CHAPTER:02 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF TEACHING ENGLISH

CHAPTER:02

Aims and Objectives of Teaching English

This Chapter Deals with

Introduction

Need and Importance of Aims

Meaning of Objectives

Characteristics of Good Objectives

Differences between Aims and Objectives

Aims of Teaching English

Aims and objectives of teaching English at different level

Aims of teaching English at junior level (class-VI to class-VIII)

Aims of teaching English at junior level (class-IX to class-XII)

Stating objectives in Behavioural Terms

Blooms Taxonomy of Teaching Learning Objectives

§ Cognitive Domain (Knowledge)

§ Affective Domain (Feelings)

§ Psychomotor Domain (Doing)

Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives in Behavioural Terms

Taxonomy of Affective Objectives in Behavioural Terms

Taxonomy of Psychomotor Objectives in Behavioural Terms

Robert Mager’s Approach (1962)

Robert Miller’s Approach (1962)

RCEM Approach (1972)

                                                                            Conclusion

Introduction:  If there is no aim, there is no way. An aim is a foresight in advance at the end of possible termination of the activity. Clarity of aims is a paramount importance. In teaching learning process the aims and objectives will determine the curriculum, text books, methods, techniques and evaluation system. English is a gateway to the world culture and also it consider as a commercial language. It is important for an English teacher to know what he wants to achieve by teaching English. The knowledge of aims and objectives of teaching English will enable a teacher to decide his methods and techniques of teaching English. Teaching of English becomes more effective and systematic only when the teacher is fully aware of its aims and objectives. Without the aims and objectives the teacher is like a sailor who does not his goal or destination and the child is like a rudderless vessel which will be drifted along somewhere ashore. Therefore the aims and objectives should be clear and aware by the teacher and pupil for effectiveness of teaching learning process.

Need and Importance of Aims: An aim is the director who gives direction to the teaching learning process. Without aims, the work would be something like a riding a stallion without reins. In the field of education, aims are helpful in setting of the school curriculum. Aims therefore are of vital importance because all teaching learning has to be in accordance with these aims. Aims are importance due to the following reasons -  

● It gives direction to the process of teaching and learning.

• It motivates the teachers as well as the students.

● It helpful in evaluating the power of education

● It helpful in school administration.

● It helpful in achieving national and international goals.

● It helpful in avoiding wastage in the field of education

Meaning of Objectives: Objectives are the means to achieve the aims. Objectives are the steps towards the attainment of aims. The scope of objectives is narrow than the aims. According to B.S. BLOOM, “an objective is the desired goal or outcome at which instruction is aimed”

Characteristics of Good Objectives

● Objectives should be specific and precise.

● It should be attainable.

● It should be based on psychological principles.

● It should lead to the development of the pupils.

● It should be helpful in acquiring democratic aims.

● it should modify the behavior of the students.

● A good objective is tangible in ordinary circumstances.

● It should be in terms of change expected in pupils and not as the duty o the teachers.

● Each student should have only one objective in it.

● It should be useful.

Differences between Aims and Objectives

Aims	Objectives
● It expresses the general and broad Purpose of education. ● The scope of aim is wider. ● It contains long term goals. ● Aims are general in nature. ● Aims constitute educational Planning. ● Aims have long term value. ● Aims are difficult to measure. ● There is no time limit to achieve Aims.	● It expresses the specific purpose Of curriculum. ● The scope of objectives is narrow. ● It contains short term goals. ● Objectives are specifics and Particular in nature. ● Objectives constitute instructional And teaching planning. ● Objectives have immediate value. ● Objectives are easily measured. ● there is time limit to achieve Objectives.

Aims of Teaching English: Delineation of aims and objectives is necessary to make process successful or to get desired results. The aim of teaching English is to enable the learner to communicate effectively using it as a medium of communication. The aims of teaching English may be categorized into two types, which are discussed below - :

General Aims: This is a long term aims which is spread out the period of learning in a school. The general aims of teaching English is also further divided into three categorized, which are (I) Semantic, (II) Phonetic and (III) Graphic. The semantic aspect of general aims relates to understanding meaning of the words and their relationship in a sentence. It deals with comprehension. The word meaning is basic to language learning, (II) The phonetic aims deals with speech sounds, spelling, pronunciation etc. The words learnt must be express in a right manner, (III) Graphic aspects deals with the graphical representation of the languages, which deals with the writing form of a language. According to Thompson and Wyatt, there are four aims of teaching English, which a student should have achieved by the time of complete their school education.

Overall, the general aim of English language is the development of four skills i.e. -: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Understanding. Where understanding is the cognitive objectives and the psychomotor objectives is related to skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening.

