinking inductively
Every inductive experience should help students learn to work inductively collecting and organizing information, forming categories and hypotheses, developing skills, and using the knowledge and skills appropriately. Through these experiences, they learn how to construct and use information while consciously improving their skills in doing so. Thus, the model gives students a powerful tool for learning, one they can use from the time they enter school and which will serve them throughout their lives. As we teach, we want them to get better and better at learning by thinking. Essentially, we want to help them increase their intelligence.
Inquiring collaboratively
Most inductive activity is the product of an individual mind. We think about data and form categories within our own heads. However, our minds do not exist in a soda vacuum! The learning environment needs to operate so that the students learn to build and test ideas with others, helping one another and testing their minds against the ideas of others. Thus, we want to build a learning community in the classroom where individuals learn to share the products of their inquiries and where groups and the whole class plan studies together.
Using the ideas in learning resource centres, books and electronic media connect the learner to all manner of sources for information and ideas. Students need to learn to mine those sources for information and to use their contents to test ideas and to find ideas to test.
Building conceptual control over areas of study
The inductive process asks students to form concepts by organizing, grouping, and regrouping information so that areas of study become clear and hypotheses and skills can be developed and tested.
Acquiring and retaining information and skills. Induction is built on collecting and organizing information and building conceptual structures that provide for long-term retention of information. The process of organizing data, building hypotheses, and converting information into skills is designed to increase the likelihood that what is learned “stays learned.”
The Flow of the Model
The concept we refer to as syntax depicts the structure of a model of teaching: its major elements or phases and how they are put together. Some models, such as concept attainment, have relatively fixed structures within which some of the elements or phases need to follow each other for maximum effectiveness. Other models have a rolling or wavelike structure where phases are recycled.
Inductive inquiries are rarely brief. The flow of the inductive process is made up of several types of inquiry that overlap considerably:
• identifying an area of study - a domain that contains conceptual or actual territory to be explored
• collecting and sifting information relevant to that area or domain of inquiry
• constructing ideas, particularly categories, that provide conceptual control over territories of information
• generating hypotheses to be explored in an effort to understand relationships within that domain or to provide solutions to problems
• testing hypotheses, including the conversion of knowledge into skills that have practical application and
• applying concepts and skills, practicing them and developing ‘executive control’ over them so that they are available for use
In this flow of cognitive operations, we find the definition of induction, for in these types of inquiry, the student constructs knowledge and then tests that knowledge through experience and against the knowledge of experts. Induction, rooted in the analysis of information, is often contrasted with deduction, where one builds knowledge by starting with ideas and proceeding to infer further ideas by logical reasoning.
Although it is convenient to imagine a prototype inquiry that begins with data collection and organization and proceeds to the development of categories, the generation and testing of hypotheses and perhaps then to the development of skills, the inductive process may begin at any of these stages or phases.
Language learning is a continuous phenomena. The students learn new words from their books and teachers. Later they start interpreting these words with the experience they come across. Inductive model of teaching is one of those techniques which offers a delightful insight into language learning.
Inductive teaching
Inductive teaching is a powerful strategy for engaging all learners in a structured lesson. The process is described here, and main questions that you will need to consider are raised as prompts through which a model lesson can be developed.
The students do the learning, however we teach. We design the environment to make it likely that the students will learn. We organise the kids, assemble learning resources, and provide tasks. We teach the students to work in that organization, use those resources (including ourselves), and respond to those tasks. We draw on various models of teaching to help us design those environments, to help us decide how to organize the students, how to arrange materials, and what kinds of tasks to provide and in what order. Always we have objectives in mind: the kinds of learning that we hope will happen.
Objectives of the Inductive Model
The inductive model is designed to accomplish some very broad purposes, but can be focused specifically as well. Some of the broader objectives occur over fairly long periods of time through many experiences with inductive processes: others can be accomplished quite quickly and efficiently.
