B. PARENTS

The parents were asked to state the number of languages they would like their children to learn, the advantages accruing out of learning several languages and the difficulties they think that their children may be facing in learning may languages. The responses of the parents to the statements asked in each to the three areas, are now being discussed, one by one. Some parents did not offer any response, neither agreeing nor disagreeing to the statements asked. This feature was not found in the cases of students and teachers, who had definite view, either way, about each of the statements asked. Therefore, in the case of parents there is a separate column in the respective tables indicating the percentage of parents not responding to each statement. Secondly in the area-wise analysis, rural and semi-urban parents were combined together since not much variation was found in their response patterns.

1. Preferred Number of Languages :

Preference regarding the number of languages that the parents would like their children to learn in the school is an indicator of the fact that whether or not they are well disposed towards teaching of several languages to their children. The parents, therefore, were asked to state the number of languages they would like their children to learn in their schools.

Table 6 in the next page, presents the percentage distribution of parents' responses to the above mentioned questions.

Table 6
Percentage Distribution of Parents' Opinion regarding the number of
Languages they prefer to be taught to their children

	Category I	Category II	Category III	Category IV	Category V
Preferred No. of languages AREA	2	3	4andAbove	No-Response	Total of categories2 &3
OVERALL	2.6	29.9	61.0	6.5	90.9
Rural& Semi-Urban Urban	- 4.6	29.9 29.9	58.2 63.2	11.9 2.3	88.1 93.1

The following salient trends emerge from the perusal of the above table.

The overall percentage shows that while only 2.6 percent parents prefer their children to learn only two languages, the corresponding percentages for three languages and four languages and above are respectively 29.9 percent and 61 percent. It appears that with the increased in the number of languages to be learnt in the schools, the percentages of parents' preference for the same is also increasing. On the whole, 90.9 percent are in favour of their children learning three or more than three languages. The same trend is found when the parents are classified area-wise (88.1% for rural and 93.1% for urban). In the case of students it has already been discussed that 97.2 percent of them, irrespective of area, medium and sex-wise, prefer to learn three or more than three languages. The same trend has been visualized (above 92% in all the cases) when the students responses were classified area, medium and sex-wise (ct. Table 1). All these unmistakably show that there is no inhibition on the part of either parents or students in learning several languages. In fact both the parties are very much willing, both reinforcing each other in their willingness to learn languages.

Area-wise analysis confirms the same trend that with the increase in the learning of number of languages there is an increase also in the percentage of parents showing their preferences for the same. On the whole, the urban parents are more liberal in their preferences for the number of languages, since 58.2 percent of the rural and semi-urban parents but 63.2 percent of the urban ones want their children to learn four and more than four languages. May be partly the cosmopolitan urban society and the education of the parents and the better environment for language learning are the factors behind this liberality of urban parents. Yet in spite of this difference in the percentages of the two groups of parents, we are not inclined to conclude that rural parents are either less conscious or less willing for learning of several languages by their children. None of them want their children to learn only two languages but 4.6 percent of the urban parents prefer to do so. Similarly 29.9 percent from both the groups of parents want three languages to be studied. The only difference is in the choice of four or more languages, which might well be interpreted as realism on the part of more rural and semi-urban parents considering their environment so that if they err, they err on the side of strictness and not liberality.

The non-responses deserve a word. 11.9 percent of the rural and semi-urban parents, while only 2.3 percent of the urban once, were not able to respond to this question. One reason may be the difference in the educational levels of the two groups since sample for the former also included those who were hardly literate. This may possibly be due to the cautious attitude of the rural and semi-urban parents who wanted to be sure about their grounds before they chose to speak out. In any case it does not show a negative or disinterested attitudes of these parents to the question under discussion.

The above discussion very clearly shows that the parents want their children to learn several languages. The reasons for this high degree of motivation will be evident when the data for the next section, 'Motivation for learning of languages' are analysed.

2. Motivation for learning of languages

The advantages arising out of learning of several languages act as incentives to motivate the parents to encourage and motivate their children to learn more than one language. In order to investigate the extent, of parental motivation in this context, the following seven statements were presented to the parents and to which they were asked to indicate their agreements or disagreements.

1) It helps in future employment
2) It helps in higher studies
3) It helps in talking to people
4) It helps in traveling to different parts of the country
5) It helps when migrated to different parts of the country
6) It helps in enjoying cinema, magazines and radio programmes
7) It helps in appreciating culture, literature etc.

