LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 10 : 4 April 2010
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         K. Karunakaran, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S.M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.

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Copyright © 2009
M. S. Thirumalai
 
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Stimulating Language Strategies through Thinking -
Help for Slow Learners

M. Barathiraja & G. Baskaran, Ph.D.

Importance of Communicative Skills and Learning Strategies

Learning a language involves communicating with other people. Therefore it needs not only suitable cognitive skills but also some social and communicative skills. An attempt has been taken in this paper to characterize good and poor language learners and accordingly create space for them inside the classroom structure to improve the good and set right the bad. Identifying such students itself is a serious task in Indian situation. A number of studies indicate that the developing learners actually undergo the same strategies as those used by the successful learners. Further research is equally going on in institutions dealing with language learning.

An important question to ask at this juncture is why we should be highly interested in learning strategies. Why are some people learning better than others?

Help for Slow Learners

We can make the slow/inattentive learners into enabled by following these practices.

1. By raising questions again and again
2. Repeating words over again and again
3. Trying to work out the rules of the language by forming hypotheses
4. Guessing the meanings of unknown words
5. Ask the learner to frame a new sentence by using the knowledge of language rules.

Current Trend: Emphasis on Learners

There has been a prominent shift within the field of language learning and teaching over the last twenty years with greater emphasis being put on learners and learning rather than on teachers and teaching. And the books are increasingly learner-centered. A large numbers of grammar and study exercises are drafted using this format to make the students learn themselves.

Research Orientation

As parallel to this shift in interest, we seek to learn how learners process new information and what kinds of strategies they employ to understand. Learn or remember the information has been the primary concern of the researchers dealing with the area of foreign language learning. Questionnaires are prepared with the intention of enabling the students to answer the questions raised. For example, if the learner is reading a question like this, "Is this the college where you are learning the art of speaking?," he or she can easily frame the answer and say, "Yes, this is the college where I am learning the art of speaking".

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

The Influence of First Language Grammar (L1) on the English Language (L2) Writing of Tamil School Students: A Case Study from Malaysia | Economic Hardship and Emotional Humiliation in Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable | Effects of Using Urdu Dictionary as a Teaching Tool for Teaching Urdu in Urdu Language Classroom in Pakistan | Acoustic Correlates of Stress in Mizo, a Tonal Language | Racism and the American Dream in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men | Stimulating Language Strategies through Thinking - Help for Slow Learners | Masses as the True Makers of History - Analysis of the Play The Trial of Dedan Mimathi | Personal and Labour Market Environment Factors in English for Employability: A Case Study of KSA | A Study of the Reported Language Skill Development Strategies of the Student Teachers in Pakistan | Strategies for Communication Skills Development | Schema in Learning | Achieving Professional Goals: Use of a Mixed Discourse in Interviews | The Reality in Langston Hughes' Poems | Techniques to Teach Vocabulary to Regional Medium Students | Life History of Buddha as Reflected in Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha | Technique as Voyage of Discovery: A Study of the Techniques in Dante's Paradiso | Some Gaps in the Current Studies of Reading in Second/Foreign Language Learning | Unmasking Student Competence: Using Computers to Teach Writing | Feminist Literary Criticism | Amy Tan and Chinese American Literature | An Acoustic Analysis of Glottal Fricative [h] at Word Medial and Final Positions:
A Comparison between Regular and Non-regular Urdu Speakers of Pakistan | Teaching Writing Skills | Self-esteem of Institutionalised Elderly Women in Coimbatore - A Case History | An Assessment on Women's Work Participation and Economic Equality | Economics of Crime : A Comparative Analysis of the Socio-Economic Conditions of Convicted Female and Male Criminality in Selected Prisons in Tamil Nadu | A PRINT VERSION OF ALL THE PAPERS OF APRIL 2010 ISSUE IN BOOK FORMAT | HOME PAGE of April 2010 Issue | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR

M. Barathiraja & G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
Department of English
VHNSN College
Virudhunagar - 626 001
Tamilnadu, India
rgbaskaran@gmail.com

 
Web www.languageinindia.com
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