ALLAMA IQBAL OPEN UNIVERSITY

Name:

Atif Mehmood Hashmi

Reg no:

0000237321

Assignment No:

01

Course:

Elementary Education (826)

Semester:

M. ED 2nd(Autumn 2022)

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Q. No. 1 Elucidate the role of public and private sector in elementary education.
Discuss the initiatives of government of Pakistan in this context.
Introduction:
Education plays a pivotal role in the rise and fall of the nations especially in the 21st century importance
of education influence much to meet the fast growing challenges. It is mainly due to the emergence of
global competition in education and technology. This competitive environment is the core need for
progress of any country. All countries including Pakistan have different school systems but when we
divide them we find two major categories of school systems: private and public schools. In Pakistan,
private schools are getting mass acceptance today to ensure sustained progress of the country. During
1990s and 2000s, private sector emerged as a key provider of education services in Pakistan both in
absolute terms and relative to the public sector. Private educational institutions are playing key role not
only in eradicating illiteracy but also enhancing the level of students as well as teachers by providing
better academic environment. Private sector contributed significantly in eradicating illiteracy in the
emerging economies. If private schools are properly managed they can uplift educational standard in
Pakistan as well.

The Public and Private sectors have been able to provide good results of providing
quality education all over the country, however it needs to continue the struggle. Pakistan has poor
schooling system with poor standards due to changing of “National Education Policies” in different
decades throughout history. Currently, we have a big challenge of increasing population ratio day by day
and approx.75% people have low standards of living all over the country. The elite families have full
control over resources and nation’s wealth. The nation has weak learning system due to having low GDP
rate (2%) as compare to other countries of South Asia. Keeping in mind above all issues, what should be
the role of public sector and private sector/community to improve our system/culture that is big
question?

The educational landscape of Pakistan has gone through numerous transformations in the past two
decades. Enrollment levels and gender parity index have been on the rise. The changes in the education
sector that have been taking place in Pakistan have created an environment with numerous opportunities
as well as challenges in terms of policy development. Even though the enrollment in government
schools is much bigger than any other sector, the declining trend in favor of non –state providers is

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significant. Education, especially primary education is mostly considered a public service which should
be provided to the citizens without discrimination, irrespective of affordability and mainly as the
government’s responsibility. This ideology was behind the nationalization of all education institutions in
1972, which severely interrupted the role of the robust private sector particularly at the post elementary
level. However, like other services provided by the government, education provision has been severely
constrained by governance, quality and effectiveness.
After the end of nationalization in 1979, Pakistan has witnessed an exponential increase in the role of
private sector service providers. The negative experiences of government schools have instigated parents
to shift children from government to private schools. Private schools no longer remain an urban or elite
phenomenon, but rather poor households also use these facilities to a large extent, due to their better
locations, reasonable fees, teachers’ presence and better-quality learning, especially in the fields of
mathematics and language. Even though private schools started off as an urban phenomenon, more
recently they have mushroomed in rural areas as well. Several characteristics are responsible for making
private schooling more attractive to parents compared to government schools; these include better test
scores, better physical infrastructure, and lower rates of teacher absenteeism

. Some of the other factors are:

1- Income of parents
2- Teacher quality factors influencing school choice:
 Parents’ knowledge of the teacher’s educational qualifications
 Parents’ opinion of the teacher’s regularity
 Parents’ rating of the teacher’s teaching skills

3- Facilities in School
4- Child safety
5- Quality of education
6- School Fee
7- Medium of Instruction
8- Better results

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Even if we disregard the debate of whether the learning levels are better in private or government
schools, the fact remains that the learning levels for both types of institutes remain poor in an absolute
sense. The private schools advantage over the public schools is marginal up if we look at the problems
of education in the country holistically speaking. Therefore, the policy developers should cater to
supporting and improving both the sectors and not either of the two.

The outcomes of private versus public schools’ debate may be a popular discourse, however, at a policy
level it is essential to understand that the current education emergency in Pakistan cannot be confronted
with just a single player in the education sector. Multiple players, other than the government alone are
required in the process to combat the problems.

