An Overview of Rabindranath
Tagore’s English Language Teaching Strategy
Shankhapradip
Ghosh
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Dewanhat Mahavidyalaya
Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India
&
Ph. D. Research Scholar
Department of English
Cooch Behar Panchanan Barma University
Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India
Abstract:
Rabindranath
Tagore was a versatile genius whose works touched every aspect of our life. He
was keenly interested in English language teaching. He devised several
strategies of teaching English at the elementary level, about which he wrote in
the textbooks namely, Engreji Swopan (Steps to English), Engreji Sruti Siksha
(Learning English through Listening), Engreji Sahaj Siksha (Easy Way to Learn
English) and Anubad Charcha (Translation Practice). This paper aims to examine
Tagore’s methodology, and how far his teaching strategies were in tune with the
various Methods and Approaches of Second Language teaching.
Keywords: Teaching
Strategies, Translation, Listening, Speaking
INTRODUCTION
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is
undoubtedly the most notable figure in 19th and 20thcentury Bengal. A versatile
genius, his works touched almost every aspect of our life. In the field of
education, his contribution is immense. Not only did he set up Santiniketan in
1901, he also wrote voluminously on education. For many decades he strove to
find a better teaching technique for teaching English to students than what was
prevalent in those days. His ideas found expression in many of his writings
which I shall discuss in this paper.
Born in
a notable Bengali family, Tagore was exposed to the arts, including music,
painting, and poetry from a young age. His brothers, sisters and cousins were
engaged in different cultural pursuits.1 Both his grandfather,
Dwarkanath Tagore and his father, Debendranath Tagore were involved in social
reform movements which helped to foster a liberal atmosphere in the family. The
cultural richness of his family had a profound impact on Tagore’s mind and
helped to shape his ideas on education.
From
his childhood Tagore was critical of the formal education system. He found it
very boring and stifling. He thought that the formal education system of the
time did not encourage the development of the student’s creative faculties, nor
did it promote aesthetic development of the senses. Tagore believed that
education should cater to the all-round development of the individual. It
should free one from all sorts of narrowness and help one imbibe a spirit of
freedom to embrace all that is good in one’s surroundings. Being a naturalist,
Tagore laid stress on the educative value of natural objects. His ideas on
education focused on the development of the self in harmony with all existence.2
Tagore
was quite averse to textbooks. He was in favour of a student-centric system of
education, but he was against the idea of the student’s carrying huge loads of
books in schools.3 He laid importance on the role of the teacher who
would stimulate the student’s inquisitiveness in diverse areas of knowledge. A
teacher, according to Tagore, should play the role of a ‘guru’ who would impart
knowledge to the student or the ‘shishya’. This transfer of knowledge from the
‘guru’ to ‘shishya’ should take place in an atmosphere joyfulness.4 Thus,
education should never appear as a burden to young minds. Rather, it would be a
very joyful experience in which the teacher would no longer remain a mere
instructor, but would become a companion, helping the student to quench his thirst
for knowledge.
Tagore
never thought that assimilation of information should be the goal of education.
He spoke of the development of the creative faculties of the students. He
thought that students should be exposed to different forms of art from a young
age so that there occurs an aesthetic development of their senses. In
Santiniketan he invited teachers from various fields and from different
countries for the purpose of providing a holistic education to his students.
Tagore’s
ideas in this respect align with the Theory of Multiple Intelligences which was
developed Dr Howard Gardner in the later part of the 20th century. Gardner
proposed that intelligence is not a single, fixed, and general ability, but
rather it comprises of multiple, distinct abilities or intelligences. He
advocated that there are eight different intelligences that individuals may
possess to varying degrees, and that learning should be tailored to the
student’s strengths and weaknesses. By exposing students to different fields of
knowledge and arts, Tagore was providing students with opportunities to develop
their innate talent and aesthetic sensibilities.
