CBSE Exam PreparationClass X Communicative EnglishIn the months of January and February, students in schools affiliated to CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education, In India) are busy preparing for their Board Exams. These months are for them (and their parents) a time of great stress. Being tense in exam preparation serves no purpose. A more positive approach is to prepare smartly in the time left. It is true, that there is not much time left for the exam. However, I think, an honest student who recognizes that his preparation has not been sufficient and sincerely wants to remedy the situation, can still hope to be very successful, even if he or she has only a month to prepare. The toughest part of the CBSE Communicative English Course (Class X) for students is the Writing Section, which tests a students' writing skills and carries 30 marks. Students worry not only about HOW to write, but also WHAT to write. They often become aware of this second part only when they actually begin to write. The 'CODER Principle' is a good guide, but students usually neglect the C (Collecting /Generating / Brainstorming of Ideas) and the O (Organizing the ideas into an Outline) and go straight to the D (the first Draft). For many students, the D is the ONLY step they do! The remaining steps of E (Editing) and R (Reviewing) are also neglected. The Communicative English syllabus is an excellent piece of work launched in 1993 (for Class IX) and the following year (for Class X) after some years of preparation by a team of teachers selected from CBSE schools (1988 or 89, according to my recollection) with experts in England. It aims to help students use English in real life situations and to learn to monitor their own study of the language. A teacher's role is to facilitate the learning process. The text books are well written and are revised from time to time. Careful reading of the Teacher’s Manual, can initiate a teacher to fulfil the facilitator's role in the classroom well and help the students to fulfill the aims of the course. Sadly, there are teachers who use the Teacher’s Manual not for learning and updating themselves, but only for checking the correct answers of the exercises given to students. One would think that checking the correct answers should be the least of the purposes of the manual, since a competent teacher should be sure of most of the answers (except perhaps where multiple answers are possible). Ignorance of what is contained in the Manual leads to deviation in the spirit, aims, and practices involved in the Communicative English course. 1. Some teachers ignore the Main Course Book.They say that nothing from it comes in the examination. How strange, the Main Course Book (MCB) is not a part of the Course! What they say is not true.True, the content of the Main Course Book, does not fully figure in the examination (except in a 10-mark question in the writing section). But this is true of all language study. In a language, a passage is given in order to study its language points, such as comprehension, vocabulary, word formation, sentence structure, style, etc. A passage in a language lesson is not given (primarily) for the sake of its content. A true language teacher always understands this. The Reading and Writing Skills for which students could get a maximum of 50 marks are in the MCB. Teaching the MCB… • teaches them these skills, and so they learn HOW to write; • gives them some familiarity and understanding of current issues of the world, and therefore, they learn WHAT to write. 2. Other teachers ignore the Workbook.The Workbook (WB) contains grammar lessons (usually using an inductive method) and exercises.Some teachers make the students complete all the exercises by themselves at home (even the whole WB at the end of the year!) and the students are told to ask any doubts they may have. There are very few students who would ask doubts in such a situation. For completing the exercises, students often take the help of the Workbooks they had the foresight to inherit from their seniors in the beginning of the year or they may neglect completing the exercises all together - often rightly guessing that the completed work will not be asked to be submitted. 3. They begin the Communicative English Course by teaching Literature!I think, the reason for this is because teaching from the Literature Reader (LR) is more like traditional English teaching and hence the teacher need not worry about updating himself of herself...hence can avoid getting too much out of his or her comfort zone.In a communicative course, the appreciation of literature is not the primary aim. The primary aim is the use of language in real-life situations. Teaching literature first is born from a distorted perception of the communicative course and inadvertently passes on such a perception to the students. One learns first to use a language, and is only then ripe for appreciation of the literature of the language. Under such a situation of distortion of the purposes of the prescribed course, a student’s problems are inevitable. To this, if you also add a student’s lack of motivation, then the problems increase two-fold. What should a student do in such situations?He or she should…
Begin time-bound preparation of these topics FIRST. These are the most important things to learn. After this go into the other material. If you live close to Suratgarh, you may take advantage of the writing and/or grammar courses I offer for the benefit of CBSE students (from Classes IX to XII). You are welcome to contact me for this. You may also read some of the grammar pages on this site after first navigating to the home page or from the NAVBAR on the left of this page.
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