An Intensive Course in Gujarati

The Central Institute of Indian Languages was set up on the 17th July, 1969 with a view to assisting and co-ordinating the development of Indian languages. The Institute was charged with the responsibility of languages. The Institute was charged with the responsibility of serving as a nucleus to bring together all the research arid literary output from the various linguistic streams to a common head and narrowing the gap between basic research and developmental research in the fields of languages and linguistics in India.

The Institute and its five regional Language Centres are thus engaged in research and teaching, which lead to the publication of a wide ranging variety of materials. Preparation of materials designed for teaching learning at different levels and suited to specific needs is one of the major areas of interest of the Institute. Basic research relating to the acquisition of language and study of language in its manifold psycho-social relations constitute another broad range of its interest. The publications will include materials produced by the members and its Regional Language Centres and associated scholars from universities and institutions, both Indian and foreign.

The Central Institute of Indian Languages has initiated an Intensive Course Series in Major Indian languages to provide suitable and comprehensive material for learning and teaching the language concerned for Indians. In a language teaching situation, the teacher is expected to combine the roles of a psycho linguist, socio-linguist, linguist, language pedagogue, a creator of materials, a literary critic and a testing and evaluation expert. Most of his competences are naturally reflected in the materials, which simultaneously are graded from simple to complex, known to the unknown and contrived to the natural. This is a very difficult task. After research and experimentation we have come out with more Questions than answers at each stage of the material. For example, how basic is basic? What is grading? In what way can linguistic and cultural matter be graded? Is question, with which most learning begins, simpler than statement? How does one move from a purely language based competence to creating literary sensibilities? How does one build into the material conceptual prose? How are lessons to the presented? Should the translated discourse structure be made to look similar to the original discourse structure? Questions such as these have been answered differently by different teachers and researchers. This search is a continuing phenomenon. Therefore these materials represent our unfinished education in this area.

The Format for the basic course is the result of a concensus arrived at by the lecturers and principals of the five regional Language Centres of the Institute engaged in the teaching of major Indian languages. This is the products of almost eight years of teaching and research. This format is flexible and has left much scope for individual authors to innovate. If these courses help the desirous to learn and stimulate those interested in applied linguistics, with special reference to the teaching of Indian languages as second/foreign languages, then the Institute would feel rewarded.

I congratulate the teachers, the trainees, the supervisors and the press and publication people who have brought out the publication in a creditable manner.

The Western Regional Centres of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore. This Centre is engaged in imparting training in Gujarati, Marathi and Sindhi to secondary school teachers, with a view to implementing the three language formula and providing more language choice to young secondary school students.

The training period for teaching a second language is of ten months duration. This period, for convenience, has been divided into three stages, namely, basic intermediate and advanced. The basic stage of 14 week duration has about 450 clock hours of instruction with primary emphasis on the spoken language. During this stage the trainees are expected to learn to read, write, understand, converse and narrate given topics in the language that they are learning. The teaching materials used for the basic stage are mainly, the Intensive Course (text book), the Phonetic Reader, the Script Book, the semantically classified Recall Vocabulary and several other reading and writing materials, specially prepared by experienced linguists cum language teachers at Regional Language Centres.

The Intensive Course in Gujarati consists of instructional material prepared for those secondary school teachers who are being trained in Gujarati at Western Regional Language Centre. However, this book can be profitably used as a text book for teaching Gujarati in any second language teaching course. it can also be used by Gujarati mother tongue teachers as a reference Language book. The main objectives of the Intensive Course in Gujarati are:

The learner should be able to form sentences orally from given patterns and lexical items;

The learner should converse with the teacher and with the fellow-learners orally on specified topics under controlled situations;

The learner should be able to narrate specified events and topics orally as well as in writing and

It was in 1970-71 that the first draft of the basic course in Gujarati was prepared. After an year's trial in the classroom and with the academic adviser, western Regional Language Centre the course was revised during the year 1972. Drills, exercises and grammatical notes were added to the body of the lessons. The teaching material included in this second draft was graded from simple to complex patterns of Gujarati language. The training in programmed learning and in applied linguistics the writer of this book had at the National Centre of Educational Research and training (N.C.E.R. & T) Delhi and at the Deccan College, Poona respectively, proved to be quite useful in selection, gradation and presentation of the teaching materials. After receiving a format from Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore for preparing the basic course, the third and the final draft was prepared under the guidance of Dr. M. S. Thirumali, professor-cum-Deputy Director. C.I.I.L, Mysore during 1974-76. This draft was tried out successively for three years in the classrooms at W.R.L.C. Based on the experiences, certain modifications were made in the contents of the draft and gradation adopted in order to make it simpler.

