Pedagogic Strategies
2.6.4 Strategies for the Secondary Stage (R1 & R2)
At the secondary level, added to the effective use of language for functional and literary purpos- es, skills like sound reasoning, argumentation, and reasoning also should be focused on in the classroom. Along with these, students must be taught an awareness of the cultural history of their languages and literature. To achieve these expectations, we must include a few of the points mentioned below in all our teaching methods.
a. Oral presentations:
Since high school students can connect things with their lives easier, the language classroom needs to give them opportunities where they can freely share their ideas, should listen to others’ points of view, should be free to ask questions, argue on their points and should ac- cept others’ views with proper justification. Teachers must teach students about the differ- ences between ‘just talking’ and ‘conversation and dialogue’. Hence students must be taught a few things early on like organising their thoughts for better clarity, the art of raising rele- vant questions, brainstorming and thinking aloud, active participation, and skills of literary appreciation.
Teachers must use methods like role play, group discussion, debate, open house dialogue, and interviews to allow students to ask questions and learn to respond impromptu. Club-based activities, assembly gatherings, and celebrations in the school should be used as platforms to practice these methods and should not be seen as a separate exercise. Teachers must also find ways to teach students how to work on their listening skills (paying attention to details, sum- marizing) and use the same in day-to-day life.
b. Developing reading skills:
i. Literary language skills: By the time students reach high school, they must have learned reading skills and must have also read various kinds of literature in their middle school years. At the Secondary Stage level, they must continue to engage with comprehension, analysis, reviewing, commenting, and critiquing different kinds of
critically analysing a literary text in the class and participate in the activities of the school literature club, poetry house, and fiction-reading groups. Overall, how students read a piece of literature (both in the mechanics of reading and the conceptual
understanding of the reading) and analyse it is fundamental to any language pedagogy in high school.
ii. Critical reading skills: Though they have already learned this in the Middle Stage, the teacher must take them to the next level of sophistication in critical reading. For that, they must be taught to take meaning from a variety of texts, taught to move from initial impressions to a closer reading of the text, and taught to experience the effect of the language used in a text for specific purposes.
iii. Exposure to reading multicultural texts: Students in high school need to be aware of languages and literature across the country. Teachers must bring a variety of text from different regions, and languages and should encourage students to read it and then share views on it. Activities like the literary comparison of two different writers should be promoted and cherished. For example, reading the poetry of Amrita Pritam and Rabindra Nath Tagore would be a great opportunity for students to experience two different regional literature. Similarly reading folk tales of Vikram Betaal and Sulasa and Sattuka (Jataka tales) would help students to connect with Indian traditions in literature. Projects, plays, performances around folk songs, and posters are important methods at this stage for an introduction to ancient text.
c. Developing writing skills:
i. Functional language writing skills: Since functional writing becomes an important part of one’s daily life, students at the high school level should be given enough opportunity to practice writing reports, essays, notes, applications, letters to editors, advertisements, and notices. Students should also be encouraged to write in
magazines, newsletters, newspapers, and blogs
Similarly, being literate about the new media is the need of the hour and any language teacher who does not see the pervasiveness of media in the lives of students will struggle with them. Teachers must encourage students to make well-planned and scripted videos, start educational YouTube channels, and podcasts and should guide students to pick up the right kind of content for these means. Here, the focus should be on writing the script for the content than the technical aspect, how a few words in a three-second frame of a video can influence the audience, and how a particular sentence can be powerful to evoke emotions in any kind of audience.
ii. Literary language writing skills: At the high school level, the pedagogy should be such that students are guided towards independent and creative writing. For this, they also need to improve their capacities for critically analysing and thinking. This would help them to connect any literature to its historical and socio-economical aspects rather than reading it in isolation. After reading, they should be able to write a critical review with their thoughts and opinions about the piece. Similarly, students should get ample opportunities to create literature in the form of poems, stories, or plays.
They should be encouraged to use literary devices like similes, metaphors, hyperbole, irony, puns, and oxymorons in their writings. Students must be encouraged to find
their voice and style as a writer taking cues from the material they read. Journal writing can be another brilliant way to take children towards reflective writing. Since writing is an acquired skill, the teacher should give constant feedback to help the students
improve their writing. The feedback of teachers should comprise inputs on students’
level of literary skills, proficiency in grammar, and appropriateness of style in writing.
Box B-2.6-ii
Specific Learning Disabilities in the Language Classroom
Specific Learning Disabilities are a group of conditions that obstruct a person’s ability to listen, think, speak, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. One or more of these abilities may be affecting a student at a time. Specific Learning Disability interferes with the developmentally predictable learning process of a student. The term does not include learning problems that are primarily the result of visual impairment, hearing impair- ment, motor disabilities, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, or of cultural, envi- ronmental, or economic disadvantage.
As language classrooms are one of the biggest sites for observation of such learning disabilities, teachers must be alert to the presence of any such learning challenges a student may be experiencing.
The Rights of Persons with Disability Act (RPWD) 2016 defines Specific Learning Disabili- ties as a dissimilar group of conditions wherein there is a deficit in processing language, spoken or written, that may show itself as a difficulty to comprehend, speak, read, write, spell, or to do mathematical calculations.
Teachers will need to find a professional diagnosis of such disabilities in grade 3 (or at eight years of age, whichever is earlier). The school principal, teachers, parents, and the clinical psychologist or doctor will have to collaborate to develop learning strategies for a student with a learning disability based on the kind and extent of their learning challeng- es.
This means framing special considerations in the kind of content selected, the methods of pedagogy used, and the assessment tools used for the learning of such a student.