Padding strategy in poems leads to effective transition from school language Hindi to English in Indian rural school, finds study

Dr Lalit Kishore, Jaipur based educator and researcher finds that Hindi poems sung with padded English words can develop initial vocabulary to make a transition to the textbook of English for grade one students of Hindi medium rural schools. Padding in language has been viewed as cushioning of extra or different material in a poem, a speech or a book in the study. The paper of Kishore (2008) was accepted for international TESOL conference in Australia organized by Australian Council of TESOL Associations (ACTA).In 2019,

Kishore applied padding strategy at Disha in Jaipur or language development of a rural child with speech defect for transition from home language to school language as well as use of rhythmic recitation of short poems. Another paper that was communicated in 2025 was also related to transition from Haryanvi to English for the school beginners.

Title: Transition from Haryanvi Dialect to Hindi to English: A Lesson Study with Grade One Rural Students

Author: Dr Lalit Kishore

Abstract: A triangulated lesson was designed and studied for school entrants in a rural private school in Kurukshetra district of Haryana State wherein the home language of students is Haryanvi while regional language is Hindi and English being taught from grade one as compulsory subject. The challenge was to culturally link the learning of school languages with a transitional research lesson in modular format first and foremost. The transitional strategy consisted of singing of four-line Haryanvi children's poem first, followed by re-singing of the poem with substituted nouns of school languages of which pictures could be made The dialect poem and school language's nouns-padded poems were recited by the teacher first and listened by students of grade one. It was followed by echo-recitation and group recitations. The picture and written-word flash cards of six selected words were vused to develop sight vocabulary which was further reinforced with board-games and worksheets. Thereafter, the sounds of the beginning letters of the six-words were reinforced with sight recognitions of the letters and their sound symbols. The research lesson was transacted as module lasting six class-sessions of 40 minutes each. The two senior teachers, who helped in designing the module, made the grade one language teacher to rehearse the module in their presence. They also worked as observes during the transaction of module to provide the feedback and fine-tune the module for use every year with new entrants to grade one. The reactions of the parents were sought during the PTA meeting who reacted favourably to the transitional module. The reactions were significantly positive at 0.01 levels when analysed using Chi-squared test with two degrees of freedom.

Keywords: Home language, language identity, multilingualism, research lesson, school languages, transitional module