1
Dr.
K.N. Anandan
Empowering
teachers in English has always been a challenge to English Language
Teaching (ELT) centres and teacher training institutions and the
various state level and national level agencies such as Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan (SSA). Every year our country witnesses seminars on various
aspects of ELT organised by state level or national level agencies
and institutions where deliberations after deliberations take place
all focusing on the multifaceted issues related to the teaching of
English in the country. Notions such as activity based learning,
experiential learning, child centred classrooms have gained much
currency in our own times and course books and method books in
English that are supposedly in tune with these have proliferated
during the past two decades. This is all good. Nevertheless, issues
remain the same which obviously is an unhappy state of affairs.
Why
is it that most of our teachers who stand at the cutting edge of the
ELT methodology and the classroom practices continue to do what they
have been doing for ages? Is it because the academic standards that
have been conceived for teaching and learning English are
inaccessible for the majority of teachers and learners?
Have the
curriculum designers have gone wrong in setting the standards? Are
teachers entrusted with a mission impossible? Is it because what the
ELT schools have been giving them as tools for teaching English have
not been fine tuned enough to suit to their local needs?
In
the forthcoming posts I will argue that a major reason for the deplorable state
of affairs prevailing in the English classrooms of our country is a
natural consequence of certain belief systems created and sustained
by institutions, agencies and individuals through the intentional or
sometimes unintentional propagation of linguistic imperialism. Unless
this is prevented no matter whatever efforts we take to empower
teachers in English will have practically no effect at all.
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