The percentage distribution of the parents' response to each of these statements is presented bellow in Table 7. After excluding from the total sample the number of non-responding parents to each statement asked, the percentage for these agreeing with each statement was calculated.

Table 7(Percentage Distribution of Parents' Opinion and Non-response
Regarding Motivation for Language learning)

From the perusal of the above table the following trends emerge.
On the whole, a major section of parents, (above 93% in all the cases), irrespective of the area to which they belong indicate their preference for all the advantages of learning several languages. The trend is same when the data are classified area-wise. This clearly shows that the parents, like their wards, are fully conscious of the importance and the multifold incentives offered by the learning of several languages by their children. One significant point emerges when the incentives are broadly classified as instrumental like help in traveling to different parts of the country and help in talking to people. As was the case with the students, the responses of the parents also are well balanced between the instrumental and the integrative incentives as they show a very high preference for the both. Similar trend is again clearly visible when the incentives are classified in terms of academic or formal educational ones like help in future employment and help in higher studies, and the non-formal educational incentives like enjoying cinema, appreciating culture and literature, in traveling and migrating to different parts of languages learning for the parents and the students are very similar, evenly shared by the instrumental and academic incentives on the one hand, and the integrative and non-formal educational ones, on other. This is a clear indication of the judicious maturity on the part of all types of parents, which gets reflected in their wards as well.

When the overall percentages are glanced through the highest preference (98.6%) has been shown for help in traveling to different parts of the country followed by help in higher studies and help in talking to people (97.9% each) and lowest for help in appreciating culture and literature (91.9% each). It appears that among integrative incentives the highest preference has been given for the help that language gives while travelling in different parts of the country closely followed by help in talking to people (97.9%). The lowest is for help in appreciating culture and literature. This trend is also supported when the data have been classified area-wise. It appears that for all types of parents language seems to be a great limiting force which helps in removing the barrier between quite a high percentage of parents consider language helpful in appreciating culture and literature, this incentive is the lowest on the preference list of both overall parents and, separately, urban and rural and semi-urban parents. This maybe because of the fact that this incentive is perceived as very remote as well as abstract while others are considered to be yielding immediate gain. Between the two instrumental incentives, higher preference has been shown for help in higher studies, (97.9%) closely followed by help in future employment (96.5%).

The above trends are well supported when the area-wise classification of the data is made. Both for the rural and semi-urban and urban parents the preferences for each advantage are so high, and the differences between the two groups so low, that it is difficult to make any inference. However, some trends are visible which are described and which future intensive research may verify. This has been the case with the overall percentages also. Except for the incentive help in travelling to different parts of the country, the urban parents have shown higher preference for integrative incentives. On the contrary the rural and semi-urban parents have shown higher preference for the instrumental incentives. The data for this trend are specifically given below.

A. Instrumental Rural-Semi urban Urban

a. Help in future employment 98.4% 95%
b. Help in higher studies 98.4% 97.5%
B. Integrative

a. Help in talking to people 96.8% 98.8%
b. Help when migrated 95.1 98.8%
c. Help in enjoying cinema,
magazines and radio 93.2% 97.6%
d. Help in travelling to different
parts of the country 100% 97.6%
e. Help in appreciating culture and
literature 92.9% 91.3%

The above trend is understandable. The rural and semi-urban parents emphasize more the instrumental incentives since they are now getting more and more conscious of their children's education and the need of these children to complete with the urban ones for their upward social mobility. The urban parents comparatively emphasize more the integrative ones as they live in a cosmopolitan society where people from different cultures and regions live. The academic needs of the different cultures and regions live. The academic needs of the children are very well met in urban schools and, therefore the immediate need to mix with different types of people, both at the social and professional levels, gets precedence.

Looking in to the incidence of non-response it is seen that, on the whole, it is highest for the incentive help in appreciating culture and literature (11.7%) and lowest for the help in talking to different people (6.5%). This shows that the parents are able to appreciate and react more to such advantages which seem to them to be immediate and concrete than the ones which appear to be remote and abstract. This analysis is supported by the area-wise, analysis also. Moreover, it is found that the rate of non-response is higher in rural-semi-urban area than the urban. This may be because of the fact that in urban areas the parents due to social environment and also due to their respective backgrounds are more aware and exposed to the suggested incentives. Hence more of them are in a position to appreciate and react. However in rural-semi-urban areas the parents due to lack of exposure to many issues and due to their social environs less able to react. This trend is most evident in the case of the abstract incentive help in appreciating culture and literature where as many as 16.4 percent rural semi-urban parents do not offer any response in comparison to that of 8 percent of the urban parents. However, with utmost caution this interpretation is made since the rural and the semi-urban areas are now getting more and more enlightened which the high percentage of agreements for the incentives show. The above interpretation holds good only for the non-responders who are found comparatively more in the rural-semi-urban areas than in the urban areas.

