From day one stepping foot in Alliance International School it became very clear to me that improving spoken English was number one on the Principal’s agenda.
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| Teaching all classes in English is a serious selling point for the school: parents expect teachers to deliver |
“Watson-Mam, we are so excited you have come to make the all the children fluent in English”. Ah. A simple task then.
The need for English
I won’t deny that students’ English ability is a serious concern for the school. It is common knowledge that children in India who want a decently paid job or to continue into higher education post-school need to speak English. In a country of nearly 30 different languages, English is (sadly) becoming the communal tongue. And since every subject in my school is taught in English, it is crucial that students speak the language in order to progress in all their other classes.
In my initial case study back in August I reported that the standard of English at Alliance International was pretty high. My classroom observations saw 9th standard reading British Romantic poetry, and 5th class explaining without hesitation that, “a noun is a person place or thing”. Students would happily come and chat to me in break time about Harry Potter or how England will lose the cricket. I didn’t think there was much to worry about. Then, as the weeks ticked on, a few realisations hit me. The classroom observations were set up and rehearsed ready for my viewing; 9th grade children had memorised the words “dewy” and “effervescent” in the exact same lesson the previous day. And the children in 5th could tell me (deep breath) “anounisapersonplaceorthing” but when I asked them what else a noun was in addition to a thing and a place I was received with unanimous blank stares. The students who had come to chat to me were those at the top of the class, sent by the teachers, and the teachers themselves had been told not to speak Hindi in my presence.
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| A lot of students = a somewhat daunting task |
But why? The answer is simple: Culture of pride. To impress foreign visitors is something so deeply instilled in Indian culture that even the school Principal, who had actively requested my help, didn’t want me to see what the reality of the problems were.
It has now been established that spoken English is a primary concern in school, particularly with students aged between 9 and 11 years, who by now should be able to make conversation and write in full sentences but in truth cannot distinguish between a capital and lower case letter. One of the main problems is that certain students within every class who speak English relatively well answer all the questions and teachers let those who know very little to remain silently at the back with their heads down.
Developing a curriculum: harder than it sounds...
The key program I’ve been working on to help fix this is to develop a spoken English curriculum for these children. Being an IDEX fellow, I’ve always got to have two things at the back of my mind: Sustainability and Scalabilty. In other words, any spoken English curriculum that I develop needs to be something that can be used by the school when I am no longer there (i.e. I should not be the teacher), and it needs to be something other IDEX fellows could potentially bring to their own schools. This is the only way to implement genuine change.
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| Working on some charts for classrooms with Mrs Tahera |
All this was kicking around in my head a month ago. All the parts of the great plan for change were there:
1. Problem identified: need for improvement in spoken English in children from 4th-6th standard.
2. Solution proposed: a syllabus specifically for spoken English to be written by me and taught in school by another teacher.
3. IDEX considerations: make it scalable and sustainable.
However, I still found myself with one somewhat worrying hole in my plan: I did not have the faintest idea how to go about creating a spoken English syllabus.
So I did what IDEX fellows do best: I found an expert and got her to show me how it’s done. I branched out to a wonderful woman called Vaishali, a self proclaimed “kidologist” – trainer of students, teachers and parents for improving spoken English in children. I spent a day at her house with her and her two kids trawling through English books and learning about all parts of English development. Vaishali explained to me the importance of “sight words” – words like this, then, his, because – the types of things that make up 70% of all sentences. She also explained how children learn in word groupings: S A T P I N Go through S- nouns first, the A- nouns etc. She told me to bring in visual learning techniques with a “word bank chart”, then get children to form their own sentences and always, always make the children think that learning is fun. It was a great day which gave me a lot of food for thought.
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| A wealth of resources out there |
Next step involved a lot of internet and bookshop trawling to get hold of components and work out how to throw it all together. Google search: Fun classroom games for kids; nouns beginning with S; sample quiz sheets; comprehension papers etc etc. I ended up creating a 4-lesson plan based around a group of 12 sight words and 12 nouns starting with a single letter. Lesson 1 and 2 involve teaching the words to the kids and forming sentences with the words. Lesson 3 is a spoken class – getting kids to fill in worksheets for dialogues then act them out in pairs and to the class. Some of the words in these may overlap from the last two lessons but many won’t. 'This is okay' said Vashali, 'just get them confident about reading aloud'. Lesson 4 is pure fun: take the kids out of the classroom and play games with them in the hall or let them watch a video. This lesson keeps students wanting to do the sessions and focuses them for other lessons in school.
All in all, the IDEX Spoken English Curriculum is going to have 24 lessons. The 4-lesson framework is to be repeated with a different word banks, different dialogues and a different sets of games. The final syllabus pack I envisage will contain six 4-lesson plans based around the six S A T P I N nouns and a whole range of sight words, a list of classroom and active games to choose from, a set of homework sheets to accompany every word grouping and a pack of dialogues. There will also be word bank charts to go up on the wall to keep a notes of all the words taught throughout the term. Every lesson on new words is to build on the ones from before, constantly expanding kids’ vocabularly and developing their confidence in speaking. The very active way the classes are taught means no kids can be left quietly behind at the back. Everyone gets involved.
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| Shruti and Faisal hard at work at one of our meetings |
Now that this package is very much in the making, the final step has been labour. Constructing this huge document is a really time consuming thing so I’ve approached other IDEX fellows who have a similar urgent need for spoken English in their schools. Three other fellows have gotten on board and we’ve met a number of times to brainstorm and delegate tasks. They also brought a number of great things to the table that I hadn’t considered. Zach pointed out that this program needed impact assessment so we can see after 24 weeks if it is worth it. He wrote a pre- and post- test to give kids in schools. Shruti, a native of Hyderabad, revised some of the word banks to choose words that Indian children are more likely to use. Faisal came up with different games he’d been doing with his kids in school in the times he’d been roped into teaching.
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| Ms. Rizwana,who is taking the classes and myself launch the spoken english curriculum on parents day in school At Alliance we are calling it A.E.D.P Alliance English Development Program |
It’s been a really good collaboration and the finished package is now nearly there. Myself and the three other fellows are piloting the program in our schools over the next couple of weeks in order to see if we need to make any revisions before handing it over to others. We are going to present it at the school owners meeting in mid December as a single document for other IDEX fellows to offer in their schools.
Fingers crossed we’ll see results.