To understand spoken English

Competency to be developed - :

  ● To understand the meaning of word/ phrases/ sentences in

      Contexts

  ● To understand elementary intonation patterns.

  ● To understand simple statements, questions and patterns.

  ● To understand simple narration and descriptions.

Content Specification -: This aim can be achieved if we give opportunities to our students for conversations in the classroom, dialogues, stories, description etc and also provide opportunities to listen English Radio, gramophones and tape recorder etc

The Ability to speak English

Competency to be developed -:

 ● To produce English speech sounds correctly.

 ● Use appropriate word stress, sentence stress and elementary

    Intonation patterns.

  ● Select a language appropriate to the context.

Content specification-: This aim can be fulfilled by arranging conventional greetings, answer to questions, dialogues, role plays, reading aloud of reader passages etc.

The ability to read and understand written language

Competency to be developed -:

  ● To read passage correctly.

  ● Develop desirable silent reading habits.

  ● Grasp the meaning of words and sentences from the contexts.

  ● Locate central ideas of the passage.

  ● Able to adopt English as the medium of instruction

  ● Able to comprehend material published in English.

Content specification-: To fulfill this aim the teacher should have to arrange English readers, supplementary readers and other material to read with comprehension.

The ability to write English

Competency to be developed -:

  ● Ability to form letters and words

  ● Ability to select right words and construct sentence

  ● Ability to write passage in correct language with grammatically

  ● Ability to write clearly and neatly with legible speed

  ● Ability to use the capital letters and marks of punctuation

Content Specification -: Writing is no way less than speaking English. It works three times more than reading. So for the development of writing skill a teacher has to provide opportunities for the students to write simple letters, application, description, accounts of events, short paragraphs, short pieces etc.

Specific Aims of teaching English: These are short term aims. They are definite and precise. The specific aims of English are also called as objectives. It helps the teacher to plan the lesson before entering into the classroom. This objective is also known as teaching learning objectives where the general aim is considered as educational objectives. The educational objectives may be achieved by organizing teaching from primary to university level. For instance, if the general aim is teaching of grammar, the teacher should first specify the topic i.e. teaching of tenses. He should further delimit the topic by selecting “Simple present Tense”. Thus specific aim helps both the teacher and the students to be clear –cut, precise and well planned in their course of action. Also the general aims find the realization through specific aims.

Aims and objectives of teaching English at different level: It is not a cup of milk that can be easily drunk at a time. So, the idea of competences in English language should not be expected right from the beginning as it is a foreign language for the Indians. A mother tongue is taught not to be caught. The competency takes place gradually. Therefore the aims and objectives of teaching English is differ at Junior and senior level.

Aims of teaching English at junior level (class-VI to class-VIII) 

v To understand spoken English.

v To acquire the ability to read the material in English.

v To acquire vocabulary sufficient to help the student in use of English.

v To be able to make simple statement through English.

v To respond short conversational questions.

v Write English with legible and coherently.

v Speak with acceptable pronunciation.

v To be able to frame short simple sentences to express himself.

v Ability to respond in reaction to hearing.

v Ability to draw the meaning from what is heard.

v Ability to locate the main idea in the passage.

v Ability to infer the mood of the writer i.e. humorous, sarcastic, sad and joyous.

v Ability to read silently without murmuring or moving lips.

  Aims of teaching English at junior level (class-IX to class-XII)

v To be able to speak English fluently and accurately.

v To be able to think in English.

v To be able to read with understanding.

v To be able to compose freely and independently in speech and writing.

v To acquire a vocabulary of 3000 words.

v To be able to use reference material like encyclopedia, dictionary etc.

v Acquire the ability to understand the native speakers and also respond to them.

First of all the teacher should define clearly the aims and objectives of teaching English. The teacher should find out in advance, the teaching points in respect of the structures, vocabulary and so on, which he has to teach. He should plan his teaching methodically to realize the aims and objectives of teaching. The scientific techniques of teaching may be followed as far as possible. He should follow the effective programme of evaluation at every step by which he can get pleasure and satisfaction from his teaching. No doubt fixing up the appropriate objectives is half way through the game. It guarantees good on the part of the learner.

Stating objectives in Behavioural Terms:  The teaching learning process deals with transfer of learning and training. We educate the learner to modify the behavior of the learner for better living and adjustment. There are two type of objectives-: the educational objectives and another one is teaching learning objectives. The educational objective is a desired change in behavior of the pupil. The main purpose of educational objectives is to provide a basic platform for an educational system but the educational objectives are realized through instructional objectives or teaching learning objectives. The instructional objective is narrow and specific, which is concern with the class-room teaching learning process. The instructional objectives are the learning outcomes. These objectives are also called behavioral objectives because teacher wants to get behavioral change in the learner through teaching. The objectives follow a path in order to achieve the educational goals or aims. We have to achieve the educational objectives and the educational objectives may be achieved by the realization of the instructional objectives.

