New strategies rolled out in English medium government schools

To improve students' reading skills besides building their vocabulary, the School Education department has instructed the government schools to adopt multilingual and translingual practices.

Hyderabad: From code switching, code mixing, to multilingual and translingual practices, new strategies have been rolled out for effective transaction in English medium in the government and local schools in the State. The classroom transaction includes teaching-learning, content, assessment etc.

To improve students’ reading skills besides building their vocabulary, the School Education department has instructed the government schools to adopt multilingual and translingual practices.

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Now on, concepts particularly in non-language subjects will be introduced using a suitable activity, experiment or game. For this, necessary instructions for the activity will be given in Telugu/Urdu, while the key terminology will be used in English for students till Class VII.

As class VII students move to Class VIII and IX, a judicious use of English will be adopted by schools and by the time students reach Class X, the focus will be on using extensive English in the classroom transaction.

The School Education department has come up with strategies to help students and teachers overcome challenges faced by them in the English medium and issued guidelines to be followed by schools. The State government had introduced English as the medium of instruction in all government schools from Classes I to VIII from the academic year 2022-23. It was also decided to add one class every year to cover all classes till Class X by the academic year 2024-25.

For effective learning of English, code switching – switching between two different languages (known language – Telugu/Urdu and target language – English) will be encouraged among students while speaking or expressing their ideas. This, according to officials, will aid in understanding the idea expressed in English by connecting it to the sentence spoken in the known language (Telugu/Urdu).

Coding mixing, using words of two different languages in the same sentence or idea, is another strategy that schools have been advised to introduce. This method will help students in building their English vocabulary.

Apart from pairing up with colleagues/friends to practice English speaking skills, teachers have been asked to utilize online and offline resources such as videos and online articles, blogs etc.