The government needs private sector’s help to contest the challenges. Various other challenges including
the flood, security issues and dislocations of citizens due to the regional conflicts in the country also
pose major concerns that the households and state need to plan around in the future. The need of the
hour is a collective action by all the stakeholders, including the households, government, private sector
and the civil society.

It can be a better option if the government uses its resources not on increasing the number of schools but
rather on the quality of existing schools. Increasing access to education for children by increasing the
number of schools should be a policy left for the private sector and the government itself should
concentrate on improving the quality of physical facilities and teachers in the existing schools. By doing
this, the benchmark for the private schools will also increase, thus increasing both access to, and quality
of education.

Q. No. 2 Describe in the light of Paget’s theory the cognitive and intellectual
development of a child at different levels.

Introduction:
Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development suggests that children move through four different stages
of mental development. His theory focuses not only on understanding how children acquire knowledge,
but also on understanding the nature of intelligence. Piaget’s stages are:

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  Sensorimotor stage: birth to 2 years
 Preoperational stage: ages 2 to 7
 Concrete operational stage: ages 7 to 11
 Formal operational stage: ages 12 and up

Piaget believed that children take an active role in the learning process, acting much like little scientists
as they perform experiments, make observations, and learn about the world. As kids interact with the
world around them, they continually add new knowledge, build upon existing knowledge, and adapt
previously held ideas to accommodate new information.

How Piaget Developed the Theory

Piaget was born in Switzerland in the late 1800s and was a precocious student, publishing his first
scientific paper when he was just 11 years old. His early exposure to the intellectual development of
children came when he worked as an assistant to Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon as they worked to
standardize their famous IQ test.

Much of Piaget’s interest in the cognitive development of children was inspired by his observations of
his own nephew and daughter. These observations reinforced his budding hypothesis that children’s
minds were not merely smaller versions of adult minds. Up until this point in history, children were
largely treated simply as smaller versions of adults. Piaget was one of the first to identify that the way
that children think is different from the way adults think.

Instead, he proposed, intelligence is something that grows and develops through a series of stages. Older
children do not just think more quickly than younger children, he suggested. Instead, there are both
qualitative and quantitative differences between the thinking of young children versus older children.
Based on his observations, he concluded that children were not less intelligent than adults, they simply
think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget’s discovery “so simple only a genius could have thought
of it.”
Piaget’s stage theory describes the cognitive development of children. Cognitive development involves
changes in cognitive process and abilities. In Piaget’s view, early cognitive development involves
processes based upon actions and later progresses to changes in mental operations.

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The Stages
Through his observations of his children, Piaget developed a stage theory of intellectual development
that included four distinct stages:

The Sensorimotor Stage

Ages: Birth to 2 Years

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

Children learn about the world through basic actions such as sucking, grasping, looking, and listening
Infants learn that things continue to exist even though they cannot be seen (object permanence) They are
separate beings from the people and objects around them. They realize that their actions can cause things
to happen in the world around them. During this earliest stage of cognitive development, infants and
toddlers acquire knowledge through sensory experiences and manipulating objects.

A child’s entire experience at the earliest period of this stage occurs through basic reflexes, senses, and
motor responses. It is during the sensorimotor stage that children go through a period of dramatic growth
and learning. As kids interact with their environment, they are continually making new discoveries about
how the world works. The cognitive development that occurs during this period takes place over a
relatively short period of time and involves a great deal of growth.

Children not only learn how to perform physical actions such as crawling and walking; they also learn a
great deal about language from the people with whom they interact. Piaget also broke this stage down
into a number of different substages. It is during the final part of the sensorimotor stage that early
representational thought emerges.

Piaget believed that developing object permanence or object constancy, the understanding that objects
continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, was an important element at this point of development.
By learning that objects are separate and distinct entities and that they have an existence of their own
outside of individual perception, children are then able to begin to attach names and words to objects.

