ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AND ‘LAGAAN’

(A Case Study of Hindi Feature Film – LAGAAN)

Dr. Pretti Kumar

From Folk to Films has been a long continuous journey.

Folk art is the form of grass root tradition for teaching. It is the unassuming creative expression of millions of rural people. It is a treasure-house of their customs and group behaviour, beliefs and concerns, pains and pleasures; in fact their ways of life. It has provided popular entertainment for the common folk and has also imparted traditional education. Their entire value system can be known from their folklore. Folk life and folk art are inseparably intertwined with each other. Thus, Folklore is an unabashedly functional Literature through which the outlook and values of its makers are manifest in performance and in language, and through which, those of its hearers and readers are shaped. Folklore entertains and instructs the audience.

The audience or the newcomer of the community receives from the singer or the folk artist and reuses it in new creative forms. The performer uses the traditional terminology to explain the new concepts. He changes the terminology to make the youngsters understand and thus brings the description. For e.g. He takes a toy and shows it to the audience and then says: What is it? A toy? No, it is not a toy, it is Nanny. Such a facility exists in Folk. For example – in Mandahechulu they use 56 toys in Katamraju Katha narration. The Performer also uses his body as a language tool and the tools from other arts like Patt in Dakkali. This tradition is still prevalent in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, West Bengal, to name a few.

This is how they use these toys and Patt as aids to teach the ethics and morals. Similarly, in Language teaching, we use Pictures, or Audio Visual aids to substantiate the new language item or to make comprehension easy.

Teaching English as a Second Language is always a strenuous conscious endeavour of the teacher and the learner. Apart from audio visual aids, the use of slides, Television and of late, films, cannot be ruled out in the teaching of English as a Second Language. I would like to place before you a research project carried out at the Brazilian University in English for Special Purpose with interesting results.

At the Catholic University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Feature Films were chosen as the source of oral discourse to be used as input for specific reasons:

- They provide the listeners with the audio, visual, nonlinguistic features that contribute to the understanding.

- In the social context of the investigation, they are far the most common source of contextualized use of oral English available to the population as a whole.

- Whenever available in Educational Institutions, they can be a rich source of material used with didactic and pedagogical purpose in English as foreign language classes.

- The feature films offer a wide variety of contexts in which this kind of oral discourse can occur.

- Speech prominence, body movements associated with speech elements, facial expression, clues that trigger relevant schemata for comprehension of the general context.

- The primary goal here was to observe and describe the use that subjects would make of both linguistic elements, in order to build coherent, logical and meaningful comprehension of the oral tests. And the secondary aim was to obtain some indication of the importance of Kinetics and Visual contextual clues for comprehension, in other words to try to evaluate to what extent comprehension would suffer if all the visual clues were removed from the texts.

- Now I would like to present before you LAGAAN as the example of teaching English as a Second language. It represents most of the techniques, the processes and procedures implemented in the classroom for the teaching of English by the teachers of TESOL.

- The Oscar nominated Ashutosh Gowariker’s Indian Feature film Lagaan is a gripping drama set in the year 1893, at Champaner. Like so many other villages in Kutch, Champaner had also vanished. And like so many of them, it too had resurfaced to tell a triumphant tale of human spirit.

- The British were still ruling and the villagers were turned into slaves to their masters. The Rajahs of the states were no more the de facto Sovereigns. The British protected the king’s territories. They could collect a tax from the farmers. The people of Champaner depended on agriculture for their livelihood and had to pay a portion of their harvest towards a land tax called the Lagaan.

- Set against this backdrop, it’s a story about the pride and the spirit of a village, which gears up to face a crisis.

- Champaner is neither backward nor prosperous. But the rain plays an important part in the lives of the people. An impending drought stares in the faces of the villagers. Indifferent to the farmers’ plight, the British announce a double tax. Rajah Puran Singh cannot go against Capt Andrews Russell.

- Champaner is hit badly and so are the villagers and their families. Capt. Andrews Russell a vicious, sadistic British officer wants to crush the villagers. He challenges Bhuvan, a villager, battling both drought and the colonial master, to a game of Cricket, as he had insulted their game. A victory would exempt Bhuvan’s people from paying tax (Lagaan) for three years, defeat would result in the imposition of three times the tax. The villagers demur: Cricket is the Phirangi’s Gilli Danda and triple tax is starvation cubed. Elizabeth, the sister of Capt Andrews, stands by the villagers opposing the unfair game played by her brother. She teaches the game to them and helps them learn to win.

- Thus Lagaan is a story of how extra ordinary situations thrust upon ordinary village folk change their lives automatically. It is about villagers who having lost everything, slowly become conscious of self and the surroundings with an awakened sense of pride and determination, to face the arrogance of Capt Andrews Russell. Lagaan is about a battle sans bloodbath fought by a team of unsung heroes led by Bhuvan.

