MYTH 3 – Concerning the Teaching of English in India

Myth No. 3: The importance of Reading Aloud (often wrongly called ‘loud reading’ in Indian schools)

Hills’ Comment:     … If there is a class of 35 students and if the teacher does not speak at all, each student will spend 34 minutes listening to his fellow students reading with bad stress, bad rhythm and bad intonation… he himself will have one minute’s practice reading aloud (one minute!) … what can we do to give the students more efficient practice in pronunciation … etc? We can do ear and speech training work, which can largely be done chorally, so that all students are practicing simultaneously.

CONTD…

S. Velayudhan
Former Director, RIESI, Bengaluru
was Head of the Department of English,
University of Calicut, Kerala

Courtesy: Perspectives on English Language Teaching by J. M. Ure and S. Velayudhan

Collected by: P. K. Jayaraj and R. Gangadhar, RIESI, Bengaluru