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The Preoperational Stage
Ages: 2 to 7 Years

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

Children begin to think symbolically and learn to use words and pictures to represent objects.
Children at this stage tend to be egocentric and struggle to see things from the perspective of others.
While they are getting better with language and thinking, they still tend to think about things in very
concrete terms.

The foundations of language development may have been laid during the previous stage, but it is the
emergence of language that is one of the major hallmarks of the preoperational stage of development.
Children become much more skilled at pretend play during this stage of development, yet continue to
think very concretely about the world around them.

At this stage, kids learn through pretend play but still struggle with logic and taking the point of view of
other people. They also often struggle with understanding the idea of constancy.

For example, a researcher might take a lump of clay, divide it into two equal pieces, and then give a
child the choice between two pieces of clay to play with. One piece of clay is rolled into a compact ball
while the other is smashed into a flat pancake shape. Since the flat shape looks larger, the preoperational
child will likely choose that piece even though the two pieces are exactly the same size.

The Concrete Operational Stage

Ages: 7 to 11 Years

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes

During this stage, children begin to thinking logically about concrete events
They begin to understand the concept of conservation; that the amount of liquid in a short, wide cup is
equal to that in a tall, skinny glass, for example

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Their thinking becomes more logical and organized, but still very concrete .

Children begin using inductive logic, or reasoning from specific information to a general principle
While children are still very concrete and literal in their thinking at this point in development, they
become much more adept at using logic. The egocentrism of the previous stage begins to disappear as
kids become better at thinking about how other people might view a situation. While thinking becomes
much more logical during the concrete operational state, it can also be very rigid.

Kids at this point in development tend to struggle with abstract and hypothetical concepts. During this
stage, children also become less egocentric and begin to think about how other people might think and
feel. Kids in the concrete operational stage also begin to understand that their thoughts are unique to
them and that not everyone else necessarily shares their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

The Formal Operational Stage

Ages: 12 and Up

Major Characteristics and Developmental Changes:

At this stage, the adolescent or young adult begins to think abstractly and reason about hypothetical
problems

Abstract thought emerges

Teens begin to think more about moral, philosophical, ethical, social, and political issues that require
theoretical and abstract reasoning.

Begin to use deductive logic, or reasoning from a general principle to specific information.The final
stage of Piaget’s theory involves an increase in logic, the ability to use deductive reasoning, and an
understanding of abstract ideas. At this point, people become capable of seeing multiple potential
solutions to problems and think more scientifically about the world around them.

The ability to thinking about abstract ideas and situations is the key hallmark of the formal operational

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stage of cognitive development. The ability to systematically plan for the future and reason about
hypothetical situations are also critical abilities that emerge during this stage.

It is important to note that Piaget did not view children’s intellectual development as a quantitative
process; that is, kids do not just add more information and knowledge to their existing knowledge as
they get older. Instead, Piaget suggested that there is a qualitative change in how children think as they
gradually process through these four stages. A child at age 7 doesn’t just have more information about
the world than he did at age 2; there is a fundamental change in how he thinks about the world.

Q. No. 3 ‘Personality development occurs early in life but later years provide an
opportunity for the modification of previously developed trends. Discuss.

Introduction:
Personality development is the development of the organized pattern of behaviors and attitudes that
makes a person distinctive. Personality development occurs by the ongoing interaction of temperament,
character, and environment.

Description
Personality is what makes a person a unique person, and it is recognizable soon after birth. A child’s
personality has several components: temperament, environment, and character. Temperament is the set
of genetically determined traits that determine the child’s approach to the world and how the child learns
about the world. There are no genes that specify personality traits, but some genes do control the
development of the nervous system, which in turn controls behavior.

A second component of personality comes from adaptive patterns related to a child’s specific
environment. Most psychologists agree that these two factors—temperament and environment—
influence the development of a person’s personality the most. Temperament, with its dependence on
genetic factors, is sometimes referred to as “nature,” while the environmental factors are called
“nurture.”

