Assignment Code: BEGS-185/ASST/TMA/2021-22

Course Code: BEGS-185

Assignment Name: English Language Teaching

Year: 2021-2022

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

Answer all questions.

Section A

Write short notes on the following: 5 × 5 = 25

Q (i) Language Learning Aptitude

Ans) Language aptitude is a term that describes a person's ability to learn languages. Formal aptitude tests are frequently used to assess this potential, which forecast the degree of success a candidate will have learned a new language. Many aptitude exams assess the ability to manage sounds, linguistic structures, deduce rules, and remember information.

Example: The Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) evaluates language aptitude.

Although language aptitude is not fixed, there are many things that teachers may do in the area of learner training to help students develop their abilities. These include assisting students in identifying their learning preferences, considering learning styles and how they can be developed, and promoting learner autonomy by teaching students how to study efficiently.

Q (ii) Multiple Intelligences

Ans) Rather than defining intelligence as a single, generic capacity, the theory of many intelligences proposes that human intelligence be divided into unique "modalities of intelligence." Mainstream psychology has chastised the idea for its lack of factual evidence and reliance on subjective judgement.

People are not born with all of the intelligence they will ever have, according to Howard Gardner's hypothesis of multiple intelligences. This hypothesis challenged the conventional wisdom that there is only one sort of intelligence, also referred to as "g" for general intelligence, which is solely concerned with cognitive ability. Linguistic, Logical/Mathematical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Musical, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, and Naturalist intelligences were introduced by Gardner to widen this concept of intelligence. The verbal and logical-mathematical modalities, according to Gardner, are the most prized in school and society.

Gardner also suggests that there may be other “candidate” intelligences, such as spiritual, existential, and moral intelligence, but that these do not fit his original inclusion criteria.

Q (iii) Classroom Interaction

Ans) Classroom interaction is a technique for improving the development of the two most crucial language skills, speaking and listening, among students. This device assists the student in becoming capable of critical thinking and sharing their opinions with their classmates.

Objectives of Classroom Interaction

1. Assists students in identifying their individual learning styles.

2. Allow learners to easily communicate with their friends and expose them to a variety of language learning genres.

3. Assist the student in confronting the numerous types of interactions that can occur in the classroom.

4. The goal of classroom interaction is for students to communicate meaningfully in their target language.

5. It also tries to elicit information about the learner's prior knowledge and how he thinks about facts and ideas.

6. This practise will assist the teacher in doing a thorough examination of the nature and frequency of student engagement in the classroom.

Q (iv) Use of Research Tools

Ans) These research tools enable you to build web-based online surveys or questionnaires for your learners or responders. These surveys can be delivered to people who are interested in participating in your research by sending the survey link or embedding it in your own website, and participants can be asked to fill out the questionnaire by clicking on the link. In most cases, these services allow you to modify the survey pages. You may alter the colour scheme, add your logo to each page, add hyperlinks, and much more! Old surveys can be saved, and new ones can be created.

Generally, you can:

1. create new surveys.

2. edit unpublished surveys.

3. delete old surveys.

4. copy surveys (use them as the starting point for a new survey).

5. publish surveys to the internet.

6. allow or prevent users from taking your survey more than once.

7. get the result of the survey that saves you the trouble of collating the responses yourself.

8. make electronic forms for various purposes like gathering personal information or an opinion.

Q (v) Retrospective Evaluation

Ans) This is the process of assessing the material's utility after it has been used in order to determine whether it should be used again. It involves examining the material and determining what works, what doesn't, and how it can be improved to make it more usable. It refers to a test of the predictive evaluation's validity as well as feedback on the predictive approach itself.

This assessment might be done in an impressionistic or methodical fashion. Teachers evaluate the resources as they are being used, and at the end of the course, they offer summative judgments on the materials. Retrospective evaluations frequently include empirical evaluations.

Section B

Answer the following questions in 150 words each: 3 X 10 = 30

Q 1) Discuss procedures for supporting autonomous learning.

Ans) Different processes and supporting materials may be used by teachers to foster this approach.

If we wish to teach them paragraph writing, we can, for example, develop a few paragraphs on the chalkboard with the class.

If we allow students time to ponder, remark on and justify choices, and reward their contributions, they will quickly take leadership. We might alternatively begin the activity by handing out a checklist for drafting a paragraph to the children. In addition, students may choose paragraphs from any subject to discuss in class. These activities help the learner understand the cognitive processes that go into growing their ability to think and communicate alone as well as in collaboration with others. Following that, the teacher and students might analyse a few descriptions together by eliciting replies to various questions. The teacher may also point out different lexical and grammatical alternatives.

During the writing process, noticing different options, contemplating and examining them will assist the student in becoming more independent, especially when the teacher is present.

Q 2) How does mixed game approach guide independent learning?

Ans) Game-based learning is characterised as a sort of game play with specific learning outcomes, according to most definitions. The assumption is that the game is digital, however this isn't always the case. The design of games for learning must balance the necessity to cover the subject content with the desire to prioritise game play, according to this description. This corollary emphasises the distinction between gamification and game-based learning.

Consider the gamification of math homework, which involves awarding points and stars to students for completing existing exercises that they find tedious. Game-based learning of the same arithmetic topic, on the other hand, would include reworking homework activities, utilising artificial conflict and rules of play to make them more exciting and engaging, even if it included points and stars.