Thinking inductively
Every inductive experience should help students learn to work inductively collecting and organizing information, forming categories and hypotheses, developing skills, and using the knowledge and skills appropriately. Through these experiences, they learn how to construct and use information while consciously improving their skills in doing so. Thus, the model gives students a powerful tool for learning, one they can use from the time they enter school and which will serve them throughout their lives. As we teach, we want them to get better and better at learning by thinking. Essentially, we want to help them increase their intelligence.
Inquiring collaboratively
Most inductive activity is the product of an individual mind. We think about data and form categories within our own heads. However, our minds do not exist in a soda vacuum! The learning environment needs to operate so that the students learn to build and test ideas with others, helping one another and testing their minds against the ideas of others. Thus, we want to build a learning community in the classroom where individuals learn to share the products of their inquiries and where groups and the whole class plan studies together.
Using the ideas in learning resource centres, books and electronic media connect the learner to all manner of sources for information and ideas. Students need to learn to mine those sources for information and to use their contents to test ideas and to find ideas to test.
Building conceptual control over areas of study
The inductive process asks students to form concepts by organizing, grouping, and regrouping information so that areas of study become clear and hypotheses and skills can be developed and tested.
Acquiring and retaining information and skills. Induction is built on collecting and organizing information and building conceptual structures that provide for long-term retention of information. The process of organizing data, building hypotheses, and converting information into skills is designed to increase the likelihood that what is learned “stays learned.”
The Flow of the Model
The concept we refer to as syntax depicts the structure of a model of teaching: its major elements or phases and how they are put together. Some models, such as concept attainment, have relatively fixed structures within which some of the elements or phases need to follow each other for maximum effectiveness. Other models have a rolling or wavelike structure where phases are recycled.
Inductive inquiries are rarely brief. The flow of the inductive process is made up of several types of inquiry that overlap considerably:
• identifying an area of study - a domain that contains conceptual or actual territory to be explored
• collecting and sifting information relevant to that area or domain of inquiry
• constructing ideas, particularly categories, that provide conceptual control over territories of information
• generating hypotheses to be explored in an effort to understand relationships within that domain or to provide solutions to problems
• testing hypotheses, including the conversion of knowledge into skills that have practical application and
• applying concepts and skills, practicing them and developing ‘executive control’ over them so that they are available for use
In this flow of cognitive operations, we find the definition of induction, for in these types of inquiry, the student constructs knowledge and then tests that knowledge through experience and against the knowledge of experts. Induction, rooted in the analysis of information, is often contrasted with deduction, where one builds knowledge by starting with ideas and proceeding to infer further ideas by logical reasoning.
Although it is convenient to imagine a prototype inquiry that begins with data collection and organization and proceeds to the development of categories, the generation and testing of hypotheses and perhaps then to the development of skills, the inductive process may begin at any of these stages or phases.
Painkilled Hearts
It was not disheartening but completely amazing when I learnt no one dared to touch and hospitalize my student Harish Sharma. He is no more now because of the new morality of ours 'Stay out of trouble'. He was one of those would have been men who would have spread smiles where ever they go. He had that charisma to make troubles look trivial.
This incident provokes only one question in me? What kind of future are we creating? Just heartless, emotionless but successful beings.
It was told to me that he remained bleeding after the accident which broke his skull. He had many sympathizers on the spot but not even one soul to carry him to the hospital which was 100 ft from the spot. But the boy had left breathing with a smile. ,'a valiant death'. A sarcastic smile for everyone which could have meant "Hi sufferers I am escaping out of suffering but you people suffer till your end which is not soon'.
This incident provokes only one question in me? What kind of future are we creating? Just heartless, emotionless but successful beings.
It was told to me that he remained bleeding after the accident which broke his skull. He had many sympathizers on the spot but not even one soul to carry him to the hospital which was 100 ft from the spot. But the boy had left breathing with a smile. ,'a valiant death'. A sarcastic smile for everyone which could have meant "Hi sufferers I am escaping out of suffering but you people suffer till your end which is not soon'.
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