LLT Final 14.07.2017
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Language and Language Teaching Editors Rama Kant Agnihotri, Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur, India (Formerly at the University of Delhi) A. L. Khanna, ELT Consultant, Delhi, India (Formerly at the University of Delhi) Associate Editors Rajesh Kumar, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Suranjana Barua, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Guwahati (IIITG), Assam, India Editorial Committee Rajni Dwivedi, Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India Haobam Basantarani, Language Consultant, Delhi, India Praveen Singh, University of Delhi, Delhi, India Devaki Lakshminarayan, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Executive Committee H. K. Dewan, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India S. Giridhar, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Partha Sarathi Misra, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Ramgopal Vallath, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India Prasoon Kumar, Vidya Bhawan Education Resource Centre, Udaipur, India International Review and Advisory Board R. Amritavalli, English and Foreign Languages University, Minati Panda, Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Studies, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India JNU, Delhi, India Rakesh Bhatt, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, D. P. Pattanayak, Founder Director, CIIL, Mysore, Illinois, USA Karnataka, India Tanmoy Bhattacharya, University of Delhi, Delhi, India Robert Phillipson, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Jim Cummins, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada N. S. Prabhu, former Head of English Language, National Ganesh Devy, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and University of Singapore, Singapore. Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India Tariq Rahman, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan Kathleen Heugh, University of South Australia, Australia Anju Sahgal Gupta, Indira Gandhi National Open University, Ayesha Kidwai, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India Delhi, India Stephen D. Krashen, University of Southern California, Itesh Sachdev, School of Oriental & African Studies, Los Angeles, California, USA University of London, UK Kay McCormick, University of Cape Town, Rajesh Sachdeva, formerly Acting Director, CIIL, Mysore, Cape Town, South Africa Karnataka, India Rajend Mesthrie, University of Cape Town, Sadhna Saxena, University of Delhi, Delhi, India Cape Town, South Africa Udaya Narayana Singh, Tagore Research Chair, Visva Bharati, K. P. Mohanan, IISER, Pune, Maharashtra, India Santiniketan, West Bengal, India Ajit Mohanty, formerly at the Zakir Hussain Centre for Educational Studies, JNU, Delhi, India M. L. Tickoo, formerly at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India Aditi Mukherjee, former Director, National Translation Mission, CIIL, Mysore, Karnataka, India Mahendra K. Verma, formerly at the University of York, UK Copy Editor: Preeti Jhangiani; Cover and Layout: Rajesh Sen Thanks are due to Arindam Chakraborty and Pankhuri Arora for their help in finalising this issue of LLT. © 2017 Vidya Bhawan Society, Udaipur (Raj.) The views expressed in the contributions to LLT are those of the authors only. Language and Language Teaching Volume 6 Number 2 Issue 12 July 2017 Contents Articles Interview Teaching of Hmar Language with Special Praveen Singh talks to Professor Karuvannur Reference to Assam Puthanveettil Mohanan 55 Vanlal Tluonga Bapui 1 Landmark Significance of Feedback in the Between the Lines Teaching/Learning Process Rimli Bhattacharya 64 T. Shrimathy Venkatalakshmi and Chandreyee Sarkar Mitra 5 Book Reviews Investigating Tasks in Formal Language Translating Punjabi Poetry: An Approach Learning T. C. Ghai 10 Geetha Durairajan 73 An Exploration on Teaching 'Subject-Verb Second Language Learning in a Foreign Agreement with Respect to Gender' Inductively Language Environment: A Pragma-Discoursal in Telugu Account Pavithra Velpuri 16 Iqbal Judge 75 Facts versus Feelings: Teaching of Literature in Peer Interaction and Second Language Learning: Indian Classrooms Pedagogical Potential and Research Agenda Shefali Srivastava 22 R Amritavalli 78 Key Issues in the Teaching of English at the Classroom Activities Primary Level Game 1: Word Rummy A. L. Khanna 28 Game 2: Word Gradients or Shades of Meaning Game 3: Four Pictures One Word What is this Hindi Used in Textbooks? Nivedita Vijay Bedadur 82 Uma Sudhir 35 Report Silence as Discourse Marker in Multilingual Feedback Report on Language and Language Classrooms in India Teaching 86 Sanchita Verma 39 Forthcoming Events 92 Other Minds and Stories Jobin M. Kanjirakkat 47 Technology Innovations for Language Learning Jennifer Thomas 52 Editorial Language and