Tagore
knew very well the importance of learning English for the students. He was not
in favour of using English as the only medium of instruction, but he never
disregarded the importance of English in education. His books on teaching
English namely, Engreji Swopan (Steps to English), Engreji Sruti Siksha
(Learning English through Listening), Engreji Sahaj Siksha (Easy Way to Learn
English) and Anubad Charcha (Translation Practice) contains his ideas on
teaching English and the methodology he adopted in putting them into practice.
In this paper I have tried to explore the different teaching strategies that
Tagore developed in teaching English as a second language.
OBJECTIVES
OF THE STUDY
The objectives of the study are:
1. To
explore Tagore’s ideas of teaching English as a second language.
2. To
identify the different teaching strategies that Tagore adopted to teach English
as a second language.
METHOD
OF THE STUDY:
In this descriptive study, Tagore’s books on
English Language teaching have been used as the primary sources of data.
Various research papers on Tagore’s theories on education and his ideas on
teaching English as a second language have also been used as secondary data
sources.
ENGREJI
SWOPAN (STEPS TO ENGLISH)
Engreji Swopan (Steps to English) consists of
two volumes. Vol. I was published in 1904, and Vol. II was published in 1906.
The ‘Forward’ to this book mentions that the book was written for his school,
‘Brahmacharjasram’ in Bolpur.5 In fact, Tagore mentions that the
method of teaching English advocated in this book was successfully used in
Bolpur’s school before he decided to publish it. Hence, this is a time-tested
method which Tagore hopes would benefit both young learners, engaged in
learning the alphabet, as well as adult learners who have decided to learn
English.
The
‘Introduction’ to the book consists of what Tagore termed as ‘Language-learning
Drill’6. In this section, students will follow whatever instructions
the teacher gives them in English. This drillis designed to acquaint students
with many new words, and their meanings, before they start reading English
books. There are hundreds of sentences/instructions in this section which
students are supposed to follow. The sentences gradually move from simple
instructions, like ‘Sit down’, Come to me’, Stand on the Bench’ to more complex
ones, like
Take
this marble. Put it into your pocket. Take it out of your pocket. Throw this
marble down. Throw the marble up. Throw this marble over the bench, across the room,
out of the room. Catch this marble.7
Later,
Tagore introduces ‘Yes-no’ questions, and also ‘Wh-questions’. An example would
make the matter clear for the readers:
Q:
Have you stood there?
A:
Yes, I have stood there.8
……………………………
Q:
Is Kumud walking?
A:
No, Kumud is not walking, he is sitting.9
Vol I.
of Engreji Swopan (Steps to English) contains more Language-learning drills.
Here Tagore introduces basic grammatical rules regarding the use of ‘the’,
‘is’, ‘are’, ‘what’, ‘who’, etc. He also asks the teacher to help students
identify nouns and adjectives from the list of words written on the blackboard.
The volume presents more difficult drills on ‘Yes-no’ questions and,
affirmative and negative sentences.
Vol II.
opens with a letter written by Brajendranath Seal to Tagore. It contains an
excerpt from Seal’s Note on University Reform about English Language teaching.
In this note Seal advocates for learning a language through conversation, and
not through artificial exercises in grammar:
English
should be taught in the same way as French, German and other Continental
languages … We learn a language in short more by learning it spoken than by
artificial exercises in Syntax or Idiom …10
Seal’s
views reflect Tagore’s ideas on English Language teaching. In this volume,
Tagore carries on presenting the drills which gradually become more complex.
Here he introduces students to the use of tense, simple prepositions, like
‘at’, ‘in’, ‘on’ ‘to’, ‘into’, ‘from’, ‘with’ etc., participle, interchange of
forms from active to passive and vice versa, and from direct to indirect
sentences, which include Interrogative sentences, Imperative sentences, and
Exclamatory sentences. Detailed instructions are given to teachers as to how
these drills are to be carried out. In both the volumes students are asked to
translate phrases/ sentences from English to Bengali and vice versa. However,
the difficulty level gradually increases as the student progresses from Vol I
to Vol. II. Thus, in Vol I. the student is asked to translate into Bengali
phrases like, ‘On the roof’, ‘The tree of the garden’, etc., and sentences
like, ‘The king has a crown’, ‘The boys have a ball’, while in Vol II.,
sentences like, ‘The queen walks in the garden gathering flowers’, ‘Either the
master or the servant was present’, etc. are given for translation. The same
strategy is followed in exercises of translation from Bengali to English.
