CLASSROOM COMMUNICATION – A TOOL FOR ENHANCING LANGUAGE SKILLS IN ENGLISH

• Parrots, mynas and even ravens can be trained to speak.  They speak what is forced upon them.  As teachers of English, we seem to be bent on reducing our clients into performing parrots mouthing words they do not understand.
  
  
• Balancing the art of providing holistic education and meeting the demands of the system that measures success in terms of marks garnered by students in Summative Examinations is a tightrope walk. Most of us succumb to the institutional, societal, and peer group pressure and condition our students to write responses without ever allowing them the joy of learning to communicate.
  
  
• For example, in the teaching of poetry, the aim is to allow the students to discover the music of the language and respond to the sensibilities expressed in the poem in the most artistic and appealing way possible.
  
  
• When it comes to the teaching of prose, the aim is to enable the student to decipher the content laid before him.  In addition, he/she is to make positive responses amounting to comprehension of the given text.
  
  
• When the students are encouraged to express in their own words what has been grasped out of the given reading task, the resultant factor is their creative ability in the use of language.  The task of the teacher is to fine-tune the expressions that are manifest and encourage his/her clients to critically respond to all the texts that they do encounter.
  
  
• Creative use of language is a clear indication of independent use of language. 
  
  
• A good listener is an active listener in the sense that he/she reacts to what is heard.  The teacher is successful in enhancing the listening skill of the pupils when he/she uses language within the linguistic and worldly experience of the pupils.  The teacher, then, gradually steps up his language to expose to the students abstract ideas and he also helps them on how to achieve the abstractness in the language. 
  
  
• As far as Listening Skill is concerned, “the human connectivity” is more important than any electronic apparatus or otherwise. It is only the teacher who is on ‘ground zero’ and only he can assess, grade, and upgrade the language experience of his/her students.
  
  
• The teacher achieves Speaking Skill by making use of different language activities including role play, debates, elocution competitions, and so on.  The activities designed could be creative while urging the students to give voice to their ideas.  A democratic set-up inside the classroom is essential.  The teacher could deploy ‘pedagogical psychology’ in prodding pupils to react.
  
  
• Reading Skill has been much debated these days.  Efforts are on to ascertain who a speed-reader is.  But at the secondary and higher secondary level, the teacher should pay attention to cultivate scores and scores of ‘purposeful readers’ rather than ‘speed-readers’.  Studies have shown that a reader could speed-read if he could read. If he cannot read, then he cannot speed-read too.  Materials that are sliced into intensive and extensive do expose to the students two different purposes of reading – for content and for enjoyment.
  
  
• At last, the apex level of Writing Skill. By ‘writing skill’ is generally meant ‘mechanics of writing’.  What is to be stressed is ‘creative writing’.  Creative writing rests on responding to a given situation.  The teacher should ensure that the students come forward to put their ideas into paper.  ‘Grammar’ element need not be given any undue emphasis in the beginning.   Theoretically, one’s written language is perfected as it is practiced.  In other words, ‘grammar’ should be internalized over a period of time and it is not picked up in ‘hit-and-run’ fashion.
  
  
• In the words of N.S.Prabhu, formerly Professor of English in CIEFL, Hyderabad, “the teacher is the method.”  The trick lies in the resourcefulness and creativity of the teacher.  The teacher, if he is warped in the perfect mould, affects not only the thinking and creative faculty of his students but also affects the behavioral, emotional, social, cultural, professional and even political composure of a personality.