‘Old MacDonald had a farm,
E-I-E-I-O!
And on his farm he had a cow,
E-I-E-I-O!
With a moo-moo here and a moo-moo there
Here a moo, there a moo, everywhere a moo-moo,
Old MacDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-O!’
That children’s song and nursery rhyme about a farmer named MacDonald (sometimes known as ‘McDonald’or ‘Macdonald’) and the various animals he keeps on his farm - three dogs, some hens, some ducks, some cows, some pigs, some cats and a donkey-had filled the air around the school.
‘Why the PA system is so loud today?’ a passer-by asked another who was standing at the ‘school’. She said nothing to her, but pointed to a large colourful decoration put up on the school gate - it was a kind of polite and thoughtful reply.
‘Oh well, see you later, then.’ She said goodbye to the latter.
The decoration itself was a spectacular sight, reflecting the views of those who had been behind it, and what was just visible beyond it, on the ‘school’ premises, was a hive, so to speak.
In the shade of a big bulu tree standing in a quiet corner there, a group of young pupils were standing in a circle. They seemed to be floating on air. A figure of authority was in the middle of the ‘circle’.
‘Who is she?’ ‘She is Dilhani.’
M. D. Rasika Dilhani Wijeratna was from ‘Araavatte’- she was the teacher of English at the Araavatte Kanishta Vidyalaya, in the education zone of Mahiyanganaya, and she had been at ‘Ulhitiyaava’ at the invitation of ‘Prabhashini’.
M. S. Prabhashini - one of the two teachers of English at the Ulhitiyava Primary School of Beligalla, Mahiyanganaya - had also invited S. M. Nilia Sulakshana Bandara of the Dharmapla Prathamika Vidyalaya, H. M. Thilini Madubhashini Hewanayaka of the Thalavegama Kanishta Vidyalaya, Tharangani Sasthri Karunaratne of the Orubendiveva Central College and H. M. Wijitha Kumara of the Egalaoya Vidyalaya to be with her on the ‘day’.
Meanwhile, her principal K. H. M. Dayananda Ratnayaka had invited principals R. M. Tilak Ratnayaka of ‘Thalaavegama’, D. M. Nandasena of ‘Dharmapala’, A. M. Karunaratna of the Serupitiya Kanishta Vidyalaya and a mathematics teacher at ‘Serupitiya’ D. M. S.Weerasundara to be with him while he was assisting Prabhashini, with his staff (at ‘Ulhitiyava’).
What all of them were doing on the premises beyond the ‘decoration’ was to tempt the young children at ‘Ulhitiyava’ into learning English!
‘Now tell me all of you what you are doing?’ teacher Dilhani asked the ‘circle’ around her.
A cluster of little mouths opened all at once -‘we are listening to a song, teacher.’
‘Good!’ she said. But when she next asked them: ‘Now tell me what the title of the song you are listening to is,’ she could hear nothing in reaction to her, for ‘that’ term ‘title’ was not in the vocabulary of the ‘innocent’ circle there.
Dilhani did not get a surprise while she saw all of the little ones around her were standing where they were in stone silence though, because Prabhashini had told her: ‘By the way, Dilee, these poor brats have no wide vocabulary.
Now that nine times out of ten children in English classes in rural Sri Lanka sit or stand in stone silence in front of their teachers with their humble apologies, it was a time for Dilhani to get ‘a good teacher’ out of her in order to get the children around her talking.
Therefore, after having kept herself to hanging on for a while for ‘that’, she began to talk again - but in ‘Sinhala’ instead of English (because she is one of those who believe anyone’s mother tongue is a best tool when it comes to helping them find their tongue in another tongue, not familiar).
‘Do you know the meanings of the words are, is, listening, of, the song, to, what and you?’
‘But you don’t know the meaning of the word title, do you?’
‘Yes teacher.’
‘Then, shall we try to guess the meaning of title?’
‘Alright, teacher’
Following their reply, she gave a few clues to the meaning of the ‘word’, and said: ‘Now children, put your hand up if you know the answer to my question ….What’s the title of the song you were listening to.
A girl’s hand went up at once! A few more girls and boys too did like her in next to no time. ‘Good!’ ‘Tell me your name?’ the teacher asked ‘her’, and the pupil replied.
‘Now, tell us the title of the song you were listening to?’
‘The title of the song is Old Macdonald Had a Farm.’
‘Is she right?’
‘Yes’, uttered those who put their hand up.’
‘Of course she’s right!’ the teacher agreed, and the ‘girls’ face lit up.
As time went by in this way there were more questions, answers and explanations followed by a lot of activities there. And just before both the teacher and her pupils took a break for a while in the end, bow-wows, cluck-clucks, quack-quacks, moo-moos, grunt-grunts, meow-meows and hee-haws had filled the air around them.
All of those things had been intended to help the group of young pupils widen their active and passive vocabularies (with a smile), it could be viewed.
In rural Sri Lanka, community demand for teaching the English language to their offspring has
accelerated in recent years owing to a range of reasons - one of which being that more and more rural folk of the country have been made aware of the fact that their offspring are in a world passing through an era of information and that the language of English has been playing a decisive role in the field of information technology.
