Week 3 - Reflective Blog

The third week of E-teacher scholarship programme is a very hectic one for me. I have been busy with a number of programmes in my Institute. Still I found time to go through two important articles- "Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials" by Lindsay Miller and "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation" by Maria Grazia Busa. Listening and Pronunciation skills are often neglected in our classrooms. This is true in the case of English class rooms in India. Some of the States in India have revised their curriculum, syllabi and text books based on activity based, communicative language teaching methodology. In these text books there are slots for addressing the listening skills of the ESL students. The course books contain listening texts and CD ROMS. But unfortunately teachers are not given sufficient training to teach listening. I think I have to incorporate more slots in teaching listening and pronunciation in my teacher training modules.

   I think technology can be used as an effective tool for improving the listening and speaking skills of trainee teachers and students. While listening and watching videos, film clippings and T.V programmes students can develop their listening skills and voice modulation and body language (gestures, eye contact, posture etc). I have used songs effectively for giving listening input to teacher trainers. I have used the songs of Michael Jackson, Gloria Gaynor, Beyoncé etc for listening. My students really enjoyed the song “If I were a girl….” sung by Beyoncé. They also enjoyed the song, “Those school days of telling tales and biting nails are gone…” sung by Lulu in “To Sir, With Love”. They really love most of the songs of Michael Jackson. My students have listened to those great singers and have done interesting activities including cloze tasks.

     I think pronunciation is also one of the neglected skills in our class rooms. Often the speech of Indian students is unintelligible to others due to improper stress, pause and tone. In my Institute we give pronunciation practice to our teachers through our language lab. In our language lab each trainee teacher uses a computer with intranet and Internet connection, CD ROMs and DVD reader, and headset for listening and recording. The student can listen a number of times to stories, dialogues, reports etc and record their sound. Students record their voice and listen to the original. We have seen that our students have improved their stress, pause and intonation.

Is it necessary for E S L learners to imitate the accent of native speakers? I think it is not. However, they need to be intelligible and then only they can become effective communicators. Hence I feel that prosodic features (stress, pause, intonation, pitch variation) are more important than segmental features. I need more help from my friends for teaching pronunciation. The two articles- "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation" by Maria Grazia Busa and "Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials" by Lindsay Miller are very thought provoking. Thanks to Robert and the E-Skills programme.

P.K.Jayaraj