While there is still controversy as to which factor ranks higher in affecting personality development, all

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experts agree that high-quality parenting plays a critical role in the development of a child’s personality.
When parents understand how their child responds to certain situations, they can anticipate issues that
might be problematic for their child.

They can prepare the child for the situation or in some cases they may avoid a potentially difficult
situation altogether. Parents who know how to adapt their parenting approach to the particular
temperament of their child can best provide guidance and ensure the successful development of their
child’s personality.

Finally, the third component of personality is character—the set of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral
patterns learned from experience that determines how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. A person’s
character continues to evolve throughout life, although much depends on inborn traits and early
experiences.

Character is also dependent on a person’s moral development .

In 1956, psychiatrist Erik Erikson provided an insightful description as to how personality develops
based on his extensive experience in psychotherapy with children and adolescents from low, upper, and
middle-class backgrounds. According to Erikson, the socialization process of an individual consists of
eight phases, each one accompanied by a “psychosocial crisis” that must be

solved if the person is to manage the next and subsequent phases satisfactorily. The stages significantly
influence personality development, with five of them occurring during infancy, childhood, and
adolescence.

Infancy
During the first two years of life, an infant goes through the first stage: Learning Basic Trust or Mistrust
(Hope) . Well-nurtured and loved, the infant develops trust and security and a basic optimism. Badly
handled, the infant becomes insecure and learns “basic mistrust.”

Toddlerhood
The second stage occurs during early childhood, between about 18 months to two years and three to four

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years of age. It deals with Learning Autonomy or Shame (Will) . Well-parented, the child emerges from
this stage with self-confidence, elated with his or her newly found control. The early part of this stage
can also include stormy tantrums, stubbornness, and negativism, depending on the child’s temperament.

Preschool
The third stage occurs during the “play age,” or the later preschool years from about three to entry into
formal school. The developing child goes through Learning Initiative or Guilt (Purpose) . The child
learns to use imagination; to broaden skills through active play and fantasy; to cooperate with others;
and to lead as well as to follow. If unsuccessful, the child becomes fearful, is unable to join groups, and
harbors guilty feelings. The child depends excessively on adults and is restricted both in the
development of play skills and in imagination.

School age
The fourth stage, Learning Industry or Inferiority (Competence) , occurs during school age, up to and
possibly including junior high school. The child learns to master more formal skills:

relating with peers according to rules progressing from free play to play that is structured by rules and
requires teamwork (team sports) learning basic intellectual skills (reading, arithmetic)

At this stage, the need for self-discipline increases every year. The child who, because of his or her
successful passage through earlier stages, is trusting, autonomous, and full of initiative, will quickly
learn to be industrious. However, the mistrusting child will doubt the future and will feel inferior.

Adolescence
The fifth stage, Learning Identity or Identity Diffusion (Fidelity) , occurs during adolescence from age
13 or 14. Maturity starts developing during this time; the young person acquires self-certainty as
opposed to self-doubt and experiments with different constructive roles rather than adopting a negative
identity, such as delinquency.

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The well-adjusted adolescent actually looks forward to achievement, and, in later adolescence, clear
sexual identity is established. The adolescent seeks leadership (someone to inspire him or her), and
gradually develops a set of ideals to live by.

The Child Development Institute (CDI) rightfully points out that very little knowledge is available on
the type of specific environment that will result, for example, in traits of trust being more developed in a
person’s personality. Helping the child through the various stages of emotional and personality
development is a complex and difficult task. Searching for the best ways of accomplishing this task
accounts for most of the research carried out in the field of child development today.

Renowned psychologist Carl Rogers emphasized how childhood experiences affect personality
development. Many psychologists believe that there are certain critical periods in personality
development—periods when the child will be more sensitive to certain environmental factors. Most
experts believe that a child’s experiences in the family are important for his or her personality
development, although not exactly as described by Erikson’s stages, but in good agreement with the
importance of how a child’s needs should to be met in the family environment.

