Abilities

I remember when in junior classes we used to have this ‘dictation tests’ in the English period. And for that we had to learn the ‘spellings’ of the ‘difficult’ words from the prescribed chapters of the text books.

Also while reading story books like ‘Noddy’ and then going forward novels like ‘famous five’,’nancy drew’ and ‘tom sawyer’ parents used to tell me to mark / note down the words, I’d read for the first time or didn’t know the meaning or which had a long spelling or all of the above,and then look into the dictionary for the meaning and memorize it for using it in future while talking-the whole idea was to improve on the word power and language ability.

Honestly,I used to detest those tests and the ‘hard work’ that was put into the preparation. Though my parents always tried to explain how important and useful it for me to know the ‘big’ words that appear in the text books every now and then. Still..I didn’t like ‘dictations’.

How important those ‘dictation’ tests were is known only when you grow up. Go to higher classes and be amongst the very few who can spell the ‘difficult’ sounding words flawlessly and with no efforts.

I’m not sure if these days schools have the same routine of conducting dictation tests any more for the junior classes…But now when I come across kids who don’t know and pretty much don’t care about their spelling ability and remembering the words and their meanings as well…I feel upset. I feel the so called ‘orthodox’ way of teaching that we had was much better than these days flashy ways of schools and their so-called apt syllabi.

The root causes could be plethora..to start with a simple one-even the little kids who have just started talking few sounds and tiny words say YA or a YEP instead of a YES.

Yes,slang. Slang is in and that’s how the little ones are picking up. and if we will have to list few more reasons then this is not the post for it…I’ll have to write another one for that !

The whole point here is I think we didn’t go to any fancy named schools-but typically ‘St.Franics’ or ‘St.Dominics’ or even ‘Spring Dales’ or ‘Holy Cross’-but we did learn what was required for us to learn at that age and it’s paying off till now.

No wonder they say “OLD IS GOLD”..not that I’m not against all the new stuff that has been included in the schools now or the new methods of teaching…..just that I wonder if they are sufficing the requirements of the ‘necessary’ education that a child needs at the right time ?

P.S. On a very very different note here…I was just wondering who started this ‘claiming’ the first position race on the blog ? Any one knows who is the ONE ? 😀