While trying to write this article, I am all on a sudden
reminded of my former class-viii student, Yonten Gyamtsho, at Chapcha Middle
Secondary School. I was teaching Wordsworth’s ‘The Daffodils’. We had come to
the last stanza which goes like “For oft when I lie on my couch/in vacant or
pensive mood/They flash upon the inward eye/Which is the bliss of
solitude./Then my heart with pleasure fills/And dances with the daffodils. ”I
was reading out from the textbook and pronounced the word ‘couch’ like coach.
Yonten was sitting at the back. Strikingly handsome and taciturn by nature, he
couldn’t help himself from standing up and asking me politely, “Sir, isn’t that
word pronounced as couch like in the idiom ‘ a potato couch’?” I was stunned to say the least, but I had the
good sense to tell him that I was not very sure about the pronunciation. I’d
look it up and let him know in the next class.
Yonten was very correct and I was delighted in offering him one of those
Cadbury’s bars the next day.
The point I am trying to get across is that during the
course of the last two and half decades, I have learnt so much from the
students, that there is no way I can express my indebtedness to them. (Should I be ashamed of myself for stating this plain truth? But a truth
is a truth is a truth and has to be told. Nothing more, nothing less.)
Today, thanks to Kalden Drukpa of class-XII Sc.’A’, I was
made to relive that unique moment. I had a class with them in the sixth period.
…….. But let me get back in time to begin at the beginning. The Board Exams for
classes X and XII were going on. As the language teacher of class-xii, I was
waiting outside in the Assembly ground on the very first day of the exam for
the exam to be over and to find out how they had performed. I was therefore, quite surprised, when at
around 4.30, I found some students reluctantly making their way towards me.
Though they looked tired, they were not completely out of their tethers. On being asked
about the language paper, one of them cut in by saying that though the question
pattern was very different, they had tried their best. I was sure of that. But what rattled me a lot was the fact that for the first time in some years there were questions worth 10 marks related to Idioms and Phrasal Verbs in the paper. In
the last 24 years, I have never seen a Bhutanese student criticizing any of
their teachers. It has a lot to do with their cultural and religious
upbringing.
The reply made me far from happy. Though I had tried to
teach them grammar to the best of my capabilities, I never bothered to teach
them anything on idioms or Phrasal Verbs for the matter. Later, at the
suggestion of the Supervising Examiner, I decided to pen a report to the English
Subject Co-ordinator, BBE ( the erstwhile Bhutan Board of Examinations) about
the injustice of the matter. I received a strongly-worded reply a couple of
weeks later from the sweet but stern taskmaster. She informed me through her
letter that idioms and Phrasal Verbs are taught to our Bhutanese students by
the time they are in the lower classes. Besides, the idioms in the language
paper were quite easy. But that is another story and something that may find a
place in my Memoir, if I ever get to write one.
To come back to the incident of the day, Kalden had finished
writing all the sentences on the board with some blank spaces followed by two idioms
within brackets after each sentence. “ Let me set the fire. …………”. He then went
on to instruct the class what he wanted them to do. Now to get back to my story
regarding the teaching of idioms, in the course of the last 5 years or so, I
have tried a few methods and strategies for teaching idioms to my students
without much success. The problem arises from the fact that there are literally
hundreds and thousands of them and there is no knowing how many of them may be important from the
exam-perspective. I tend to avoid the
topic, if I have the chance. But XII
SC’A’ has been adamant from the beginning, so much so that finally I had to
spend some time on it. Luckily the little time I spent on Idioms was enough to
make them realize the enormity of the problem of teaching idioms. Since then
the students have been presenting idioms on a daily basis. Kalden in the
meantime started asking the class about the meanings of the idioms from the
context and choosing the correct one for each sentence from between the two given
in brackets. The class was happily involved. When Kinley Sithup, after
answering the question, sat down, Kalden rebuked him for doing so without his
permission. “ You may park your ass now, Kinley and if you’re wondering about what
I have told you to do just now, lemme tell you that this is another idiom
meaning you may sit down.”
Later, while commenting on his presentation, I congratulated
Kalden for teaching me so much within such a short time. Firstly, he
exemplified the true meaning of the saying that winners do things
differently. Secondly, I loved the way he
promised to reward the triers with the correct answers. The fact that he
did not offer them anything other than verbal pats, is another matter! Thirdly.
He had a steel edge to his voice when he asked Kinley Sithup to ‘park his ass’
with his permission after he had made the mistake of sitting down without. This single fact made the presentation so life-like. Fourthly, I could not stop praising him for the way he used a couple
of idioms besides the ones on the board.
Finally, I gloated over the way he assigned Homework by asking his
friends to find out the meanings of the leftover idioms in brackets and make
their own sentences.
Can anyone ask for more from a mini-lesson on Idioms like
Kalden’s?
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