 

All the above objectives can be achieved only if a teacher has to clear about the following four questions-:

Ø  To whom he is going to teach?

Ø Why he is going to teach?

Ø Which method will be followed in teaching?

Ø  How will he evaluate the achievement of the students?

Blooms Taxonomy of Teaching Learning Objectives: It is not a new concept in the field of education.    Drucker (1954), B.S.Bloom (1956), Robert Mager (1962), Robert Miller (1962) and NCERT (RCEM), they all developed various approaches for writing objectives in behavioral terms. Professor Benjamin S. Bloom, Chicago University (USA) presents a system of classification of objectives. These objectives are related with all the three aspects of an individual’s behaviour-: (I) Cognitive (Knowledge aspect) (II) Affective (Feeling aspect) (III) Psychomotor (Doing aspect). Knowledge is the basic for understanding, understanding leads to application and application develop skills.

 

1.     Cognitive Domain (Knowledge)

The cognitive objectives are related to head only. It stress that the pupil should acquire more and more knowledge. Here the teacher is interested in the development of intellectual abilities and skills. For the development of the intellectual abilities and skills, BLOOM has suggested that there are six stages of cognitive domain. These are -: (I) Knowledge (II) Comprehension (III) Application (IV) Analysis (V) Synthesis and (VI) Evaluation.                                                                      

(i)Knowledge Objectives: The knowledge objectives are concerned with the development of recall and recognition abilities of the pupils with the help of terms, facts, information and theories. So, the teacher has to plans the situation for the learner accordingly. It includes three type of content.

v  Knowledge of specifics i.e. facts and terminology.

v  Knowledge of ways and means.

v  Knowledge of principles, theories, and generalization.

(ii)Comprehension Objectives: Comprehension means understanding of new knowledge to the pupils. The pupils who have comprehension of contents i.e. their recall and recognition abilities certain contents have been developed, they can carry on the activities of the followings -:

v  Translation of specifies: facts, principles and theories.

v  Interpretation of the same specifics and...

v  Extrapolation of the above content.

                (iii) Application Objectives: Without Application the    knowledge and comprehension is worthless. So after knowledge and comprehension, application is followed. This category includes the use of abstraction in particular and concrete situations. The abstraction may be in form of general ideas, rules, procedures or generalized methods. The facts, principles, ideas, rules and theories are must applied. This has also three levels-:

v  Make generalization of facts, principles and theories.

v  Diagnose the weakness of these contents.

v  Apply these contents.

(iv) Analysis Objectives: After knowledge, comprehension and application, analysis is followed. This level is related to the breaking of whole into parts and distinguishes elements, relationships and organizational principles. It refers to an understanding of a higher level. It includes division of contents into its elements and these are mutually related. It has three levels-:

v  Analysis of elements.

v  Analysis of relationship.

v  Analysis of organized principles.

(v)Synthesis Objectives: Synthesis is considered as the creative objective. This has pre-requisite of the earlier four categories. It is the ability to put parts together to form the whole. This has also three levels-:

v  Unique communication by arranging different elements.

v  Suggest new plan by combining all elements.

v  Establish an abstract relationship among different elements.

(VI) Evaluation Objectives: Evaluation is the highest level of the cognitive domain. All the earlier levels are pre-requisites of this category. It includes the ability to judge the value of the material for a given purpose. It is a continuous process. In evaluation, after making critical decisions regarding the laws of contents, Principles, and facts. It has two sub-divisions-:

v  The internal judgment of the material and methods.

v  The external judgment of the material and methods.

2.     Affective Domain (Feelings)

Affective objectives are related to heart only which stress with the interest, Emotions, mental tendencies and values of the pupils. Here the teacher is interested in the development of interest, emotions, mental tendencies and sentiments of the individual. The development of such affective domain is not an easy task because these are individual conditions. It is not an easy task to understand the nature of the child and its elements. The interests, sentiments and mental tendencies are taken as the criteria for our personality. Therefore these occupies important role in the field of education. It is the supreme duty of the teacher to develop the affective domains of the pupils by affective objectives. B.S.Bloom, Kruth Wehl, and Masia (1964) have divided the affective objectives into five parts, which are discussed in the followings.

