VIRUDHUNAGAR: It’s lunch break. The pin-drop silence inside the classroom is in stark contrast with the hustle and bustle outside. Donning the role of a teacher, a girl in her teens expounds aspects of the English language as her classmates, gather around and listen.
More than two decades and many a challenge have flown by. Post the Covid-induced lockdown, during her visit to several government schools, it dawned upon S Usha, a lecturer at the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET), that most students are under the grip of Xenoglossophobia, the fear of learning English and other foreign languages.
When the children of Class 6 of a government school in Sivaganga were asked to read a topic from books, Usha was shocked to see their lack of reading sub-skills such as comprehension and summarising.
“Despite being talented and having a strong base, they are unable to perform well in a reading comprehension exam. The fear of language has brought down their confidence level and made them think they could never perform well,” she points out.
The 39-year-old DIET lecturer had a Herculean task at hand — quelling the fear factor. She came up with a strategy — Semantic Mapping — that could help hone the reading and comprehension skills of students. The method allows students to conceptually explore their knowledge of a new word by mapping it with other related words or phrases that are similar in meaning to the selected word.
“The idea worked. In order to map the words, the students have to read the given paragraph repeatedly to understand the terms. The paragraph that is given could be a topic related to technology, nature and the like. Since the method is activity oriented, they are interested in doing the exercise,” says the English graduate hailing from Sivaganga, who has won many awards including the Abdul Kalam Award (2020). She also won the National Award for Innovation- 2021-22 by NCERT, Delhi for her technique.
Ask 12-year-old S Madhusri, studying in Class 6 at the high school Sivaganga, she would say it’s easy to learn concepts through the mapping strategy. “When I read a paragraph that has, say, around five lines, it’s always easy to remember. But when it comes to detailed concepts, it was difficult. After applying the strategy, now, I am able to remember things easily. Plus, it takes only less time to learn,” she says.
Seconding Madhusri’s opinion is 12-year-old S Swetha of the same school. “The paragraphs that used to take one hour for me to understand could be completed within half an hour now,” she says.That’s true, adds Andal S, a teacher at the school. “The grasping power of the students of Class 6 has improved a lot after they started following the techniques taught by Usha,” she says. After reading a paragraph, the students, now, are able to convey the concept easily by just looking at the map, Andal explains.
“In my school days, I would be asked by my teachers to explain a few topics to my classmates. To help my friends, I started putting effort into learning. The practice continued in my college days,” says the ‘born-teacher’ who started her career as an English teacher for Classes 6 to 10 at a government high school in 2006 before becoming a DIET lecturer in Kalayarkovil.