Special on International Mother Tongue Day
Dr. Lalit Kishore
Many children enter schools with language deficiencies due their socio-cultural context or their home language being different from the school language.
During a recent training of teachers in Banswara, four-line rhymes in Bagadi dialect with padding strategy designed by me were used for transition from home language to school language and were liked by the trainees.
It is being generally felt that teachers need to ensure that children reach a certain level of language development before being exposed to the syllabus of the primary level. It is only then they will be able to understand different subjects later through self-study from book resources and do the workbook exercises without too much difficulty.
The expert input from, Dr Lalit Kishore revealed the following facts that led the development of the language readiness material.
• If children are confronted with a lot of new words and expressions for study of language as well as other subjects. It would render learning, especially reading of free texts almost meaningless. It is almost impossible to understand new ideas if the unfamiliar vocabulary is there in the text, and it is a limitation of the text book. Hence a transitional course or readiness course is required before introducing text book to grade one students or an exposure session introducing the self-study for books on a topic for higher grades by building the vocabulary.
• Picture reading for expressive language (expression of needs and feelings), conversation (talking about events and happenings at home, neighbourhood and natural surrounding), discussion on a matter of their concern in the conservation; repetition of the some children's words and their new names in standard language, giving and following of oral instruction are helpful to develop language.
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