Teaching English: The Use of Support Materials

reviewed by S P Dhanavel, India

Dr S P Dhanavel is Professor and Head, Department of English at Anna University, Chennai, India. He is the author of Poetry of Life (1997), Purpose of Life (1998), Muse Time (1998), The Indian Imagination of Girish Karnad (2000), Writing for Mass Media (2005), English and Communication Skills for Students of Science and Engineering (2009), and English and Soft Skills (2010) He also edited the volume Critical Perspectives on American Literature (2008). His collection of essays English Language Teaching in India: The Shifting Paradigms is in press from Tata McGraw-Hill India Ltd. He has published 58 research articles in national and international journals. He is keenly interested in developing innovative methods and materials for teaching and learning English language, literature and communication skills.
E-mail: dhana@annauniv.edu

Title: Teaching English: The Use of Support Materials
Author: Dr B S Jadhav
Publisher: Orient Black Swan Ltd., Hyderabad, India
Year: 2011,
Number of Pages: 158.
ISBN: 978 81 250 4208 2
Price: Rs. 220

Teaching English: The Use of Support Materials is a book that has come out of the research work of B S Jadhav while exploring the strategies for exploiting alternative materials that can support the learning of English in the classroom at the tertiary level in India. In his Foreword, Professor Z N Patil says that the book is “intended to help the teacher of English make the classroom learning lively and interesting, and also to provide teachers and students relief from the monotony of the textbook.” The book, in fact, offers fresh, interesting, and innovative perspectives on English teaching and learning for a meaningful engagement in the classroom.

The book is divided into five chapters each with a distinct purpose finally culminating in the brief but persuasive chapter “Recommendations for Action.” The first chapter “English in India” is a common theme in many books on ELT in India. It gives a brief account of when, how and why Englishmen and English arrived in India. The consequence is logical as it led to the introduction of English education with English as the medium of instruction. Even after independence, English continues to hold strong roots in India for various reasons: it is a link language among the states, it is library language for study, it is a window on the world of science and technology for economic and social development, and most importantly it is the language of administration, law and mass communication. The aims and objectives of teaching English have undergone transformations and the methods too have changed with them. Literature and content-based teaching has given way for communication, learner and need-based teaching of English. Likewise, the role of the teacher too has changed from the images of potter, guru, gardener, artist, social engineer and craftsman to a facilitator. Today the English teacher is affected by the forces of globalization and information technology.

The second chapter “Approaches, Methods and Techniques of Teaching English” defines the key terms like curriculum and syllabus, examines the interconnection between syllabus and the textbook, analyses the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for learning, distinguishes among approach, method, and technique, traces the history of methods from grammar translation to communicative methods, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the lecture method, and finally deals with the role of pair work and group work in learning. It strongly suggests that the native speaker is no longer the model for ELT and points to the multiple non-native speaker model(s). Consequently, the function of communication has come to receive more importance than standards of usage.

The third chapter is very useful to the English teacher in the sense that it throws light on how to choose a textbook and use it maximally for achieving the learning objectives. While it points to the dangers of over dependence on the textbook, it also emphasizes that the textbook is irreplaceable. All that the author argues is that the textbook should be altered, adapted, and supplemented depending on the interests and needs of the learners. He reproduces the checklist given by (Garringer 2001) for the benefit of the teacher. Supplementary material could include “cartoons, newspaper middles, proverbs, jokes, limericks, malapropisms, crossword puzzles, anecdotes, folk tales, and riddles,” (p. 57) which an English teacher can profitably use to “nurture lifelong learning strategies and skills” (p. 57) among the students. In line with the recent trends, he believes that supplementary activities can be in the form of different tasks: information gap, information transfer, opinion gap, static, dynamic, and experience tasks. The bottom line is the need for shifting from closed textbooks to open-ended textbooks which could offer scope for supplementation for implementing a student-centered and interactive approach to language learning.

The fourth chapter deals with the central theme of using support materials in the English classroom. Nearly half of this chapter is devoted to cartoons, especially those of R K Laxman, newspaper middles, especially from the Times of India, folktales mostly from the Indian context and anecdotes relating to Einstein, Nasrudin, Victor Hugo, and Francis Bacon. The other half of the chapter is meant for discussing the use of riddles, crossword puzzles, jokes, proverbs, limericks, and malapropisms. Each of them is followed by linguistic, social and moral awareness exercises. Every one of them is aimed at motivating the students to get interested in the communicative activities of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Some exercises in riddles and crossword puzzles help students to develop their problem-solving and logical thinking skills. As the author points out, these resources “can be used to teach anything under the sky and the teacher’s creativity is the only limit”(p.128).

Finally, the fifth chapter “Recommendations for Action” gives some concrete suggestions for using support materials in the classroom. In view of the fact that both teachers and textbooks have some limitations, support materials like cartoons, newspaper middles, crossword puzzles, etc., should be brought into the class to make the classroom lively and learning enjoyable. Such activities are useful for inculcating team spirit and logical thinking and problem-solving habits among the students. Obviously, the lecture method cannot help. Then, pair work and group work activities have to be carried out in the class. As comic relief is important in a tragedy, learning and teaching relief is required in the classroom. This learner-centered, task-based, and problem-oriented use of support materials for teaching English is possible with some changes in attitudes of teachers, syllabus designers, textbook writers, and educational administrators. It is not surprising that the author concludes his study with a quotation: “What’s learned with pleasure is learnt full measure” (p.153)

The book ends with a bibliography of 78 books and articles useful for teaching and research in ELT in India. Some notable references J Braude’s Treasury of Wit and Humor, B. Cunningham’s The Puffin Joke Book, R K Laxman’s You Said It, N J Lewis’s Quick Crossword Puzzles, R K Murthi’s How to Solve Crossword Puzzles, A K Ramanujan’s Folk Tales of India, Rees’s The Cassell Dictionary of Anecdotes, G. Vas’s The Sterling Book of Riddles, and Paramahamsa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi suggest the range of support materials an English teacher can draw on for use in the class. In fact, Jadhav has extensively used cartoons and folktales in his book to propose model lessons for the teacher. It is left to the imagination of the English teachers to exploit these and many other common materials which the students would be happy to work with in the classroom.

Notwithstanding the useful ideas presented by Jadhav, the book is not free from common mistakes: some typographical and linguistic errors. Here are some cases: Relief appears as relieg in the foreword, Masters degree has no apostrophe s (p.13), evaluation and our are transposed (p.21), comprise comes with of (p.25), etc. Another point of concern is the lack of a sample lesson where both main and support materials are used together. This is important for teachers who do not want to go outside the text for addition or adaptation.

On the whole, the author deserves appreciation for taking pains to experiment with support materials and giving concrete suggestions for using them in the class. This kind of activity should be of great interest to both students and teachers. Any sincere textbook writer would find Teaching English useful for incorporating support materials in the English textbook. Hence, Jadhav’s book is bound to find favor with the community of English teachers in India and other countries.

Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Train the Trainer course at Pilgrims website.