Tagore’s
Engreji Swopan is a book one of a kind. Here he lays stress on the development
of the student’s listening and speaking skills. It is quite noteworthy that
Tagore thinks that language is learnt primarily through listening and speaking,
and hence he advocates the development of these two skills prior to the
development of the reading and writing abilities of the student. For this
Tagore adopts the conversational style of teaching where students are made to
repeat the drills until they would become quite adept at them. Another
important feature of these drills is that the exercises are written in English,
while the instructions to the teacher are given in Bengali. This means that
Tagore was also in favour of using the mother tongue in teaching English to
students. This is further borne out by the fact that the book contains ample
passages for translation from English to Bengali and vice versa.
ENGREJI
SRUTI SIKSHA (LEARNING ENGLISH THROUGH LISTENING)
The title of Tagore’s second book, Engreji
Sruti Siksha (Learning English through Listening) makes it clear that in this
book too Tagore continues with the same aim to teach English through listening
and speaking. The book opens with an Appeal to the Teachers where Tagore
outlines his method of teaching English. Tagore points out that this method
should be adopted when students start learning the alphabet. He believes that
after completion of the drills mentioned in the book, students would be able to
read books easily. He instructs the teachers to first make the students
understand the sentences/ instructions clearly, and then make them repeat them.
In case any student finds it difficult to understand or follow any sentence/
instruction, the teacher may skip it. Tagore outlines his plan of teaching
English in detail:
First,
the teacher makes the student stand in a line, and then calls the students one
by one.
Hari, come to me!
The
student listens to the instruction, does as he is told, and then after
understanding the meaning of the sentence, says –
Sir, I come to you.
Hari, go back!
Sir, I go back.11
The same drill is repeated for other
students. Gradually, the instructions take the form of Interrogative sentences,
using different tense forms.
Tagore’s
Engreji Sruti Siksha is divided into two parts. The first part contains a
series of instructions which contain syntactical variations, as in
Shake your head.
…………………
Shake that fountain pen.
………………….
Close your hand and shake your
fist.12
Unlike
in Engreji Swopan, the first part of this book contains little instructions for
the teachers. Here the drills are intended to acquaint students mainly with the
use of different verbs, like ‘push’, ‘put’, ‘touch’, give’, ‘fill’, ‘kick’ etc.
The
second part of this book contains conversations between the teacher and
students, which mostly take the form of question-answer between two. Here
students will enact the instructions given by the teacher. For example, the
teacher will ask the student to stand on the chair: “Hari, stand on the chair”.
The student will literally stand on the chair, after which the teacher will ask
another student, “Who stands on the chair?” In another exercise students are
required to smell clove, camphor, rose, jasmine, lotus, etc. and tell in both
English and Bengali what each item is. In this way, students will get to know
the names of different objects around them.
ENGREJI
SAHAJ SIKSHA (EASY WAY TO LEARN ENGLISH)
In this book, Tagore gives an idea as to how
students should be initiated into writing at the primary stage. For this he
does not want students to memorize words and phrases. In the ‘Preface’ to this
book, Tagore clearly points out that he does not prefer memorization to be the
goal of this book.13 The teaching strategy that he adopts here is
that the teacher would write words in the blackboard, seeing which students
would try to frame sentences orally as well as in written form. Towards the end
of the first part of this book, Tagore provides a list of nouns and adjectives
which are used in day-to-day conversations. He wants students to frame
sentences using these words. Here also he cautions readers by saying that these
words and their meanings should not be memorized. Rather through constant use
students should get acquainted with these words and their meanings.