On the whole, it appears that all the parents are very well motivated towards the idea of their children learning several languages, and the advantages arising out of it serve as incentives to keep the motivation high. We have seen that the students are also similarly motivated. May be this is the result of parents' encouragement. In any case both reinforce and strengthen each other. The next section will show that the parents are well aware of the difficulties faced by their wards in learning several languages. However well motivated as they are, they keep their children encouraging in spite of the difficulties.

3. Difficulties in the learning of Languages
In order to investigate the difficulties that the parents think their children might be facing in learning several languages, seven statements were presented to them to which they were expected to show their agreements or disagreements. These statements, which were selected from three areas - pedagogic, environmental and curricular - were as follows :

The percentage distribution for each of these statements are presented below:

Table 8
Percentage Distribution of Parents' Opinions and non-persons
regarding difficulties faced by their children in language learning

Nature of difficulty	Specific difficulties	Over-all	NonRes-ponse	AREA
				RuralSemi-urban	NonRes-ponse	Urban	NonRes- ponse
A.  Pedagogic	1) Confusion in learn-ing different grammars 2) Confusion in scriptsof different languages	37.7   19.4	15.6   13.0	42.3   20.4	22.4   19.4	35.6   18.8	10.3   8.0
B.Environmental	3)Nooccasion tousethe language for practice 4) No extra coaching at home	40.9   34.6	11.0   11.7	56.1   48.2	14.9   16.4	30.0   25.0	8.0   8.0
C. Curricular	5) Many othersubjectsto learn 6) Too many text books to study in each language 7)Time not sufficient	25.5   19.4    23.7	11.0   13.6   14.9	23.2   23.1   27.3	16.4   22.4   17.9	27.2   17.3   21.1	6.9   6.9   12.6

From the perusal of the above table the following trends seem to emerge.

It appears from the overall responses that the largest percentage of parents perceive difficulty in the environmental areas followed in order by the pedagogic and the curricular areas. The first four areas of difficulty, include items from each area showing the balanced and mature selection of the parents, who have spotted the key difficulties faced by their wards in learning several languages.

They are as follows :
i) 'No occasion to use the language for practice' (Environmental-40.9%)
ii) 'Confusion in learning different grammars (Pedagogic-37.7%)
iii) 'No extra coaching at home' (Environmental-34.6%)
iv) 'Many other subjects to learn' (Curricular-25.5%)

For the remaining three items of difficulty one from the pedagogic ('confusion in script learning'-19.4%) and two from the curricular ('Time not sufficient'-23.7% and too many textbooks to study in each language-19.4%) the percentages are co-operatively lower. The responses of the parents are once again very similar to those of the students, who have also highlighted the same four areas of difficulty (of Table 8). However, for the students the order of difficulty is pedagogic followed by the environmental and curricular. This only shows the natural difference existing in the perception of one, who is directly concerned with the problem and the other who is only indirectly interacting with the situation. Since the students are the direct consumers they have first hand experience of the day to day difficulty which have first hand experience of the day to day difficulty of different grammars. The parents, on the other hand, have more direct experience of the environmental hardships. Similarly all these four items have been considered to be the sources of difficulty by a higher percentages of students than by the parents. This again shows that the direct consumers feel the difficulty more deeply than the indirect ones.

Secondly, though both students and parents consider the curricular area be offering the least source of difficulty, yet very surprisingly the latter, inspite of indirect interaction, highlighted it more than the former, who have to face the problem directly. For example, the two areas of curricular difficulty-'Time not sufficient' and 'too many text books to study in each language have been emphasized respectively by 10% and 14.4% of the students, as against that of 23.7% and 19.4% of the parents. It appears that the parents may be because of fondness for their wards, who are obviously busy and hardworking to cope well with the situation, or may be because of the little time these children can spare for the domestic work, have a magnified perception of curricular difficulty. It may, however, be pointed out that this trend is visible only when the responses of the students and parents are compared. Otherwise, separately both consider environmental and pedagogic to be bigger sources of difficulty. It is interesting to find that both the parents and the students have identified the same difficulty-confusion in learning the different grammars-in the pedagogic of language teaching. While interpreting the students' responses to the difficulties faced in language learning, we have already examined in detail the importance and the roles of the pedagogic, environmental and curricular factors. They are applicable here also and the parent's responses further highlights them.