ABOUT THE GAME

- Cricket is a foreign or an unknown concept for the villagers of Champaner.

- Bhuvan the hero of the film to understand ‘cricket’, relates it to his understanding of their native folk game of Gilli Danda. He says: ball (image of the silli thing) is gola-gola-ball, bat-phalli-phalli-bat. He applies this understanding to cricket and also helps his team mates apply their knowledge of Gilli Danda to cricket, to help understand the know-how of the game. Their aim here is to learn to play and play to Win. Thus, their motivation is high to play , to realize their goal. An English lady, who represents the native speaker or teacher and who knows about cricket comes to the rescue of the villagers to teach them this new game.

- Initially, she takes the help of ‘mother tongue translation’ to understand the villagers and to make them understand her (though not encouraged-use of mother tongue is the shortest route in the teaching and understanding of Second Language which is English here).

- She draws diagrams to make them understand certain concepts of the game and the position of the players. In the teaching of English as Second Language also we make use of verbal or pictorial illustrations.

- A real cricket ball is brought by her to show the villagers and to make them play with it. The real objects or the models are often brought into the classroom as visual aids to facilitate better learning. In most situations, learning occurs more easily if there are positive attitudes towards the Second Language Community for e.g. in Lagaan the villagers liked and respected Elizabeth, (the English lady, who supported them). Initially they were not keen to learn cricket but the relation of the game with their lives helped them develop a positive attitude towards the learning of cricket.

- Secondly, according to the recent work in social learning, learning depends on the following basic conditions:

- Motivation to learn-as seen in the player. This motivation could be immediate or long term.

- Internal representation of the crucial features of the behavior to be learned – Learners are usually instructed as to the crucial features which they have to internalize for e.g. positions of the players while fielding or the order of batting. Such different aspects are to be learnt by the individual players or by the team as a whole. This internalization process is subject to attempts to control it through training procedures.

- Practice – in skill learning framework.

- Lastly – Feedback about success.

- (Both these things we will see as the game develops and finally as it ends).

- Positive strokes, appreciation, praise and practice techniques are used by Bhuvan to motivate the players and to encourage them to learn. Motivation runs high because the winning of the game is very closely related to the reward of a better life.

- According to the statistics, majority of the people can call themselves speakers of at least two languages, even if their mastery on each language is not identical. Pure monolinguals are the result of either physical isolation from speakers of other languages or it is the result of cultural isolation. While discussing the Processes in Using Second Language, it is said that the meaning of the text is not found just in the sentences themselves. It is derived from previous knowledge stores in the reader’s mind and the processes through which the reader tackles it. Such a process is called Schema or Schemata-which means the background knowledge on which the interpretation and understanding of the text depends.

- The reader uses his background information to help understand the text. They can do efficient reading if the content of the text is accessible and they know about it or be able to apply their own background knowledge or previous knowledge to reap the benefit from the reading of a new passage or a new learning.

- Bhuvan in the film makes use of the backdrop knowledge or ‘Schema’ – an important factor in the comprehension of Second language learning, to help his team mates understand certain concepts and aspects foreign to them of the game.

- e.g. Goal’s ability to whirl and turn the sling shots is used to bowl which, makes it easier to Golly to turn into killer bowler through intense practice.

- Bag’s strength of Teak to beat the drum is applied and used for batting and for vigorously hitting the ball.

- Bhura’s extraordinary experience and knowledge to pounce on the hens lest they run away is applied to cricket to grab the ball.

- Kachra, the handicapped man’s inability to throw the ball nor realizing that he was actually spinning the ball aids and elevates him as a ‘Spinner’ and thus gives the villagers a sure sign of their victory.

- Similarly the association of the sound “UH” produced by Goli, with the releasing of the ball is yet another example of Stimulus and Response theory widely used as the Psychological Theory of Behaviorism in the Second Language Learning of English. However, here it is the English players who learn from this theory and are benefited.

- Finally, intensive practice as used in the Second Language Learning is given to the players to ensure good and sure results.

- Robert Lado summed up the learner’s problem in well-known formulation. “Those elements that are similar to his native language will be simple for him and those elements that are different will be difficult”. Therefore to make things simple- similar or known skills are applied in the learning of Cricket in Lagaan.

- Conclusion.

- Interestingly, when Folk Communicative System uses or adapts a Modern Language for e.g. English here, the Pronunciation, Concept and the Words change. For e.g. they take the word, understand the meaning and own it for their daily use without waiting for the Language experts to do so.

- This paper is conceived in the spirit advocating a surge and our concern for the use and forms of popular literature, folk arts, folk theatre, culture dominated works or features films etc – to be given preference. Majority of Indian learners belonging to the rural India would take pleasure and it would play a vital role in their lives and consciousness and thus correct the distortions or omission of them perpetuated by the conventional academics and at the same time be open to the use of feature films both for the students and also teachers for better comprehension and effective learning.

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