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The
NCERT has been involved in evolving methods of teaching reading for the last 17
years. Sets of books using different approaches have been prepared and published
for children. Recently, on the basis of experience gained in teaching reading
to children, primers have been prepared for illiterate villagers in Haryans and
Delhi. Below is a brief presentation of the teaching reading developed in the
NCERT.
1. Basically, reading
involves the ability of a trained human brain to interpret written script symbols
phonetically and semantically. All other reading skills are moved around this
fundamental process involved in reading.
2. The traditional alphabet method of teaching reading suffers from to defect
of involving learners for a long period of time, sometimes extending into four
or five months, in the unmeaningful, boring and unproductive process of learning
to read and write the vowels, consonants and the matras in a fixed logical order.
By the time the learners come through with this tedious process, they have lost
much of the interest in the process of learning to read. Not surprisingly, the
highest rate of school drop-outs is in the very initial period of education itself
where, because of our defective method of teaching the three Rs the child loses
his interest in the process of getting educated. As only words and sentences are
the meaningful units of language, learners, both children and adults, find the
exercise of writing the isolated letters uninteresting and devoid of any purpose.
3. Because of the above difficulty, some scholars have adopted word and sentence
method for teaching reading. Here the learners are exposed initially to short
words or sentences which are repeated quite frequently. The words are presented
in meaningful context. No attempt is made in the beginning to break down words
into their constituent letters. Learners identify a word as a unit and the recognition
of individual symbols comes much later. This method has the advantage of retaining
the interest of children in the material being read but it also has the clear
disadvantage of keeping away the children for a long time from the essential basic
skill of recognition of script symbols which is the crucial factor in the process
of learning to read. This method has been found useful for the teaching of reading
English at the initial stages mainly because the spelling system of of English
does not have one to one correspondence between sounds on the language and the
script symbols representing them.
4. In the teaching of reading of most of the Indian languages, we have the tremendous
advantages of the sound-symbol concordance. Usually, there is one symbol for one
sound and a sound is usually represented by only one symbol. Once a child has
learnt to recognise a particular symbol. Once a child has learnt to recognize
a particular by only one symbol. Once a child has learnt to recognise a particular
symbols, he can do so in all contexts and can even read unfamiliar words fairly
correctly. Thus, the teaching of inititial reading is much simpler in Indian languages
than it is in English.
5. This great advantage available to us in Indian languages is partially lost
when we confine ourselves to the traditional alphabet method in the belief that
once we have taught our children the skill of recognizing individual script symbols
they will learn on their own the reading of words and sentences. This does happen
to some extent but there is a great lose of interest and enthusiasm on the part
of the children on this tedious process.
To develop an efficient method of teaching reading in Indian Languages, we have
to combine the advantages of both the alphabet method and the word method.
6. It should be borne in mind that the alphabet in Indian Languages, for example
in Hindi, is only a logical and systematic enumeration. This has absolutely no
represented by † and †Ö constitute about 21 per cent of all Hindi
sounds in use, in written representation the letters † and †Ö are
used less than one per cent each, while the matra (1) is the most frequently used
script symbol in Hindi.
7. To teach script symbols in such a way that the leaner begins to recognise them
and 'generate' more and more new words in the reading process, it is essential
that the order of introducing script symbol to learners should be in order of
introducing script symbol to learners should be in order of their frequency in
use. Some consonants, for example ²Ö Æü ÃÖ Ö
"Ö are much more frequently used than some other consonants like -Ö,
¤, Ö .
Similarly, some matras, for example, *, *, are more frequently used than the primary
vowel symbols. If we teach a few frequently used consonants and matras, the learner
can easily recognise the words written with them.
This is what is exactly doen in the NCERT Method. There is a gradual introduction
of script-symbols according to the frequency of use. For this purpose the script
symbols are categorised under the following headings and their frequency determined
:
(a) Consonants
(b)
Matras
(c) Vowels
(d) Consonant Clusters
(e) Less frequently used and
peculiar script-symbols such as'* ' ºþ ÁÖ
It
is essential to take into account all sorts of script symbols otherwise lacunae
may be left in the learners' competence. In Hindi, for example, there are
about 90 distinct script symbols to be mastered by learners.
The NCERT has done a pilot research in this area and the results are available
for use by the interested parties.
8. The efficacy of the method of reading could be calculated on the basis of the
generative power of the learnt symbols. One can calculate how many words a child
can read after learning a certain number of script-symbols. The efficiency of
the reading process is quite high in the NCERT Method as would be evident in the
table given below.
Number
of Script-symbols Number of words that can
introduced be read
4 7
8
16
10 25
14 40
18 110
Thus the learner can read about 100 words and sentences made out of them at the
end of about one month of learning to read. With this method it is easily possible
to enable the learner to read meaningful sentences almost from the first lesson.
At the end of one month he can read a set of narrative sentences with a flavour
of a story.
The learners'
interest is not only retained, but it actually increases as they receive reinforcement
at every stage of their learning being able to read and write more and more meaningful
words and sentences.
9. The first presentation of printed symbols are usually made in the form of words
which can be depicted by pictures. The learner first recognises a word as a whole
with the help of textbook, blackboard and flash-cards. Immediately after he is
able to do so, these words are broken up into their constituent script-symbols.
After sufficient practice has been given in the recognition of these symbols,
they are joined in various ways to make as many familiar words and sentences as
possible.
10. While the script-symbols are chosen on the basis of their frequency,
he words and sentences are selected on the interest value they have for the learner.
Thus quite different sets of words and sentences can be used for children and
adults, and their various dialectal groups, without compromising the principles
enunciated above.s
11.
The stress in the whole process is on developing the ability among the learners
to decipher script symbols and read words and sentences formed with them. While
every attempt is made to make the reading material as interesting as possible,
precaution is always taken to see to it that the learner is actually ' reading
' the printed material and not reproducing it from memory. This may frequently
happen in the case of some learners who, because of reading material happen in
the case of some learners who, because of reading material bring interesting to
them, learn by heart pages after pages of their primer and when asked to read
it, reproduce sentences after sentences from memory giving the unobservant an
impression of their skill acquired in reading the essence of which consists, as
stated in the beginning, in the ability of the human brian to react to printed
symbols of a language.
12. This approach of teaching reading has been tried out by the NCERT not only
on children, as in the primer Bal Bharti, but also in the primer developed for
the illiterate villagers of Haryana and Delhi. We are happy to report that the
results achieved so far are quite promising and deserved try-out elsewhere.