Area-wise analysis shows that the rural-semi urban parents stress the environmental area ('no occasion to use the language for practice'-56.1% and 'no extra coaching at home'-48.2%) followed in order by the pedagogic ('confusion in learning difficult grammars-42.3%) and curricular areas ('time not sufficient'-27.3%). This was also the order of preference for the rural and semi-urban students. The urban students, however, followed the pattern of their parents who are also urban and who emphasized most the pedagogic area ('confusion in learning different grammars'-35.6%) followed in order by the environmental ('no occasion to use language for practice'-30%) and curricular areas ('many other subjects to learn'-27.2%). Since the rural-semi urban environment because of its monolingual nature provides less opportunity for social interaction in the newly learnt languages, the rural-semi urban parents comparatively feel the pinch more of the environmental difficulties. There is absence of familial reinforcement also in the form of no extra coaching at home in the rural-semi urban homes as the educational level of these parents are expected to be lower than that of the urban parents. The rural-semi urban parents are well conscious of this limitation because 48.2 percent of them, as against 25 percent of the urban parents, stress this difficulty.

It is a welcome feature that the rural-semi urban parents are very conscious of the problems facing their wards' education in the context of learning of several languages. More such parents, in comparison to urban ones, have stressed all the difficulties facing language learning. Even they have not lost site of the pedagogic and curricular difficulty which in comparison to the urban parents, have been stressed more by them. The less equipped rural-semi urban schools, both in man and material, focus these problems, which are well appreciated by the parents belonging to this area. In the better equipped urban schools these difficulties are better taken care of. Consequently, lesser parents consider them to be sources of difficulty in learning several languages. We have already discussed in the first chapter that the conditions under which learning and teaching take place may yield a magnified perception of the curriculum, which may look like a load. It is, therefore, not surprising that quite a sizable percentage of rural parents emphasize all the curricular difficulties. Even the urban parents though in lesser percentage, do so. In fact 27.2 percent of the urban parents consider 'many other subjects to learn' to be a difficulty, as against 23.2 percent of the rural-semi urban once. But the item 'time not sufficient' is considered to be a difficulty by more rural-semi urban parents (27.3%) than the urban parents (21.1%). It is possible that in rural-semi urban areas because of lesser teaching facilities and lack of proper training, the teachers are not able to cope within the allotted time with the teaching of languages in the curriculum. The parents have detected this problem possibly because of the poor performance of their wards in the language subjects. The curricular difficulty, 'many other subjects to learn' have been highlighted both by the parents and the students. It may be because of the fact that at the secondary stage the students have to compulsorily learn three languages and different subjects in science and social studies. However, as pointed out earlier, since fewer students and parents consider curriculum related items to be sources of difficulty and since both of them are well motivated at their respective ends to learn and encourage the learning of languages, the solution at the pedagogic and environmental levels may take care of the curricular difficulties as well. On the contrary solution only at the curricular level may not be of much help.

The percentage of non-response does not vary very much in the case of overall percentage. The highest is for the statement 'confusion in learning different grammars' (15.6%) closely followed by the item 'time not sufficient' (14.9%). The lowest is for the statement 'no occasion to use the language for practice' (11%). It appears that such items with which the parents are not directly involved have high incidence of non-response. Moreover, it has already been pointed out that the parental sample was very heterogeneous since they varied in terms o area, occupation and above all education. That is why the non-response phenomenon is peculiar only to parents and has not been found in the case of students and teachers. It is perhaps due to this reason that the percentage of non-response for all the students is comparatively higher in the case of rural-semi urban parents who because of their lower educational background may not appreciate the difficulties as much as urban parents do. Moreover in the case of the rural semi-urban parents, the highest fusion in learning the grammar' - 22.4%) and curricular areas ('too many textbooks to study in each languages' - 22.4%) and the lowest for the environmental area ('no occasion to use the language for practice-14.9%). This only shows that with the former two the parents are not directly involved, a point which has already been made out.

From the analysis of the above data, it appears that, on the whole, the parents, like their wards, stress more the pedagogic and the environmental difficulties and less the curricular ones which once again does not appear to pose much of a problem if environmental facilities are given and the pedagogic difficulties are sorted out.