The present text – book consists of 12 units, designed to cover a group of related grammatical patterns of a major grammatical structure. These grammatical patterns are further divided into several teaching items, at the end of each unit a review lesson and a test are provided for assessing the progress of the learners. The units are divided into a told of 68 lessons. These lessons consist of five parts, namely body of the lesson, drills, exercises, notes and vocabulary. Each lesson concentrates on one or two teaching items, i.e. one or two structural patterns. These patterns are reinforced in subsequent lessons.

The language variety used in this book is the standard colloquial Gujarati spoken in the area between Ahmedabad and Vadodara in Gujarat State.

Body of the lesson

To reduces the dullness in presenting graded patterns graded patterns, the body of the lesson is presented in the form of meaningful dialogues, narrations, stories or letters. Free translation in English is provided against each Gujarati sentence to enable easy comprehension of the sentence in particular and the situation in general.

Drills

The carefully graded drills are especially prepared for oral practice through which a learner gets practice to achieve mastery over the basic grammatical patterns of Gujarati. The types of drills included in this book are: repetition drill, substitution drill (simple and multiple), addition drill, build up drill (expansion), response (question-answer) drill, and completion drill. These drills are aimed at accurate speedy performance of the learners.

Exercises

The exercises in this book are intimately connected with the patterns introduced in each lesson. They are carefully organised to develop the learning strategies. They also help to find out the learner's understanding of the basic patterns of Gujarati. Instruction to perform exercises are given in Gujarati as well as in English. In the beginning the beginner may not follow these instructions in Gujarati. The teacher in the classroom can use these instructions and utter them in Gujarati to familiarise the students with Gujarati.

Notes

Notes cover grammatical as well as relevant cultural information introduced in the lessons. The grammatical explanations given in the present book are intended to cater to cater to the needs of a teacher to teach a lesson successfully and help the students in understanding the structures. The drills, exercises and notes focus on specific patterns which are introduced in each lesson. In case the grammatical explanation of a particular structure is spread over more than one lesson the student is guided to refer back for continuity.

Vocabulary

The vocabulary items of each lesson are listed separately according to the order of occurrence in the body of the lesson. This in-ding only the items that occur for the first time; only the relevant English equivalent is given against each word item. However the teacher has the liberty of bringing the various uses and shades of meaning of a vocabulary item whenever necessary.

For the convenience of the learner, the Gujarati text and the instructions of the first ten lessons and given in Devanagari transcription as well. This enables the learner to read basic patterns right from the beginning of the course. The Gujarati script is expected to be taught simultaneously. As the learners aquire mastery over Gujarati script, they are expected to switch over from Devanagari to Gujarati script. The Devanagari Transcription helps them to learn the pronunciation.

Language learning is a complex activity. Its success is largely determined by the method, medium material and the motivation of the learners. Hence the major success of a course depends on the co-ordination between the material producer and the teacher who handles the class. To get the expected results of this book the teachers should take note of the following:

The teacher should follow a sequence of four basic steps, namely, presentation, explanation, repetition and transfer of teaching items. He/She should expose the students to the material in a systematic and consistent manner, taking one step at a time and concentrating as far possible on one structure at a time.

With regard to the teaching method to be adopted, it should be noted that only flexible and many sided procedures and techniques can procedures into a method is highly appreciated. In this manner, the teacher's approach should be eclectic' and open to all suggestions from different methods. Wherever possible he can take advantage of the contrastive method also, provided he/she has a full mastery over learner's mother tongue.

The script should be taught simultaneously with patterns, and Devanagari Script may be used for reading until the learner masters the Gujarati script.

Before presenting a new lesson, the teacher should prepare the student for understanding the patterns to be introduced by revising the patterns already introduced.

The teacher should always discourage the learner from the habit of over-relying on translation for comprehension. Make the learner think in the second language as early as possible. In the classroom make the minimum use of a language other than the language being taught.

When new words are introduced special attention should be paid to their correct pronunciation and grammatical category.

Teaching of the basic structural principles of the grammar is necessary for the learners. But they need not be compelled to memorise the Grammatical rules.

If possible the teacher should use audio – visual aid like picture postcards, wall pictures, flannel board and cut outs, tapes and still memorise the grammatical rules.

Each lesson has the potential for preparing supplementary materials. Therefore, the teacher may prepare the same as and when necessary taking into consideration the need and the time factor.

Being the first effort of its type in teaching Gujarati as a second language the writer does not claim the present work completely free from drawbacks and hopes for fruitful suggestions to improve the same.