Research Proposal for Ph.

D Program

Learning English as Second Language and Medium of Instruction by the

Agricultural Labourers’ Children of Madurai District. -
A Socio-Educational Linguistic Perspective.

Arulmani A.S
Madurai
I. Introduction:
English being the window of the world and serving as a lingua franca is being
learned and taught as a second language and employed as a medium of
instruction in the Indian education domain. We also use English apart from
educational purposes to establish and maintain group membership to express
our emotions, to amuse ourselves and to entertain others and to convey
information for serious or trivial matters that exist in the world. The need of
English in Indian context has gone up in academic, official, judicial and
commercial walks of life. Thus, an army of people in modern days long for
learning English for different purposes. Learners especially, novices while
learning English and the budding teachers while teaching have to move
heaven and earth to unearth the design features of English. It is a known secret
that a number of parents compel their children to learn English and to study
through English medium schooling. Even villagers who work as agricultural
labourers send their children to English medium schools and those children,
against their will and wish, accept the English education. Because of this
unwillingness and cumbersome nature of English and the vast dichotomy
between mother tongue Tamil and English, those children experience a lot of
hurdles and difficulties in learning and using English. Therefore, it is the need
of the hour to unearth the attitude of both parents and their children who learn
English and study courses through English medium. This will present the
ground reality of English education among the rural population of Tamilnadu
especially, the agricultural labourers and their children . This will intend to
help the planners of ELT to revamp the strategies of teaching English to the
students who come from rural Tamilnadu.

1
II. Statement of Problem
Though English is a foreign language to the Indian soil, it is taught and
learned as a second language since the English environment or English
socialization is prevailing in the entire Tamil nadu. Once the English learning
and teaching were urban centered; sons and daughter of rich, elite were
attending the private English medium schools. Nowadays, because of the
mushrooming private English medium schools, extension of transport facility
to rural areas, advancement of technology: mobile, computer, etc. and
introduction of English medium in the government schools itself, facilitate
poor students also to opt for English medium schooling. In India, national
level selection process for various purposes is being done through Hindi or
English and the parents who aspire their wards to be employed want their
children to study in English medium schools. Poor and middle class parents
love to be called ‘mummy’ and ‘daddy’ by their children. Because of the
linguistic hegemony of English in the modern society of Tamil nadu, the
English language has gained high status and charm to attract both urban and
rural population of Tamil nadu

III. Review of Literature:

Many studies have been carried out on the problems of learning English as
second language by the students of Tamil nadu in different universities.
Chandran (1999), analyzed the error committed by the students in the
productive skills such as speaking and writing in his thesis entitled “A Study
of Productive Skills with a Special Reference to Communicative Ability in
Speaking English of the higher Secondary first year Students in Coimbatore
District”.

The production skills and in the comprehension skills the defect in the
recalling ability of words and sentences. Researchers Recommends group
discussion, language games to be encouraged in the class hours and

2
introducing the audio visual instrument for language teaching at collegiate
level.

A critical review reveals the fact that no study has been undertaken taking
samples from the agricultural labourers of Madurai district. Thus this work
will be a pioneering one.

IV. Aim and Objectives:

The present research envisages the following objectives to understand the
English competence of the children of the agricultural labourers of Madurai
district who are studying in Higher Secondary Schools (Plus 2 ).

To unearth their linguistic hurdles in learning and using English language.

To identify the attitudes of the parents of the students towards English

language and English education.
To understand the attitude of those plus students towards English language
and English education and
To suggest corrective measures in repairing their linguistic hurdles in learning
English and to advocate recommendations for policy making for teaching
English for rural children especially of agricultural labourers.

V. Coverage:
The student studying +2 in matriculation school and government English
medium schools located in urban and rural parts of Madurai district and their
parents will be serving as the subjects for this study.

VI. Limitation:
The present study chooses only the students whose parents are agricultural
labourers. Other students of from the rural and urban are will not be
considered for this study.

VII. Selection of Samples:

3
Around 400 samples will be chosen across the entire Madurai district and their
parents will also be selected as samples based on the random sampling
technique. Gender variable will be considered for understanding the attitudinal
and performance differences.

VIII. Research Methods:

Descriptive and inferential methods would be adopted with basic statistics.
Linguistics and ELT principles will be adapted for the description and
inference of results for the corrective measures.

IX. Social and Academic Relevance.

This study will present the ground reality of the rural students in terms of
response to their performance, problems, perspectives of students and parents.
Based on this policy note for the ELT can be advocated.

X. Research Tools:
Three research tools will be prepared specially for this study and those will be
used for corpus elucidation.

1. Test Device
2. Attitudes of Students
3. Attitudes of Parents

XI. Scheme of Presentation:

1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Framework of the Study.
3. Literature Review
4. Performance and Problems of the Students in English. language and
English Education
5. Attitudes of the Students towards English and English Education.
6. Attitudes of the parents towards the English and English Education
7. Findings and Recommendations.

4
5