Language Teaching (LLT), as the name suggests, brings researchers working on language and people interested in the field of teaching language together. As the Feedback Report in this issue shows, teachers have consistently found materials published in this journal useful; at the same time researchers have tried their best to make their theoretical understanding of the intricacies of language accessible to teachers in the context of language teaching. This issue of LLT includes ten papers. The papers present an eclectic mix and teachers, teacher trainers as well as policy makers and those generally interested in language issues would all find something of interest to them. A general thread that binds the contributions to this issue together is the emphasis on the reader/ learner experience. It has been a conscious effort in this volume to include voices and perspectives that help the learning experience and to take into account the multilingual nature of classrooms. This issue also includes its regular features such as an interview with an eminent scholar in the field of the study of language and education. This time we have interviewed Professor K. P. Mohanan with whom Praveen Singh talks at length about issues that are strikingly relevant to teachers and researchers in the field of education. Mohanan candidly explains his concerns and understanding of wide range of issues such as teaching methods, role of the study of language in teaching, classroom practices, the teacher-training practices and, English in India and Education to name a few. The other regular feature of this journal has been a Landmark piece of fundamental importance to teachers and teacher educators. In this issue, we invited Dr. Rimli Bhattacharya to write the landmark paper. In her paper, Bhattacharya emphasizes on learning through exploration. Writers of textbooks would find this piece relevant and helpful. Drawing on insights from Sandesh - a monthly magazine founded by Upendrakisor Raychaudhuri – she questions the validity of disciplinary boundaries and vouches for a style of text that is both scientific and imaginative, factual and fictive at the same time. Literature and science, she contends, need not be two ends of a spectrum but can come together in a holistic and engaging way in a text which can thus do justice to the child's inquisitive mind. Bhattacharya ends her piece with a few suggestions that can be incorporated in pedagogy and provide for language to be more than just an instrumentalist concern in education. Amongst other pieces that concern the status of languages and their use in education, V.T. Bapui's paper deals with the Hmar language which belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family and is a part of the Lushai-Kuki-Chin group. It traces the history and development of the language while stressing on its teaching in Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Assam while also focusing on and recognizing the associated problems in its teaching. T. Shrimathy Venkatalakshmi and Chandreyee Sarkar Mitra talk about the role of feedback, assessment, and evaluation process in the process of learning. They show how information to students on their performance is the key factor that enhances their performance. They suggest constructive, prompt, and qualitative feedback to students could be one of the turning points in education. T. C. Ghai analyses an approach for translating (Punjabi) poetry. In line with contemporary readings in Translation Studies, Ghai – through his analysis of his own translations of Puran Singh Kanwar, Avatar Singh Sandhu (popularly known as Pash) and Lal Singh Dil – draws attention to the fact that the relation between a poem and its translation remains fluid. A translated text can therefore be literal, in spirit, an adaptation, a trans-creation or free and even become independent of the original - something that language teachers would do well to take cognizance of. Pavithra Velpuri explores her understanding of relationship between language, mind and society Language and Language Teaching Volume 6 Number 2 Issue 12 July 2017 with respect to pedagogical implications of linguistics. She tries to understand how children acquire tacit knowledge and proposes that such an understanding would be an asset that every teacher should leverage in classroom. She explores why the grammar class of a first language could not be made interesting and how grammar could be taught inductively. Also, teaching learners rules is less exciting than making them come up with rules based on what they know. In appropriating reader- response theories for the Indian classroom, Shefali Srivastava's paper makes a case for aesthetic stance in education as equally important as an 'efferent' stance. She claims that the goal of education is not to produce literate mechanized human resource but to develop thinking and feeling individuals with sound