For example, children who are toilet trained too early or have their toilet training carried out too strictly
may become rebellious. Another example is shown by children who learn appropriate behavior to their
sex lives when there is a good relationship with their same-sex parent. Another environmental factor of
importance is culture. Researchers comparing cultural groups for specific personality types have found
some important differences. For example, Northern European countries and the United States have
individualistic cultures that put more emphasis on individual needs and accomplishments.

In contrast, Asian, African, Central American, and South American countries are characterized more by
community-centered cultures that focus on belonging to a larger group, such as a family, or nation. In
these cultures, cooperation is considered a more important value than competitiveness, which will
necessarily affect personality development.

Q. No. 4 Explain the inter-relationship of language skills. How does the classroom
environment affect them?

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Introduction:
The significance of listening skill in effective communication has been recognized for a century. Rankin
(1926) conducted a study and found that listening skill was the most dominant skill for the mode of
human communication.

However, there were no more similar studies until the 1940s. The base of listening inquiry was primarily
laid academically in the late 1940s and the founders (James Brown, Ralph Nichols and Carl Weaver) of
the listening skill were considered as the “fathers of listening” (Vocile, 1987).

Listening skill was taken into the second and foreign language research field in the mid 20th Century
and many researchers put listening as the focus of their studies. After half a century, a professional
committee International Listening Association (ILA) was established in 1979 to develop listening skill
(Feyten, 1991). Knowing how to entail listening instruction and assessment in the school syllabi was the
main target of the pedagogy.

Steven (1987) pointed out that many studies provide a focus on either understanding listening
comprehension or listening critically – agree or disagree with oral input. Similarly, Floyed (1985)
defines listening as a process entailing hearing, attending to, understanding, evaluating and responding
to spoken messages. He further believes that listeners should be active participants in communication
process.

The nature/purpose of listening skills varies as the context of communication differs. Wolvin and
Coakley (1988) propose five different kinds of listening.

First, discriminative listening helps listeners draw a distinction between facts and opinions.

Second, comprehensive listening facilitates understanding oral input.

Third, critical listening allows listeners to analyse the incoming message before accepting and rejecting
it.

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Fourth, therapeutic listening serves as a sounding board and lack any critiques, e.g., advising.

Finally, appreciative listening contributes listeners to enjoy and receives emotional impressions. All the
varieties of listening help to demonstrate that listening is an active process rather than a passive product.
The authors define the process of listening as making sense of oral input by attending to the message.
Thus, this study adopts the second definition of listening – understand the oral input mentioned by
Wolvin and Coakley as a tool to evaluate the research assumption. The current study seeks to delve into
the correlation between listening and other skills in International English Language

Testing System.
Language development involves four fundamental and interactive abilities: listening, speaking, reading
and writing. The attempt has widely been made to teach four macro skills in second and foreign
language for more than 60 years. Berninger and Winn (2006) emphasize that external and internal
environment interacts with functional systems to extent, which the nature-nurture interaction at birth
evolves over the course of time.

The question is how much and how long the basic skill of listening gains attention in second and foreign
language learning while listening is recognized to play a significant role in primary and secondary
language acquisition (Ellis, 1994; Faerch & Kasper, 1986). In the 1970s, Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT) method was introduced to develop language learning proficiency. Some prominent
researchers (Asher, 1977; Krashen, 1992) highlighted the significance of listening in the pedagogy.
Krashen (1992) has argued that language acquisition highly depends on the decoding process of making
sense of incoming messages. Language acquisition never occurs without access to the comprehensible
language input (Rost, 1994) because in addition to visual learning, more than three quarters (80 %) of
human learning occurs through listening direction (Hunsaker, 1990). Returning to language acquisition,
Nunan (2003) suggested that listening is the gasoline that fuels the acquisition process.
Thus, the main reason experts emphasize the significance of listening in language acquisition is the
frequency of listening in language development. However, much of the relevant research incorporated
into listening as an inevitable medium to drive primary and secondary language acquisition. What is
more, none of them focuses on the relationship between listening skill and other language skills –

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speaking, reading and writing in English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The current research study aims
to fill this gap by providing empirical data obtained in a large-scale .
Learning Language

In their early years, children are learning both spoken and written language. They are developing use of
complex grammatical structures and vocabulary; communicative competence (rules for the appropriate
and effective use of language in a variety of social situations); comprehension of spoken and written
language; and ways to express themselves.

