This is a month of examinations. At GEC,
my college, the language lab practical exams started on Monday and will go on
for about a week. The students take a written test for about an hour and are
then vivaed in small groups by an external examiner from some other engineering
college.
I had lunch at 12.30, as usual, and came
out. In the corridor, there was a carnival atmosphere. Quite a lot of students
had finished the written test and were waiting for the external examiners to
call them in for a viva. Some were lounging around what my genteel colleagues
call the restrooms at both ends of the corridor, some were rushing down
the corridor, and some were even snacking. Their joie
de vivre was infectious. In the classroom next to the ELT Centre, however, some
sincere students were still slaving away over the written test.
Would I be disturbing the examiners if I
went into the language lab? I peeked in. The examiners were quite free. I went
in, and they stood up. Both looked weathered; our language lab isn’t
air-conditioned yet.
‘Have you had lunch?’ I asked them.
‘I have completed my meals, sir,’ said
the lady.
I looked at the man. ‘I will take my
lunch after completing this section,’ he said.
Then I did something foolish. I asked a
question: ‘How do you quiz students in a lab viva? I mean, what are some of the
questions you typically ask?’
The weathered look on the man’s face
disappeared all of a sudden. ‘Students,’ he said with enthusiasm, ‘must know
the distinction between the present perfect tense and the simple past tense.’
‘Do you ask such questions in a lab
practical test?’ I said, bewildered. ‘Have you had a look at the guidelines we
have formulated for lab practical exams, internal as well as external?’
‘Grammar is very important, sir,’ he
said and went on with complete nonchalance. English-as-a-second-language
teachers’ zeal for grammar is legendary. Equally legendary is the inability of
the vast majority of this tribe to be grammatical in its own speech and
writing. After all, how this self-willed examiner was testing the students was
based on his own beliefs about the kind of communication skills in English students
of engineering need as well as his own classroom practice.
After listening to him with attention
for quite some time, I cast a furtive look at my watch. I was shocked.
‘Thanks for coming here as an examiner,’
I said holding out my hand.
But he wouldn’t let me go. ‘Soft skills
is also an important subject, sir,’ he said, pursuing a different line with
equal enthusiasm. ‘I asked different groups of your students to explain the
difference between soft skills and communication skills. They couldn’t answer
the question.’
‘Perhaps you could have tested their
procedural knowledge of soft skills rather than their declarative or propositional
knowledge,’ I said. ‘I’m sure their personality traits and communication
abilities are fairly good.’
But he held forth with dogged
determination on the theoretical aspects of soft skills. I cast another
agonized look at my watch and thanked him, this time in a firm tone of voice.
Now the woman caught my eye – the examiner who had “completed” her “meals.” She
was regarding her lecturing counterpart with admiration: he was after all
confirming her own beliefs.
It was by no means a new experience. Teacher
professional development programmes are a dime a dozen. Teachers attend quite a
lot of them, but when they come out of them, they do so with their beliefs and practices remaining “unscathed.”
I have explored this phenomenon – the phenomenon of the mismatch between
teachers’ received knowledge and their classroom practices – both in scholarly
papers and in feature articles. With these thoughts, I came out of the language
lab.
The sun was at its blazing best, and the
air simmered in the mid-day heat. I walked across the hot, noisy corridor and moved
into the ELT Centre closing the door behind me. I felt safe again within the
cool and quiet confines of the Centre. But I knew that it was a deceptive sense
of safety.
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