But when it comes to the matter of teaching English to school going girls and boys of the remote rural areas of the country, the task is rather a difficult one, for most of them are not from very privileged backgrounds where even one or two members, if not all, have no good solid background in the subject of English and European culture.
And that’s why Prabhashini the English teacher of Ulhitiyava Primary School, her colleague A. M. Erandika Madhumali and principal Dayananda Ratnayake have to experiment with different approaches in their dealings with the children under their care from ‘7: 30 am to 1: 30 pm’.
Like the trio, assisted by all others on the teaching staff and the parents of the pupils, there are certain others at ‘Aluyatavela’, ‘Dambaraava’, ‘Dehigolla’, ‘Ginnoruva’, ‘Girandurukotte’, ‘Gurukumbura’, ‘Hadaththava’, ‘Mapakadaveva’, ‘Orubendiveva’, ‘Pangaragammana’, ‘Senanigama’, ‘Serana’, ‘Thalavegama’, ‘Velampela’ trying to do their duties in a much better way.
Well, it was being said that Dilhani broke for a while - she let her children go grab a drink, ready for them, prepared by a group of parents voluntarily co-operating with the ‘trio’ in organizing their programme.
Meanwhile, what was going on where Tharangani Sasthri Karunaratna and her group of children were also worth to watch, she was one of those who believe that ….reading aloud to young ones could be an effective means of improving three of the four skills of language learning, also known as the four skills of language: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
What Sasthri had picked for her group was The Dumb Owl. It is not heavy with a vocabulary difficult for the young children with her, she had thought. A little tale of that kind would be better, considering their attention span, too, she would have thought.
While reading aloud The Dumb Owl to her group of young children, the teacher of English was behaving like an actress of many talents - creative with her voice, while she imitated different characters and sound effects attractively, the little girls and boys were very cheerful and developing their listening and speaking skills automatically without thinking deeply. Her varying of tone while reading The Dumb Owl aloud, amazingly helped her group of young pupils improve their reading and listening comprehension, too.
Interestingly, The Dumb Owl had been written by no famous writer- it was only a creation of Erandika Madhumali, ‘that’ teaching staff colleague at ‘Ulhitiyava’.
Madhumali has been able to make parents as well as children reading her booklet aware of a fact that any child born with a ‘healthy’ brain can learn English or any other language blindfold if they are assisted carefully.
Later on, during a session for the purpose of making the parents aware of how to back their offspring in learning English doggedly, teacher of English H. M. Wijitha Kumara said that when a child learns a language, there are four skills that they need for complete communication.
When they learn their native language, they usually learn to listen first, then to speak, later on to read and finally to write, the teacher added with an explanation: ….these are called the four language skills.
A set of capabilities that allow the child to comprehend and produce spoken language for proper and effective communication, he said.
According to another explanation by him, research has proved that reading amazing literature aloud to a young child frequently is a most effective way to help them be a successful communicator and write answers to a language paper at any examination without much trouble.
By the way, you had better wish you’d be able to see a teacher of English of the kind of H. M. Thilini Madubhashini Hewanayaka while they are taking an English class aimed at helping a group of young brats develop the language skill of speaking.
Tilini did not tell her group of children to follow her to repeat a few sentences being uttered by her in order to make them train their little mouths to ably talk in English, a teacher of English of many talents (like the teacher read The Dumb Owl aloud to her children) would not do it to begin with.
Thilini had picked ….Where are you going, my pretty maid? And she first played only the tune of the nursery rhyme on a CD player for the children around her. After the ‘tune’ was familiar to everybody there, the lyrics matching the tune was introduced through another CD.
While the song was being played repeatedly, the girls and boys who tried to say the lines of it one by one, and, in the end, most of them were able to say:
….Where are you going, my pretty maid?
I’m going a milking, sir, she said.
May I go with you, my pretty maid?
You’re kindly welcome, sir, she said.
What is your fortune, my pretty maid?
My face is my fortune, sir, she said.
Then I won’t marry you, my pretty maid.
Nobody asked you, sir, she said...., with little difficulty, but with more conviction, after a lot of effort by their teacher.
Following an open invitation to the class by the teacher, a little girl, meanwhile, recited ‘Where are you going, my pretty maid?’ from her memory with surprisingly no difficulty.
During the latter part of teacher Thilini’s period with her group, she had a lively discussion with the young children about the language skill of speaking and certain other things like vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar.
By the end of the period, she had been able to make them aware of how they could gather English sentences to be utilized in their learning conversational English.
And by the time for the bonfire to mark the end of the day’s programme at ‘Ulhitiyava’, a group of about 380 naughty little devils, aged 11 and under, had well understood that their period for ‘English’ in the classroom timetable would be no longer ‘the evil half an hour’ of any day from Monday to Friday.
Another group of about 20 of their kind arrived at Ulhitiyava from ‘Thalavegama’, ‘Dharmapala’ and ‘Serupitiya’ as observers to the English Teaching and Learning Camp at the Ulhitiyava Primary School and left the campsite for their homes after the roaring bonfire was licking just the ground around it, wishing ‘theirs’ too would have a grand finale of that type one day.
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