In this book, Tagore relies heavily on
translation in his teaching strategy. The second part of this book contains
fifty-two lessons which mostly consist of exercises on translation from Bengali
to English and vice versa. Through these exercises Tagore intends not only to
enrich the vocabulary of students, both in Bengali and English, he also imparts
grammar lessons to students on different forms of tense, transformation of
sentence from positive to negative and vice versa, change of number etc.
ANUBAD
CHARCHA (TRANSLATION PRACTICE)
Tagore considered translation to be a very
effective way of learning a foreign language.14 He mentions in the
‘Preface’ to this book that a student should practise translating a small paragraph
from Bengali to English and vice versa on every alternate day. If he continues
this practice for two years, Tagore thinks that that the student will attain
expertise in both English and Bengali.
In the
‘Preface’, Tagore lays down his plan of teaching the process of translation to
students quite elaborately. At the onset of the class, the teacher should
discuss all the grammatical rules necessary for that day’s lesson. The teacher
would begin with a sentence, and it is quite likely that students would make
mistakes, but gradually, learning from their mistakes, students would be able
to translate difficult sentences.
Tagore
very well knew verbatim translation from English to Bengali and vice versa is
difficult and not always possible as the two languages differ in their modes of
expressions and in their syntactical patterns. To bring home his point, Tagore
shows in the ‘Preface’ how the use of adjective clause and the verb differs in
Bengali and English. Here, he also concedes the fact that students may not be
able to express their ideas properly because of their limited vocabulary. In
such cases, Tagore suggests that students can use easier expressions at the
time of translation. For example, if the student is not familiar with the
phrase “in dismay”, s/he can use expressions like, “with painful heart” or
“with anxious mind”. In this way, Tagore hopes students can overcome the
problems of translation.
CONCLUSION
A study of the various teaching strategies
developed by Tagore makes it clear to the readers that they were quite novel
and much ahead of his time. Though he did not formulate any theory on Second
Language teaching, his methodology shows traces of the Direct Method and the
Audio-lingual Method, though Tagore was not aware of them. At the same time, he
gave importance to the use of mother tongue and considered translation to be an
essential element of his English Language teaching strategy. Moreover, he was not
in favour of memorizing grammatical rules and using words and phrases without
context. His grammar lessons were often interspersed with his Language-learning
drills, which prevented the lessons from becoming boring. He wanted students to
learn English as spontaneously as they learn their mother tongue. It is for
this reason that he preferred developing listening and speaking habits of
students before they are introduced to reading and writing skills. His
technique of teaching English was student-centric and based on practice in
life-like situations. The active participation of students in the
teaching-learning process, no doubt, would make learning English an enjoyable
experience for students. It can also be said that his teaching strategies have
certain similarities with the Communicative Approach which was developed much
later.
References
1. https://www.ripublication.com/ijbamspl17/ijbamv7n2spl_14.pdf
2. ibid.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabindranath_Tagore
4. https://www.ripublication.com/ijbamspl17/ijbamv7n2spl_14.pdf
5. Tagore,
R. Engreji Swopan, Rabindra Rachanabali Vol. 15, Viswa Bharati, 1986, Kolkata,
p. 191.
6. ibid.
7. ibid.,
(Part I), p. 196.
8. ibid.,
p. 199.
9. ibid.,
p. 204.
10. Tagore,
R. Engreji Swopan, Rabindra Rachanabali Vol. 15, Viswa Bharati, 1986, Kolkata,
p. 231.
11. Tagore,
R. Engreji Sruti Siksha, Rabindra Rachanabali Vol. 15, Viswa Bharati, 1986,
Kolkata, p. 275.
12. Ibid.,
(Part I), p. 286.
13. Tagore,
R. Engreji Sahaj Siksha, Rabindra Rachanabali Vol. 15, Viswa Bharati, 1986,
Kolkata, p. 308.
14. Tagore,
R. Anubad Charcha, Rabindra Rachanabali Vol. 15, Viswa Bharati, 1986, Kolkata,
p. 375.