(I) Receiving or Attending: Receiving means the willingness and    interest of the pupils to receive or to attend to particular stimuli. It increases the sensitivity of the students towards values and attitudes. It involves the following three levels-:

v  Awareness of the stimuli / phenomena.

v  Willingness to receive the stimuli / phenomena.

v  Control the attention.

(ii) Responding: At this level the students show active participation and reaction to the stimuli under the influence of motivation. Once the learner receives a particular ideas or events, he must be made to respond to it actively. In this level the students show their behavior related to attention and curiosity. It involves the following three levels-:

v  Obedience to response.

v  Willingness to response.

v  Satisfaction in responding.

(iii)Valuing: valuing means those values to which the pupil give special importance in their life. Valuing is the process of internalization in which the individual personalizes the worth of certain beliefs, objects, and attitudes. It enables the pupils to show the sentiments and stable feelings in their behavior with the change in the circumstances. It involves the following three levels-:

v  Acceptance of a value.

v  Preference of a value.

v  Commitment of value.

     (IV) Organization: In a situation, in which there is more than one value is appropriate, the pupils organize these received values in an order or sequence. Such a system is gradually subject to change as new values are incorporated by students from time to time. The above three levels are the pre-requisites to this level. Ultimately this level of objectives leads the learner to form a set value structure of philosophy of life. It has three levels-:  

v  Organization of values in a system.

v  Determination of interrelationship among them.

v  Establishment of the dominant value.

      (V) Characterization: This is the highest level of objectives and the earlier four levels are the pre-requisites of this level. In this level the values have already takes place in the individual’s values. It is concerned with the knowing the life style of a person. At this level the learner is able to imbibe all the essential affective behaviour i.e. attitude, interest, values, value patterns and permanent set of the value structure. It has two levels-:     

v  Generalized set.

v  Characterization.

1.     Psychomotor Domain (Doing)

The psychomotor domain is related to hand which is concerned with the training of the pupils for physical activities and the development of the skills. As we have already mentioned that the teaching learning process is deals with the transfer of learning. In this level the learning is transfer to the real situation. As per example-: Whenever we are teaching to a child that A for Apple, Apple is a fruit etc, this knowledge a child acquired in cognitive domain. Then the child develop his feelings towards the object that the apple is good for health, it is sweet to eat etc, this feeling comes in affective domain. The above two are worthless unless a child do it in practically. As he acquired knowledge and develops his feelings towards the objects, obviously he comes to eat an apple, which is considered technically in the terms of psychomotor domain. So for the development of the psychomotor domain, education should be managed properly by the teacher. The classification of psychomotor objectives was first produced by E.J Simpson in 1966 and later modified by Harrow in 1972; they divided the psychomotor objectives into the following five levels-: (I) Perception (II) Set (III) Guided response (IV) Mechanism (V) Complex overt responses. But the main levels of psychomotor domains are-:

v  Imitation.

v  Manipulation.

v  Precision.

v  Articulation.

v  Naturalization.

v  Habit formation.

(I) Perception: Perception is the process which is concerned with the activities related to sense organs. In simple word, this is a mental process which includes a chain of tasks and which can be termed as real experience. In other way we can say that the word perception is assigning some object or an event after looking them is known as perception. It has the following two levels-:  

v   Descriptive level.

v   Prescriptive level.

 (II) SET: Set means initial adjustment which occurs for some specific activities and experiences. It seeks the cooperation of all the three aspects – mental, physical and emotional. The adjustments of all the three levels are the pre-requisite of specific type of set. It has three levels-:

v  Mental level.

v  Physical Level.

v  Emotional Level.

(III) Guided Responses: A Guided response is the initial stage of developing a practical skill. It is the external behavior of a person under the guidance of another person. Abilities with more complex skills are stressed in the guided response.  

(iv) Mechanism: Mechanism is the level at which self confidence and skills for doing some task gets developed in the pupils. The collection of possible responses and the selection of the correct responses are done in this level of mechanism. It is the condition which helps the pupils in responding properly and correctly.

(v) Complex over response: It is the highest level of psychomotor domain. At this level the pupil becomes more efficient and he acquires many skills by which he is able to accomplish the most complex task with minimum energy and time.

Robert Mager’s Approach (1962): Robert Mager (1962) had used the taxonomy of cognitive domain of Prof. B. S. Bloom. In his approach he emphasizes on action verbs rather than mental processes, he also emphasized more on cognitive and affective objectives. According to him the cognitive objectives can be realized by programmed instruction. Robert Mager is of the view that the objectives should be written in the following ways -:

Ø  Identify the terminal behaviour and name it.

