Dr. Anandan’s PACE (Promoting Acquisition of Competence in English), Published by Mathrubhoomi (2004-05), Kerala.
In PACE Anandan was exploring how the second language pedagogy in the constructivist paradigm can be worked out as a reading material for the unemployed youth who would like to develop proficiency in English at lest to some extent. Like the multimedia material RACE, this material also takes recourse to using narratives as a pedagogic tool. The story of a young teacher who had to undergo physical and emotional torture under the hands of a police officer under the instigation of a magistrate. The story was presented to the learners in the form of a serial. The narrative would stop at critical points where a number of interaction questions would be posed to the learners. . They can compare their responses with the responses of a few learners who are assumed to have read the same same narrative. Based on the inputs given to the learners they are asked to produce a variety of discourses at various points in the story. To some extent this strategy was helpful to create a collaborative environment of learning.
The major limitation of depending solely on reading material is that the learners are deprived of listening inputs. Supplying audio tracks of the narrative will be a way out.
Facilitating Acquisition of Competence in English – FACE (2005), Course Material for primary classes, MIND, Calicut.
FACE is an attempt to address questions like the following:
- How can we facilitate language acquisition of beginners?
- How can we treat English at the discourse level for the beginners of English?
- How can we give comprehensible listening input to the learners?
- What are the essential and non-essential components of the textbook?
These were some of the prominent questions that led to the conceptualization of FACE. The story presented in the textbook revolved around the adventure of two siblings, Ani and Bini and their friends Catty, their pet cat, Doggy, their pet dog, Dolly, their doll and Carro, their car. One part of the story is meant for listening and the text for this was given in the facilitator’s companion, the supportive material for the teacher. The dramatic moment in each narrative is captured with a series of illustrations, each picture and the text related to the it together make a page of the learner’s material. There are also slots for the learners to produce basic discourses such as description, conversation, narrative and songs.