Educational programs for young children often emphasize curriculum and instruction to facilitate
language learning. With regard to spoken language, instructional programs may emphasize opportunities
to comprehend a variety of genres from directions to narratives and opportunities to experiment with
modes of expression. With regard to written language, classrooms for young children provide
opportunities to learn alphabetic symbols, grapho-phonemic relationships (letter-sound relationships),
basic sight vocabulary, and comprehension strategies; and also feature the reading of stories designed
for young children. Young children may also have opportunities to learn how to express themselves
through written language, including opportunities to form letters, words, sentences, and text structures,
and opportunities to learn how to put together a written story.

There is debate about the extent to which classrooms for young children's language learning should
provide didactic, teacher-centered instruction or student-centered instruction. Those who support a
didactic approach argue that children whose language performance is below that of their peers need
explicit instruction to catch up. These advocates argue that the home and community environments do
not provide all children with the experiences needed to be proficient and effective users of language and
that direct instruction with grammatical forms, vocabulary, and pronunciation can help certain students
catch up with their peers. A similar argument is made for the didactic instruction of written language.
Written language, it is argued, is sufficiently different from spoken language as to require explicit
instruction. Research noting the importance of phonological awareness to reading development is cited
as rationale for a parts (letters and sounds) to whole (fluent oral reading) curriculum.

The alternative argument is that children are inherently wired as language learners and that providing
them with a stimulating, rich language environment supplies them with the tools they need for further
developing their spoken and written language abilities. Although teachers may provide instruction, the

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instruction should follow the student's needs and interests rather than being prescribed in a
predetermined manner. The complexity of language processes requires that children be allowed to
engage in complete or whole-language activities rather than in isolated skill instruction activities that
distort language processes by stripping them of their complexity (and also making them harder to learn).
The learning of written language is not viewed as being much different from the learning of spoken
language, and thus learning processes similar to those used in learning spoken language are advocated
for the learning of written language.

Learning through Language

Learning in classrooms is primarily accomplished through language. Teachers lecture, ask questions,
orchestrate discussions, and assign reading and writing tasks. Students engage in academic tasks through
reading, writing, exploring the Internet, giving verbal answers to teacher questions, listening to teacher
lectures and student presentations, participating in whole-class and instructional peer group discussions,
memorizing written text and vocabulary, and so on. A major thrust of classroom research since the
1970s has focused on the following question: What forms of classroom language practice facilitate what
kinds of learning?

One classroom language practice of interest to educational researchers has been scaffolding. Scaffolding
is the process through which teachers and students interact with each other by building on each other's
immediately previous statement or utterance. For example, after making a statement, a teacher might ask
a student a question intended to help the student elaborate or probe the academic topic a bit further. The
student, building on the teacher's question or comment, produces a statement with more depth,
complexity, or insight. The teacher might then ask another question to scaffold the learning even further,
and so on. Through scaffolding, teachers may be able to help students explore and understand academic
issues beyond what they are able to do on their own. Scaffolding can occur between teachers and
students and also among students.

Another classroom language practice that has received a great deal of attention from educational
researchers has been the teacher initiation—student response—teacher feedback/evaluation sequence
(known as I-R-F). It is also referred to as the asking of known-information questions and recitation
questioning. Of concern to researchers and educators are the constraints that such a conversational
structure places on academic learning. I-R-F sequences rarely provide students with opportunities to

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provide long or in-depth responses, and the knowledge displayed is contextualized by feedback or
evaluation that subsequently comes from the teacher. I-R-F sequences rarely allow opportunities to
explore explanations or to debate issues. The teacher always generates the topics, and thus students do
not have opportunities to ask questions. Further, I-R-F sequences provide students with few
opportunities to practice the creation of extended spoken text. Research on I-R-F sequences has also
shown, however, that they may be more complex and malleable than previously recognized. For
example, instead of just providing an evaluation of the correctness of a student response, a teacher might
provide additional information and revoice a student response in a way that models for students how to
phrase the statement in the academic jargon. Such revoicings can be considered a kind of scaffolding. I-
R-F sequences may also be useful to display to the whole class what counts as the knowledge for which
they are accountable. And I-R-F sequences may also be used by teachers as a classroom management
tool, ensuring that students complete assignments and that they are paying attention.

