The
Composite Correspondence Course in Kannada for the employees of the Government
of Karnataka who do not know Kannada is one of the several steps undertaken by
the Government of Karnataka, for the effective implementation of its policy of
making Kannada as medium of administration in Karnataka at all levels of administration.
So, far, efforts have been made to train
the large number of employees of different categories who do not know Kannada
through conventional means such as classroom instruction, and printed learning
manuals for home study , While these efforts have borne fruit, a combination of
several media in addition to classroom instruction need to be exploited. Further
more, the learning materials used for teaching the Government officials need to
be function oriented. Considering these aspects, the Composite Correspondence
Course has set before itself the following general objectives.
At the end of the course,
the employees, who undergo the course will be able to:
Listening: Comprehend the conversation, discussion, radio news bulletins and public
speeches given in normal speed in Kannada.
Speaking : Speak with ease in Kannada in official
circles about routine administrative matters, conduct or participate in official
discussion, and speak with ease in Kannada regarding personal needs.
Reading : Read printed, typed and hand written
materials in Kannada relating to routine administrative matters, matters of public
Interest and newspapers with appropriate speed and comprehension.
Writing : Write short paragraphs with connected
sentences, write short notes on administrative matters and draft short official
communications in Kannada.
Each correspondence course will be run for one year duration. The
registrants will be supplied with function oriented 20 Learning Packets which
will enable them to learn the Kannada script as well as Kannada language so as
to use it in their official duties.
These learning packets of the Composite Correspondence Course in Kannada
have 100 lessons in four parts. They include lessons for learning Kannada script,
lessons for spoken Kannada, lessons for developing reading and writing skill and
lessons for use of Kannada in administration. These skill and function oriented
lessons are learner centered and are prepared on the basis of an assessment of
language needs of the government employees to perform various duties in Kannada.
The first
ten lessons cover Kannada alphabets. Here the letters
are introduced based on the principle of pattern perception and contrastive observation.
In order to help the learner the clues are given in Roman and Devanagari. While
using the lessons the learners are advised to : identify the relation between
the letter : and its sound value : link them both and pronounce loudly : identify
each letter in the given word and read the word and after learning a lesson, practice
the script with the help of the exercises. While learning the script with the
help of these lessons the learners may read the sign boards, cinema posters, bold
type letters in the newspapers, advertisements, brochures pamphlets etc.
The lessons
in the Dialogue are meant for learning to listen,
understand and respond orally, appropriate to the situations. Here the major sentence
patterns that are used in spoken Kannada are used in situations that are found
to be relevant to the officials. The sentence patterns are graded from simple
to complex. Each lesson has four parts: text of the lesson, vocabulary used in
the lesson along with the meaning, exercises for practicing listening and speaking
and notes that aid the learner to the extent to which he can make use of them.
Here, the learners are advised to : read the text of the lesson aloud as many
times as possible to understand the language used in the context : use the English
translation also : complete the exercises orally and then in writing and use the
sentence types learnt in the lesson in the contexts that they come across, without
waiting for the learning process to complete. Hence, whatever is learnt should
be put to use then and there itself.
The lessons under Reading and Writing
have selections from Kannada prose written by different Kannada writers. They
include a sample each from an autobiography, folk story, editorial, news items
from newspapers, news bulletin from the All India Radio, short stories etc,. These
lessons help the learners to understand Kannada used in day to day reading and
writing. And also help them to understand the Kannada prose writing in its various
forms of literature. Each lesson has the text, introduction to the author, exercises
for reading and writing practice and a translation passage from English to Kannada.
While using these lessons the learners are advised to ; read and understand the
prose ; understand the way in which the vocabulary and sentence types are used
by different writers; answer the questions in the exercise part of the lessons
; write compositions as indicated in the exercise and also to note the idiomatic
usages of words and the nuances of language use.
The lessons under Administrative Kannada are
administrative communications that are used in day to day administration. Each
lesson is on a format of official communication. Also each lesson has the text
of the lesson, introduction to the format, vocabulary with English meaning exercises
for the use of language and translation from English to Kannada. The learners
are advised to : study the format of correspondence ; study the text of correspondence
; study the use of vocabulary and sentence types in the correspondence and try
to write short correspondences in each of the formats on the analogy of the given
model.
The learners achievement in language learning is tested by administering
tests in the form of response sheets. Each learning
packet is followed by a response sheet. The registrants answer the questions and
return the answer sheet for corrections and suggestions. The corrected and evaluated
answer sheets are sent back to the registrants as help for self study.
During
the course there will be three contact programmes. First contact programme is
of 2 days in which the basic alphabets of Kannada are taught through modern methods
of teaching scripts such as shape similarity. Standard spoken Kannada is taught
through the gradation of structures in the conversational form using the appropriate
contexts. Second contact programme is of three days duration in which learners
are systematically exposed to standard variety through the reading of passages.
Emphasis will be given on both reading and writing skills, In the third and final
contact programme different formats of administrative Kannada are taught. At the
end of the third contact programme, examination will be conducted and the particulars
of the examination are as follows.