[ELTWeekly Volume 6, Issue 27 | November 10, 2014 | ISSN 0975-3036]
This article is submitted by Dr. Krati Sharma, JECRC UDML College of Engg. & Technology, Jaipur (Rajasthan).
Introduction
Teaching English to ESL learner is always a challenge. Teaching a grammar item needs much learning, training, understanding and above all an innovative pedagogy. In the present paper an attempt has been made to teach Noun (naming words) to ESL learners with the pedagogy of task based teaching. For non-native English speakers understanding of this item is very important and crucial as it comes first in the ladder of parts of speech. The emphasis here is to make learners usage centric. The problem is they would know the usage and discourse of this grammar item. The pedagogy of teaching is divided into stages. Each stage has a correlation with the other stage. In the final stage the learner will not only identity the noun but it become a part of its lexical discourse.
Keywords: ESL Learners, Task based teaching, Label, Discourse
Teaching is an implicit exercise. In the present paper discusses a teaching pedagogy of Noun. Noun is a grammar item. It is one of the basic that has been assumed by the facilitator that ESL learner should be friendly with.
The pedagogy has been divided into stages.
The first stage is to introduce that to the item Noun Facilitator discusses the term Noun that is a naming word or it is name of a person place or a thing. Its example is
- I am Mohan
- I live in Jaipur
- I am working on my project.
Here the underline words are Noun. Some other example can be given beside this.
In the second stage it is the involving the ESL Learners into this process of understanding grammar in an interesting way.
Facilitator asks the learners to look around in the room and make a list of noun in their notebooks. Learners will make a list of twenty to twenty five words that includes for i.e book , boy, girl, pen paper, pencil, cellophane ,room, blackboard, duster and many other . In this manner a group of words have been collected by the learners Now facilitator one by one write them on the blackboard by asking learners so everyone has a common list of Noun.
In the third stage facilitator will teach learners the types of Noun namely :
Proper , common, collective, material and abstract with suitable example. Proper noun stands for name of the person or place. Like Ram and Jaipur. Boys trees and girls are example of Common Noun. Herd army bunch are examples of collective noun. Gold , silver, rubber are example of material noun. Hate , jealous are illustration of abstract noun.
In this stage facilitator ask the learners to now take out there from common list and table which they have according the Types of Noun described to them.
Here the learners are involved in this process to understand the different categories of noun.
They will classify the words and put them in the given category.
In the fourth stage a sample of list will be noted down on the black board like.
| Proper | Common | Collective | Material | Abstract |
| Mohan | Boy | Student | Iron | Faith |
| Jaipur | Girl | Fleet | Steel | Proud |
| Kukas | Pen | Herd | Wood | Greed |
| Reena | Copy | cluster | gold | Jealous |
Finally a list is prepared and everyone can now understand the classification of noun.
In the fifth and final stage a task of discourse analysis of this grammar item is to be done. The facilitator will divide the students in pairs. Facilitator will assign a task to the learners. The pairs have to make a discourse in four to five lines using the words which are given in the list of classified noun.
Some samples are given below:
A : Hello ,What is your Name?
B: Hi my name is Neena Prashar.
A: Is it your first day in college?
B: Yeah, it’s my first day.
A: Have a good day.
B: Thanks.
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A; Have you attended last lecture?
B: Yes it was very interesting lectured by Mr. Sharma.
A; I need some notes of it. Can you give me your notebook?
B: It is in my bag take it from it.
David Nunan says, “in order to create learning opportunities in the classroom, we must transform these real world tasks into pedagogical task” (19).
So in this way the usage of noun is clear to the Learners where they are not restricted to understand noun but also learn how to use them in conversation a part of communication.
In this process of learning the aim is the clarity in their conceptual approach secondly they should know the usage of the noun. This is the basic and the most important aspect of language learning and grammar. Once the learners acquire clarity on this they will be able to use them correctly.
This is a process of collaborative learning where both learners and facilitators are involved and equally responsible for the learning. The involvement of the learners will give momentum to the language learning. It is an enriching process of learning.
Language cannot be taught but it has to be learnt by the learners words are very important part of any language. Noun is an important part of Grammar one need to understand the way of pedagogy to make it interesting learning for ESL learners.
Noun is part of naming words. There are so many things in front of us but we have to classify them and this is a tedious process but with this pedagogy it became simple and productive.
Work Cited
Nunan, David.Task Based Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.2004.Print.