Even if the issue over how games are defined cannot be settled here, this may not be a problem because play—the basic action in games—has long been considered a critical component of human growth.

Q 3) What are some positive trends in material production?

Ans) The following are some favourable trends in material production:

1. Learners must invest in materials that require them to discover for themselves the complexities of the language and content.

2. Interactive learning packages that incorporate a variety of media to create more in-depth language experiences.

3. A large reader series that does not rely solely on language activities but also encourages the reader to think.

4. Personalized texts that connect the student to real-life circumstances and the usage of language in them.

5. Increased use of internet-based language learning resources.

6. Instead of rules of grammar, functional grammar is introduced.

7. More and more government research agencies, such as the NCERT, are interested in developing materials that have little commercial use.

Section C

Answer the following questions in 250 words each: 3 X 15 = 45

Q 1) What are the characteristics of underprivileged learners?

Ans) The following are some of the characteristics that are frequent among impoverished students:

1) Low cognitive abilities

The cognitive talents required to function at the abstraction level, as well as the ability to recognise and construct concepts, are underdeveloped in the poor student. The school curriculum demands students to apply critical thinking abilities, which necessitate concepts, associations, and manipulation of ideas or principles, all of which the student lacks.

2) Poor linguistic ability

This language deficit is created by a lack of social connection, and it makes it difficult to grasp what the teacher says in class or what the material contains. The development of high-level cognitive analytical ability is hampered by this language disadvantage. The curriculum for such students is also designed in such a way that some of these higher order thinking skills are never acquired.

3) Low self-esteem

Students from disadvantaged backgrounds believe they are unable to cope with the subject and language in the classroom. As a result, they develop a negative attitude toward themselves and their culture. Because kids from various social classes, castes, and ethnicities do not mix with them, there is an implicit segregation, which contributes to their poor self-esteem.

4) Involvement Gap

It has been discovered that underprivileged students have less drive to learn. As a result, there is a gap in involvement because there is a "distancing between what the student perceives as meaningful life experiences and what is happening inside the school."

5) Poor ability to read or write

The requisite experiences that form the foundation of reading and writing skills, such as interaction with mature users of language, exposure to toys or print material, listening to songs and stories, and experiences of visiting places and observing their environment, are not provided to underprivileged learners. Even in their own language, the verbal patterns and idioms are lacking, which makes learning difficult.

6) Their strengths:

They are more emotionally mature and capable of putting in hard effort and facing adversity since they have been through the trials of life. Many impoverished students who have had to fend for themselves have a strong feeling of independence as well as some decision-making ability.

Q 2) What are audio-verbal difficulties? What remedial measures will you take to address these difficulties?

Ans) If a child's language development is delayed, he or she may acquire auditory discrimination and be unable to recount a narrative. Blending sounds might be difficult for children with auditory-verbal and language impairments. They may be able to pronounce individual letters, but they are unable to combine them into a word. This is a challenge for them, especially when reading lengthier words.

Reading books, magazines, or any other text in the surroundings to such youngsters can be beneficial. They must also understand that the language of books differs from that of speech.

Other measures that can be taken are:

1. The child says a sound that can be sustained like ‘Ttttt...’ or ‘Lllll’. She raises her hand if the teacher repeats the same sound.

2. Child is taught to concentrate on the positioning of the tongue, lips etc. while producing the sounds.

3. Chaining of words by successively changing one sound to form a new word like -cat-can-man-mat-met-wet.

4. Using rhyming games like ‘I went to the market and bought a fan, can and pan. Children can go on supplying a word rhyming the word that the teacher says.

5. Rhyming sentences like -Lan likes a van and a pan/ Pat likes cats as pets.

6. Finding similarity or difference in the sounds (phonemes) occurring in the beginning, middle and at the end of words.

7. Picking pictures that have rhyming words/names like -tap, map, cap, lap.

8. Using plastic letters to make/ find words that rhyme.

9. Copying the rhythms and patterns by copying and tapping the pattern on the desk.

10. Teaching word families using words that look the same so that when they encounter a new word with similar letters, they may be able to decode it.

11. Also teach them to blend sounds like ‘s’+ ‘it’, ‘f’ + ‘it’.

Q 3) What do you mean by repair? Explain the different types of repair.

Ans) Error correction is another term for repair. Error correction is a larger word that refers to all forms of teacher feedback. Direct or indirect error correction, overt or covert, is possible. Teachers have a lot of alternatives, and our split-second decisions in the middle of a session can have a big impact on the learning possibilities we give our students.

Direct Repair: Overt error rectification is referred to as direct repair. Direct repair entails swiftly and directly correcting an error.

Example: Student: My brother enjoys riding motorcycles... Not like...enjoys...he likes bikes, said the teacher.

Indirect Repair: This is a covert repair approach. Instead of immediately correcting an error, the teacher uses hints and cues to try to achieve the correct response from the learner. In other words, the teacher uses questions or relevant suggestions to elicit the correct response.

This is referred to as language-centered repair. It refers to comments made on the language chosen rather than the content itself.

In this encounter, the teacher's goal is to explicitly enhance fluency and encourage students to communicate. If we want to improve our accuracy, we need grammatical input in the form of direct repair. To put it another way, language-focused feedback is suited for accuracy-based activities, but content-based feedback allows learners to freely express themselves without becoming conscious. We should avoid direct repair for fluency-based tasks. As a result, we must align our pedagogic goals with our repair tactics, just as our questioning strategies must align with our desired pedagogic aims.