A third classroom language practice that has received a lot of attention has been sharing time (also
known as show-and-tell). Sharing time provides an opportunity for young children to develop narrative
performance skills such as topic coherence, sequencing of events, structuring narrative events, and
adjusting a narrative to an audience. Research shows that how students construct a narrative during
sharing time may reflect narrative practices from their own families and communities. In such cases, the
narrative produced by the child may differ from the narrative models that a teacher is using to evaluate
the child's language performance, and as a result the teacher may negatively evaluate the child. The
research on sharing time and similar classroom language practices shows that there is great variation in
the narrative models, structures, and devices used across cultures and that children may experiment with
many different types of narratives. Children adopt and adapt narrative models from a broad range of
sources. In addition to suggesting the need for educators to be sensitive to cultural variation in narrative
performance and in assessment of children's language abilities, the studies of sharing time show the
close connections among education, language, and cultural variation.

Beyond questions about the effectiveness of various classroom language practices are questions about
who is able to engage in what language practices and language processes, when, and where. In other
words, what constitutes equitable classroom language practices? Research on turn-taking practices has
shown that a broad range of factors influence who gets a turn to talk during classroom conversations and
who is less likely to get a turn. These factors may include race, gender, class, native language, and

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where the student is seated, among others. Some students may get or seek few turns to talk. Those
students who do not get or seek turns to talk and who feel alienated from the classroom are sometimes
referred to as having been silenced. Although students can be silenced by the behavior of the teacher or
of other students, more often silencing involves a deeper social process whereby a student is inhibited
from bringing into the classroom his culture, language, heritage, community, personal experience, and
so on.

Learning about Language

Perhaps the most obvious classroom practice for learning about language is through the study of
grammar and spelling. As linguists point out, the grammar taught in school is a prescriptive grammar
and is not what linguists mean by grammar (they mean a descriptive grammar). For those students who
use Standard American English, prescriptive grammar is often very close to the language they speak.
But for students who speak a variation of English other than Standard English or who speak African -
American Language (which is also referred to as African-American English, Black Dialect, and Ebonics,
among others), the teaching and learning of prescriptive grammar does not necessarily map onto the
language they speak, and thus they are learning about a language different from the language they speak.

Another typical classroom practice for learning about language is the instruction of a second language.
Learning a second language can mean one of two things: the learning of a foreign language (such as the
learning of Latin, French, and Spanish in the United States) or the learning of English by those in the
United States whose native language is not English. It is often the case that the teaching of a second
language includes coverage of the grammar, vocabulary structures, and history of the language.

Beyond the teaching of prescriptive grammar and the explicit teaching of a second language, there is
very little taught about language in K–12 classrooms. Although there have been experimental and one-
off programs in K–12 schools that have taught students the practices of linguists, engaged them in
sociolinguistic studies, helped them develop language autobiographies, and sensitized students and
teachers to language variation, there exists no broad-based trend.

Q. No. 5 Differentiate between role-play and simulation. Discuss the use of each for
making teaching learning process effective at elementary level.

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Introduction:
There is a difference between simulations (where students act out real-life situations, for example the
student checks in at “the airport”, but students do play themselves) and role plays where students take on
different characters. In a role play, for example, one student may be asked to take on the role of “an
angry landowner” in a role play which is concerned with discussing the possible construction of a new
road.

Another may be asked to play the role of the “road company representative”. Role plays will thus
require more “imagination” on the part of the student to be able to get “into” the role.

