3 Discovering English words
Now try the following activity.
Activity 4: English in the community
Since there is so much English being used within our local languages, some students may be using English without being aware that they are doing so. There are several ways that you could make your students more aware of the English language in their community. Here are some examples of activities that elementary teachers have tried:
- Take students to the railway station. Look for all the signs in English and discuss what they mean.
- Bring in a toothpaste advertisement that says ‘Brush your teeth every day’. Discuss irregular plural forms of words such as ‘tooth’ and ‘teeth’.
- Give a homework task to look out for the English words in the community over one weekend. Examples: newspapers, magazines, advertising; tickets to the cinema or other entertainment, and signs saying things like ‘Entry’, ‘Exit’, ‘Tickets’ and ‘Toilet’; or signs on the roads that say things like ‘No parking’, ‘One way’ and ‘No entry’. In the classroom, discuss the words that are familiar and those that aren’t.
- Look for T-shirts that have some writing in English. Check your clothes to find labels in English. Talk about the meaning of the words and phrases you find.
- Ask students to note down any English words and expressions they hear or see in the school building.
- Ask students to listen to the radio broadcasts in English. Even if they do not understand very much, they will benefit from hearing English being used authentically and enjoy being able to recognise some of the words and phrases.
Choose one of these examples to try out with your students. What do you need to organise to make the activity successful? What criteria will you use to assess students in the activity?
Carry out the activity with your students. How did they respond? Did they hear or read more English words? How did you evaluate this?
In the next case study, a teacher brings an English newspaper into her classroom. Many English newspapers in India contain supplements for younger readers, which may be of interest to your students.
Case Study 2: Mrs Chadha uses an article from an English newspaper
Mrs Chadha teaches Class VII.
I found a short article called ‘They have long legs’ in a newspaper supplement for young readers called ‘Young World’, part of The Hindu. I thought my students would enjoy learning about all these creatures with long legs. I realised that the text was a little difficult for Class VII students, as I had to look up some of the vocabulary myself. I didn’t know what a cranefly was, for example, and I had to remind myself what ‘vulnerable’ meant. But the text was predictable in that it moved from talking about insects to birds and then animals. So I thought that my students could follow it as long as I helped them.
In the first lesson, I read the first two paragraphs aloud, translating some of the key unfamiliar words into the students’ home language. These first two paragraphs were the most difficult, but the text became easier as it went on. In the next lesson, I read out the first part of the text again, and then continued with the rest of it.
Craneflies are insects with slender bodies and extremely long legs, which is why they are sometimes called daddy long legs.
They are slow flyers and vulnerable to predators. When they perch on plants or on the ground, they bob up and down, due to their habit of alternately bending and straightening their legs.
The black-winged stilt has the longest legs among birds – not the longest in absolute terms but longest relative to its body length, the legs making up 60 per cent of its height.
The giraffe’s great height – it is the tallest animal – is due to its long legs and neck …
The students were amused by the name ‘daddy long legs’ for the insect. My drawing of the cranefly on the board made it clear what it was. The ideas and words in the phrases ‘up and down’, ‘bending and straightening their legs’, and ‘habit’ were familiar to the students. The difficult parts were about ‘vulnerability to predators’, and the concept of ‘perching’ (sitting). I quickly explained these words in the students’ home language.
The students now added the word ‘insect’ to their vocabulary, along with the words ‘bird’ and ‘animal’, which are in our textbook. In the part about birds, to explain the relative height of the leg compared to the body, I used my hands and fingers to show 50 per cent (half), 60 per cent and 40 per cent.
Something interesting happened when, before I read out the third paragraph, I asked: ‘Now you know a long-legged insect and a long-legged bird – can you think of a long-legged animal?’ Many students immediately mentioned the word ‘giraffe’. Some said they had seen one on television. So when I said that the giraffe was indeed the animal that the newspaper mentioned next, the children crowded round me to look at the newspaper. The pleasure of correctly guessing what an authority like the newspaper had said was very great indeed!
 Pause for thought
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2 Find out how much English your students know