Effectiveness of Including Supplemental Interactive English Activities in the Gujarat State English Curriculum – Author: Emily Richardson

Background: Although India has made significant progress in primary and secondary education, there are still many challenges and high school graduation rates remain low. Education in rural India, especially in the state of Gujarat, is particularly weak. The Gujarat State curriculum focuses on rote learning and memorization. In rural high schools, like Madhi High School, there are insufficient resources, such as textbooks, classrooms are excessively large, and teachers are often over-worked and incapable of devoting the necessary time to adequately teach their students. As a result, countless students are left behind when they do not understand a topic. Furthermore, students will go home and copy homework assignments from a teacher’s guide, instead of learning the material. And in subjects, like English, there is hardly enough class time and far too few resources for students to apply their knowledge and practice their skills. A project aimed at including interactive supplemental English activities in the rigid Gujarat State English curriculum, in hopes of creating opportunities for students to apply their language knowledge, is reported here. Results: Quantitative results are shown for students’ End-of-Term English examination performance in two Standard 8 and Standard 9 English classes at Madhi High School. In the first term, those classes not offered supplemental English activities performed lower on their examinations than the classes who participated in weekly English activities. The English activities increased the classes’ average test scores by at least two points, in each class. A comparison of the English examination scores, as well as observations, is presented, showing that the inclusion of supplemental English activities in the Gujarat State English curriculum will effectively improve students’ performance on examinations. Conclusions: A quantitative analysis of Standard Eight and Standard Nine students’ examination performance at Madhi High School indicates that supplementing the Gujarat State English curriculum with academic and interactive English activities positively impacts students’ examination performance on End-of-Term examinations. INTRODUCTION As a Teaching Fellow for Nanubhai Education Foundation, I am teaching Standard Eight and Standard Nine English at Madhi High School. Based on my experience teaching English for the last ten months, as well as my observations and conversations with local English teachers, I believe the Gujarat State English curriculum needs serious attention. Each textbook for high school English classes contains innumerous grammar and spelling mistakes. The organization of the textbook is also disheveled. Each textbook is comprised of fifteen units and each unit follows a similar format. First, there is a “Pre-task” in which the main theme of the unit is introduced in the form of short story or dialogue. Next, there is a story. In some units, the main story is actually a play or dialogue, in other units the story is non-fiction and many times, it is short fictional prose. Unfortunately, the selection of stories is poor. Some of the stories have no plot while others are so advanced or dry that the students cannot comprehend the vocabulary and theme. Following the story, there is a pronunciation exercise and then very basic comprehension questions based on the story. The remainder of each unit includes grammar questions and activities for the students to complete at home. Each grammar section includes practice questions, but no lessons. For each unit, the majority of students will not actually do the required work. After school, they will go home and copy all answers to all questions from a teacher’s guide called English Navneet. The guide is easily accessible in village bookshops and many students have a copy. After copying the answers to all assignments, those students then pass the guide to their friends. In one of my first months at Madhi High School, I assigned a paragraph writing exercise. The next day in class, forty-eight students had identical paragraphs, while only one student submitted original work. The education system in Gujarat encourages teachers to teach to the examination, which students must pass to continue with their schooling. Thus, students have poor problem solving skills and are unable to apply their knowledge outside of the classroom. In addition to the poorly written English textbooks, there are other limitations in successfully improving students’ English skills at Madhi High School. In the majority of my classes, there are over sixty students in a small classroom. Instead of desks, students cram onto benches. Sometimes, there are four students sharing one small bench. The few eager learners sit in the front, while the students who tend to misbehave sit in the far back of the room. Teaching English while simultaneously managing an over-sized classroom is difficult. To add to the challenge, there is an insufficiency in textbooks. For a bench of three students, in most classes, only one student has his textbook. As a result, several students cram together to share a book. In a class period lasting only thirty-five minutes, I am limited to using the textbook in order to cover the mandatory curriculum necessary for the students to learn in order to pass the examination. After a few weeks teaching at Madhi High School, I decided that it was crucial for my students to not only obtain all information needed for the examinations, but also to acquire basic English speaking and critical thinking skills. I created several interactive English activities that I would test out in a couple of my classes. For this project, I defined Supplemental English activities as any games, short lessons or other activities that complement the Gujarati English curriculum or the students’ existing English skills. Some of the activities could be used in a few minutes at the end of a class period while others could incorporate the Gujarat State English curriculum material. Lastly, I developed homework activities that would require students to write their personal opinions in English. The main purpose of this initiative was to explore whether or not there is value in including supplemental interactive English activities in the Standard Eight and Standard Nine English classes at Madhi High School. Each activity serves a purpose in the class, as described in more detail, below. METHODS: Procedure: After formulating my hypothesis, “What is the value of including supplemental interactive English activities in Standard 8 and Standard 9 English classes at Madhi High School,” I defined my variables.

• Independent variable: The effectiveness of supplemental English activities in Standard 8 and Standard 9 English classes at Madhi High School
• Dependent variable: Students; performance on End-of-Term examinations.
• Control: Number of students, structure of the activities, frequency of activities

In order to refine my project and test its effectiveness, I chose two classes in Term One and two classes in Term Two to participate in my activities. In Term One, I selected Standard 9A and Standard 8B to receive activities during English class. In Term Two, I selected Standard 9B and Standard 8A to participate. I carefully monitored all four classes for both terms. After students wrote their End-of-Term examinations, I collected, analyzed and compared their results. Because I teach each class for two periods every week, I decided to include only one activity each week. The types of activity varied. I would alternate between in-class activities and homework activities. Below are several samples of the activities and the specific procedures I used in the duration of this project. I simplified the instructions so that the activities can be adapted by local Gujarati teachers. Activities: I designed three main types of activities. First, I used basic English activities that could be used in five to ten minutes at the end of class. These activities were created for students to think and answer in English. They are fun activities in which all students can participate. Two examples of these activities are Scategories and How Many Words Can You Find?. A second type of activity I implemented is the revision activity. These activities directly complement the Gujarat State English textbook. In each activity, vocabulary, grammar and main concepts are included, in order for the student to revise what he or she learned, prior to sitting for the End-of-Term examination. Two such activities are Vocabulary B.I.N.G.O. and Revision Jeopardy. The last type of activity I focused on in this project was homework activities. These activities were constructed for students to use at home. I developed several composition questions that require the students to think critically and formulate his or her own thoughts, opinions and ideas. (Due to restrictions of the web format, the activities and paper continues in the full pdf, below) Download the Full Article