ORIENTING PRIMARY TEACHERS TOWARDS
COMPETENCY BASED ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
K. Chellamani
INTRODUCTION
The
basic aim of teaching English is to enable the student to develop the skills of
listening, speaking, reading and writing English. It is while speaking and
writing that the problem of intelligibility and acceptability arises.
Correctness based on internationally accepted standards can not be ignored by
us. For today the compulsions of learning English in
The latest revision of textbooks has begun
from the year 2000. Introduction of new text book goes with the teacher’s
handbook and organization of in-service training programs. But interaction with
the teachers reveals that they are not even aware of the competencies
identified and enlisted. They take up
the lesson as a subject to be taught and never think that it is only a tool for
developing competencies. They do not
know what competency means actually. They do bother about syllabus completion
and preparation of students for examination. Without understanding the
organization of the text, the input components are considered as lesson and are
transacted to students as subject and lesson. As a result, the objectives of
primary education are not attained. Hardly there is competency development.
With this, base the primary level children
move to upper primary class. In upper primary class, the area of
language competencies are ten in number, right from Listening to Creative
competency. It really requires a base, without which the objectives of upper
primary can not be achieved. The entry behaviour of upper primary students with
the existing condition really scare the language teachers of upper primary.
Consequently with little understandings of competencies they prepare those
students for examination by training them to by heart all ready made questions
and answers. Ultimately throughout in elementary the prescribed competencies
are not at all achieved and the objectives of elementary level education go in
vain. One more aspect to be recognized
here is the preparation of Teaching Learning Material by teachers. Teachers are
expected to use TLM for effectiveness in achievement of competencies. TLM are
supportive materials for the tool given in hand. TLM should provide experience
for students in their development of language competencies. But actually
happens is, teacher do take up preparation of TLM as part of their lesson plan
writing. And they do produce charts in thermo coal, copying what is given in
the textbook and call it a TLM. And this mechanical process may not also be
followed for all, the lesson. It serves more for inspection process rather for
development of competencies. Thus TLM plays a meaningless role in instruction.
In order to have a comprehensive understanding of the prescribed competencies,
the investigator pooled down all the competencies and made a list of them. For
competency development among children, it is essential for the teachers to
possess all those competencies. Therefore the required teacher competencies for
the learner competencies in each language skill area are sketched by the
investigator in her study. Objectives of the Programme were to enable the
primary teachers: To understand the theory of second language learning; To
understand the second language teaching principles; To practice the essential
language teacher competencies; To practice the expected language competencies
of primary level students; To understand the
psychological/pedagogical/technological principles in the instructional design;
To know the concepts on preparation and utilization of TLM materials; and To equip themselves towards the application
of the principles in their utilization for the development of desired
competencies.
Sample
Teacher sample :Ten teachers from 5 zones in Chennai city were
selected at random as teacher sample.
Student sample: Students of respective sample teachers, a set for each
class (from class 1 to 5) was selected for the study.
Duration of the programme
A
total of two months in which the training of the teachers was followed by
implementation in their classrooms.
Research Phases
In
order to realize the objective, the investigator had proceeded the research in
the following manner.
Phase 1: Developing
a tool to find out the present level of English language teaching competencies
among primary teachers in
Phase 2: Designing an instructional programme where the
preparation of TLM would be based on psycho/techno/pedagogic principles -
“Orienting the teachers on learner’s English language competencies and train
them to design instructional language programmes along with the preparation of
TLM”.
Planning
for a Training programme: The investigator assessed the training requirements
of the teachers based on the data collected through a set need assessment tool.
The one on TLM preparation was collected during an in-service training
programme on TLM preparation. And the other on , “an assessment on English
language teaching competency” was given to the primary teachers. From the
responses, the investigator inferred that teachers need to:
*Have
awareness on strategic planning and devising appropriate methods of
instruction;
*Know
that the preparation of instructional materials and devices must be in
accordance with the nature of the learner and the principles behind learning;
*Possess
the essential language competencies for facilitating the students to acquire
the expected competencies;
*Understand
the psychological/technological/pedagogical principles to be adopted in the
instructional design; and
*Have
the ability to identify the appropriate TLM requirements for development of the
stated language competencies.
The investigator reviewed related literature
for identification of instructional strategies, cognitive, metacognitive, psycholinguistic
principles and literature to establish research grounds. The psycholinguistic
principles for language teaching were gathered. Experts were consulted,
regarding the principles behind preparation of TLM materials. The scientific
principles behind selection, preparation and use of TLM were understood. Then
Romiszowski’s(1974) guidelines for using Media Taxonomies were selected. The
theories of learning were consolidated and the pedagogical principles were
listed down. The investigator referred technology books and studied the
applications of technology towards education. In the perspective of TLM
preparation, she identified certain factors like Task factor, Student factor,
Physical attributes, Economic factor, and Media factor, essential to be taken care of. Then the important component
playing in human learning i.e., psychological principles were attended. The
psychological principles were sketched under four frames, viz. Motivation,
Attention, Perception and Cognition for concept formation. Thus the skeleton
for preparation of TLM was set ready.
