UNDERSTANDING THE ENGLISH TEXTBOOK FOR EFFICIENT USE OF E-RESOURCES FOR QUALITY TEACHING OF THE LANGUAGE

Employment and societal status are equated with knowing English. There was a whooping figure of 274% increase in enrolment in English medium schools in India between 2003 and 2011. However the quality of teaching the language is abysmal. Teachers' proficiency in English and teaching skills are looked at, as major problems in teaching English as a second language in India. Considering the linguistic diversity of the country and issues concerning language proficiency, most of the government of India has made provision for innovative e-resources in regional languages or with bilingual audio recordings. DIKSHA mobile app was launched in 2017. It is a digital platform with resources to teach English as a second language for schools functioning in 14 media of instruction. This paper intends to test the teacher's understanding of the English textbook and check its impact on their use of DIKSHA app. 80 teachers teaching English in the Hindi belt state of Chhattisgarh in the district of Dhamtari were the sample for the study. The location was chosen based on the linguistic diversity and a mix of tribal, rural and urban population residing here. The teachers' responses based on their pedagogical awareness and proficiency levels which are prerequisites to understand the textbook showed an interesting impact on their use of the app. Though the app seems to lend support to the most vulnerable teacher audience, it needs to work on its content to better the quality of teaching the language. The study highlights the possibility of literal consumption of information on pedagogy from various sources including the app but without the conceptual knowledge and proficiency needed to deliver the textual matter. However focus group discussions inverted these results to an extent making it evident that the teachers who spoke more of technology had been using other innovative pedagogy in class already. DIKSHA was only additional. Their seating arrangements interestingly threw light on how a compulsion or technological interventions on using DIKSHA in school had created a hierarchy among the teacher community. The more they spoke on the use and knowledge of DIKSHA in the text-book during the discussion, the higher they would be raised in the group present there. Their talk on DIKSHA decided their seating arrangements and their position in the hierarchy that nonetheless got created during the discussion and seems to exist generally also. Thus the understanding of the textbook does impact the teachers' use of the app but the idea of understanding of the text-book in itself has changed to integrate now the understanding of codes and other directions for the simultaneous use of app. More than the actual use of the app, talking of the app got highlighted here.