Ø  Importance conditions under which the behaviour will be expected to occur be described.

Ø   To specify the criteria of accepted performance with which the learner terminal behaviour will be compared,

Limitations of Robert Mager’s Approach : Robert mager’s approach is not appropriate method for writing the objectives in behavioural terms. It has the following limitations -:

Ø  It gives main emphasis on action verbs rather than mental process that involves in performing the actions.

Ø  Mager is a behaviorist; therefore he explains learning in terms of (S-R), where all human learning cannot be explained by (S-R) learning.

Ø  This method can be used for writing the lower level teaching objectives. Higher level teaching objectives cannot be written clearly.

Ø  The list of action verbs indicates that there is over lapping of action verbs in different categories. Thus, it may create confusion in the minds of the teachers to use the appropriate action verb for specifying objectives.

Ø  The psychomotor objectives are not written in mager’s approach. It is an application only for cognitive and affective objectives.

Ø  Mager’s approach can be effectively used in writing teaching objectives in behavioural terms because teaching objectives are of three types -: Knowledge, skills, attitude and interest. It can be effectively used in the development of programmed instructions.

Ø  There are many common action verbs in the list of both categories.  

Robert Miller’s Approach (1962): Robert Miller’s approach originated from military science. This approach is used for writing psychomotor objectives in behavioural terms. The following steps are involved for writing behavioural objectives-:

Ø  Produce an indicator on which the activity appears.

Ø  This in turn calls for response.

Ø  The main objective is activated.

Ø  The activation is to be made.

Ø  The indication should be such that it ensures feedback.

                               

Robert Miller also gave a list of associated action verbs of psychomotor domain

PSYCHOMOTOR OBJECTIVES	ASSOCIATED ACTION VERBS
1-Reflex movement	● Lengthen, loosen, stop, and relax etc.
2-Before fundamental movements	● Catch, jump, hold, walk, and run etc.
3-Physical abilities	● Begin, conduct, increase, start etc.
4-Perceptual abilities	● Seeing, smelling, hearing, writing etc.
5-Skilled movements	● Dance, swim, play, drive, knit etc.
6-Non discussion communication	● Pose, sit, smile etc.

RCEM Approach (1972): Regional College of Education, Mysore has developed an approach for writing objectives in behavioural terms. It is applicable for cognitive, affective and psychomotor objectives. There are four objectives which is used in this approach are –: (I) Knowledge (II) Understanding (III) Application and (IV) Creativity. These four categories involve seventeen mental processes or abilities which are mentioned below-:

OBJECTIVES	MENTAL PROCESS OR ABILITIES
1-Knowledge	Recall, Recognition
2-Understanding	Seeing relationship, cite example, discriminate, classify, interpret, verify, and generalize.
3-Application	Reason out, formulate hypothesis, Establish hypothesis, infer and predict.
4-Creativity	Analysis, Synthesize, and Evaluate.

  

Limitations RCEM Approach: The following are the limitations of RCEM approach-:

Ø  All the behavioral objectives can only be written in seventeen mental abilities where there are 120 mental abilities according to Guilford.

Ø  These seventeen mental processes are employed in writing the behavioral objectives in all the three domains. Hence it is difficult to differentiate among cognitive, affective and psychomotor objectives.

Ø  It is generally very difficult to select appropriate mental process for a content element.

Ø  There are seven mental processes for understanding for understanding two for knowledge, five for application, and three for creativity. In this way there is no proper balance in mental abilities assigned to different categories.

Ø  There are three mental abilities in creativity objective where as Torrence and others have given five types of activities.

Advantages of Behavioural Objectives

Ø  Specification of objectives.

Ø  Selection of items for preparing a test.

Ø  Teaching can be related to learning.

Ø  Integration between learning experiences and change of behaviour.

Ø  Selection of appropriate teaching strategies, tactics and teaching aids.

Obstacles in the realization of Behavioural Objectives: There are some of the obstacles in the way of achieving behavioural objectives, which are given below-:

Ø  Administration and financial problems of the school.

Ø  Lack of good English teacher.

Ø  Lack of teaching aptitude of English teachers.

Ø  Workload on teachers is yet another cause.

Ø  Over crowded classes.

Ø  Ineffective teaching method.

Ø  Lack of motivation among students to learn English.

Ø  Poor educational status of the family members.

Conclusion: All the objectives should be regarded as paramount and equal importance should be given to each because it helps the teacher in selecting the strategies of teaching learning process.  To achieve these objectives, the role of English teacher is crucial. There should be standard text books in English and the ratio of teacher and student should be manageable.

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CHAPTER: 03 TEACHING OF PROSE