Some students will find being asked to play a different person in a role play quite liberating. Some
students who are normally quite shy can open up considerably in a role play lesson. The teacher, though,
must attempt to maintain the “pretend” part of the simulations and role plays: i.e. the students ARE in an
airport and not the classroom. Teachers can aid this process by use of realia and other props. Students
who don’t enter into the ‘fantasy world’ can ruin it for everyone else.

Teacher intrusion must be kept to an absolute minimum during role plays and simulations….preferably,
zero. We use role plays to allow students to test out learnt language in as realistic a situation as possible.
They are, in a sense, a halfway house between a sterile classroom practice activity and the often
frightening reality of the real world for students.

Students can thus feel free to experiment with their language in a safe environment. Teacher intrusion is
possible if the participating students, for example, are not understanding at all what they should be
doing. Otherwise, teacher input should be left for the post-activity feedback session.

Feedback on what students have just done is vital. The role-play or simulation could be videotaped or
recorded for example, which would allow a more detailed and thus useful analysis of their
performances. Students need to see this as an important part of self evaluation. If students can learn to
appreciate the weaknesses of their performance, they will only benefit.

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A student who says “he asked me about the ticket prices and I tripped up over the numbers again – I
need to focus on that” is one who is well aware of where future performance needs to improve. The
priority in the mind of the teacher, though, should remain communicative efficacy. Long feedback
sessions of the mistaken use of the present perfect during the role play can be left for another time.

The more natural setting of a well set-up role play can also be used to introduce the unpredictability
which makes communicating in the real world so daunting for many foreign language learners. This can
be done either with the teacher playing “rogue” characters or handing out a couple of unusual role cards
to other students. Teachers should seek to mix things up if you feel the simulations and role-plays are
becoming too predictable for the class. As we said before, the safe environment offered by role plays
means a few surprises can quite safely be thrown at students to see how they cope.

The Role of the Teacher

The teacher must first of all be convinced of what she is doing. She must have the conviction that drama
can be an effective tool in language teaching. She must have clear objectives as to her role and the use of
dramatic activities in achieving her goals. She is the one who sets the mood of the class. She must
change her attitude towards her role in the classroom.

In the drama classroom she needs to be less domineering and gradually withdraw. Her main function
should be that of an initiator controlling but not directing the situation. Her rapport with the students is
important. The students should feel at ease and relaxed in the classroom. Certain warming activities can
help to achieve this. This will be discussed later.

Although the teacher is to slowly withdraw from the main scene, she still needs to be in control of all
that is going on in class. She can still do this without appearing domineering if she has clear objectives
and has prepared herself thoroughly. She must give clear instructions to the students to carry out their
various tasks. She must also have close control of time so that her plans can be carried out accordingly.
Thus do not be over ambitious in the aims of the lessons.

For lower level or weaker classes, there is a need for language preparation before the class. Lists of
words, phrases, functions and sentence types, which are relevant to the activities to be carried out, have

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to be prepared before hand. These have to be presented to the students before the activities so that they
can use them as aids/tools in their tasks.

Role of the Learner

In recent years there has been a move towards the “whole-person approach. The learner thus becomes
the centre of focus and at the centre of the language learning process. This is influenced by the
“effective humanistic approach” to language teaching. With this in mind, language learning must
therefore appeal to the language learner intellectually and emotionally. Stevick (1980), states that
language learning must appeal to the creative, intuitive aspect of personality as well as the conscious and
the rational part.

Drama activities provide opportunities for active student participation. The activities involve the
student’s whole personality and not merely his mental process. Effective learning takes place as the
student involves himself in the tasks and is motivated to use the target language. As he uses the
language, he becomes more aware of his ability to use the language and this will hopefully increase his
motivation to learn.

Conclusion:
In drama activities, the student is encouraged to discuss, evaluate and describe the activities. He has to
explain, interpret and make decisions. The student thus has little time to be idle or daydream for he is an
active participant in the lesson. Students may take some time to get used to this active role and the
teacher may have to slowly but firmly initiate this change in the role and even attitudes.

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