Professor Usha Dutta, NCErT
Meera Shenoy, Executive Director of EGMM
http://englishnext.in/6
http://englishnext.in/7
English does not stand alone. It needs to find its place along with other languages in India so that the languages spoken by children strengthen English learning and teaching.
I found actually it made no difference whether it was an English school or a vernacular school. The language was the same, the communication levels were the same, reading and writing was the same.
Secondly, I think it also has to be seen in relation to other subject areas because treating English separately has created a lot of problems in the Indian schools. A language-across-the-curriculum perspective is of relevance to primary education. We need to integrate it with the teaching of other subject areas like mathematics, environmental science, art education, etc..
Chetan Bhagat, Author http://englishnext.in/8
I always say Hindi is like the mother, English is like the wife, and you can love both. Just don’t ask who you love more – ever.
Professor Ajit Mohanty, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, jawaharlal Nehru University http://englishnext.in/9
English is gradually being moved to Grade 1. Regardless of the fact that it has been shown in India ... that it isn’t required. It’s more ... Ministers of Education competing with each other to cater to the popular demands – the uninformed choices of people. Multilingualism in India is not just a number of languages. It’s a way of life, a life in which languages complement each other. Languages are porous; they move into each other. As a result, you need multiple languages. Therefore, education should become multilingual in India. Develop mother tongue competence and then develop English at a later point in time to have better English and faster learning of English English teaching cannot be monolingual. ... In multilingual societies, multiple languages can be used to communicate in the classroom ... it is perfectly all right to use a child’s mother tongue, to use the child’s languages in the classroom. ... it’s necessary to use a multilingual method of teaching of English in the classroom where children are encouraged to think about languages and that reflection, that awareness of languages or metacognitive or metalinguistic skill is what makes language teaching more effective. ... it’s not a question of how many languages we have, it’s a question of whether there is an adequate methodology to inculcate that multilingual competence in each child.
english next india
• part three • policy implications
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