Through the need assessment, the investigator realized the necessary
inputs to be incorporated in the training programme. The necessity for teachers
to comprehend the objectives of English Languish Teaching at primary level, the
structure and the design of the text book, the enlisted English Language
competencies, and the teacher requirements for developing the competencies
among students were sensitized. Since the teacher trainees need theory inputs,
the investigator arranged for expert lectures. While learning theories,
practical sessions are essential for hands on experiences. Consequently, a
schedule for preparation of TLM, using Pedagogical, Technological and
psychological principles was interwoven in the program time frame. The
programme was planned in such a way that through brainstorming their
expectations were elicited and their
requirements were incorporated. The first two days of the programme, the necessary
theory inputs on English language teaching, familiarization of language
competencies, conceptualization on TLM preparation and utilization, theory on
language components were given. The
other three days were exclusively for hands on experience on TLM preparation.
The investigator gave a model Instructional design, with a demonstration class.
The participants were ten in number and they were divided into five different
groups. Each group was given one textbook thereby all the classes (1-5)
textbooks were analyzed. Orientation on Instructional Designing was given. Here
the teachers’ perception on looking at the content was directed towards taking
them as a tool for developing the expected competencies. The teacher was to see
the relevance and the sufficiency of the given input for the prescribed
competencies for students, with that deficiency identification, keeping the
pedagogical and technological principles on the main frame, designed an
instructional programme. This instructional programme has TLM and
students’ participation. Each group has a demonstration class followed by a
feedback. The feedback carried corrective measures and it had been attended in
the following session. The last session focused on consolidation, presentation
and validation. The investigator realized the importance of portfolio writing
for every individual to reflect on her own growth and development in the
programme. Everyday, before the session calls it a day, they recorded the
things they had learnt, and the areas of inquiry. The investigator collected
their portfolios and did attend their enquiry in the following day. The last
day they voiced out their experience in that programme. Thus the investigator
designed a training programme where the primary teacher was tuned to develop
Teaching Learning Materials using pedagogical, technological, and psychological
principles. The developed instructional packages were consolidated and arranged
in a module form.
Phase 3: The
investigator wanted to assess the effectiveness of the training on teacher
language competencies and hence administered the same pretest tool as post test
tool. The research design of the training programme is pretest-training
posttest design.. The scores of both the tests were collected. Teacher
portfolios were also collected.
Phase 4: The training input, i.e., designing an instructional
programme where the preparation and utilization of TLM are based on
pedagogical, technological and psychological principles was taken to the
classrooms by the trainee teachers. The teachers assessed the language competencies
of the students’ using the instructional design that they developed in the
training programme, to their real class. It was followed by the administration
of a post test tool similar to the pretest tool. The content validity of the tools was established
by experts. The reliability of the tools was established by KR 20 method. The
scores of both the tests were collected. This has been uniformly carried over
by all the trainee teachers in their schools.
Phase 5: Scheme of Data analysis: The pretest and
post scores on English language teaching competency of the trainee teachers
were tabulated and the mean and standard deviation were computed. The scores of
the competencies were computed and tabulated. In order to find out the
significant mean difference between the pretest and posttest mean scores on ELT
competency, the ‘t’ test for correlated
small group was applied. Hence ‘r’ value between the pretest and posttest
scores of language competencies were computed separately. Omega square analysis
was attempted. The pretest and posttest scores on English language performance
of all the experimental group students performance were tabulated and the mean
and SD were computed. In order to find out the significant mean difference
between the pretest and posttest mean scores on English language performance, the‘t’
test for correlated sample was applied. Hence ‘r’ value between the pretest and
posttest scores of the experimental groups was computed separately. Omega
square Analysis was attempted to see the effect of the instructional design
treatment in their performance in English language. In order to see the overall
effectiveness of the treatment the weighted arithmetic mean of the entire
students sample was found out to see the overall effectiveness.
CONCLUSION
The
results of the analysis proved that there is change in English language
teaching and assessing language in a way that encourages a positive working
atmosphere, where students make mistakes and learn from them. The reflections
of trainee teachers speak that there is shift in their perception of the text
book. Moreover there is prevalence of confidence and hope in attaining the
objectives of English language teaching at primary levels.