E-E-305 Post Colonial Literature

Assignment Paper: - E-E-305 Post Colonial Literature

Topic                     : - Introduction to “Orientalism”

Student’s name     : - Makwana Jayshri D.

Roll  no                 :- 14

URL                      :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com

Semester               :- 3

Batch                    :- 2010-11

                                                 

                                   Submitted to,

                                                 Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                 Department of English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

 

Introduction:-   

                       A central idea of Orientalism is that Western knowledge about the East is not generated from facts or reality, but from preconceived archetypes that envision all "Eastern" societies as fundamentally similar to one another, and fundamentally dissimilar to "Western" societies. This discourse establishes "the East" as antithetical to "the West". Such Eastern knowledge is constructed with literary texts and historical records that often are of limited understanding of the facts of life in the Middle East. Orientalism by Edward Said is a canonical text of cultural studies in which he has challenged the concept of orientalism or the difference between east and west, as he puts it. He says that with the start of European colonization the Europeans came in contact with the lesser developed countries of the east. They found their civilization and culture very exotic, and established the science of orientalism, which was the study of the Orientals or the people from these exotic civilizations. Edward Said argues that the Europeans divided the world into two parts; the east and the west or the occident and the orient or the civilized and the uncivilized. This was totally an artificial boundary; and it was laid on the basis of the concept of them and us or theirs and ours. “Oriental” was simply understood as the opposite of “occidental” (western). The word was used to develop negative connotations after the publication of the work Orientalism by the American-Palestinian scholar Edward Said. Following the ideas of Michel Foucault, Said emphasized the relationship between power and knowledge in scholarly and popular thinking. In particular, Said says that without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period (p. 3).

In the part I of his introduction, Said puts several definitions of “Orientalism”. Some of these are:

       “A way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on Orient’s special place in European Western experience” (p. 1).

       “A style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’” (p. 2).

       More historically and materially defined, Orientalism is “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (p. 3). Said gives limitation in his work, that Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient, which until the early years of the nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands. America also has dominated the Orient since World War II. British, French, or American come the large body of texts Said calls Orientalist (p. 4).

In part II, In this chapter, Edward Said explains how the science of orientalism developed and how the orientals started considering the Orientals as non-human beings. The Orientals divided the world in to two parts by using the concept of ours and theirs. An imaginary geographical line was drawn between what was ours and what was theirs. The orients were regarded as uncivilized people; and the westerns said that since they were the refined race it was their duty to civilize these people and in order to achieve their goal, they had to colonize and rule the orients. They said that the orients themselves were incapable of running their own government. The Europeans also thought that they had the right to represent the orientals in the west all by themselves. The most important use of orientalism to the Europeans was that they defined themselves by defining the orientals. For example, qualities such as lazy, irrational, uncivilized, crudeness were related to the orientals, and automatically the Europeans became active, rational, civilized, sophisticated. Thus, in order to achieve this goal, it was very necessary for the orientalists to generalize the culture of the orients.   

Said stresses particularly on the Orient as an idea that has history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary that have given it reality and presence in and for the West. Then, he gives three qualifications to someone who deals with Orientalism.

First of all, it would be wrong to conclude that the Orient was essentially an idea, or a creation with no corresponding reality. The phenomenon of Orientalism deals principally with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient beyond any correspondence with a real Orient (p. 5).

Second, the ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood without their force or their configuration of power. The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination, and of varying degrees of a complex hegemony (p. 5).

Third, one has never to assume that the structure of Orientalism is nothing more that a structure of lies or myths which would simply blow away. It is particularly valuable as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient than it is as a verdict discourse about the Orient (p. 6).

Another justification the Europeans gave to their colonization was that they were meant to rule the Orientals since they have developed sooner than the Orientals as a nation, which shows that they were biologically superior, and secondly it were the Europeans who discovered the orients not the orients who discovered the Europeans. Darwin’s theories were put forward to justify their superiority, biologically by the Europeans. In this chapter, Edward Said also explains how the two most renowned orientalists of the 19^th century, namely Silvestre de Sacy and Ernest Renan worked and gave orientalism a new dimension. In fact, Edward Said compliments the contribution made by Sacy in the field. He says that Sacy organized the whole thing by arranging the information in such a way that it was also useful for the future orientalists. And secondly, the prejudice that was inherited by every orientalist was considerably low in him. On the other hand, Renan who took advantage of Sacy’s work was as biased as any previous orientalists. He believed that the science of orientalism and the science of philology have a very important relation; and after Renan this idea was given a lot attention and many future orientalists worked of in its line.

In the part III, avoiding from an inaccuracy produced by too dogmatic generality as well as too positivistic focus, Said deals with three main aspects of his contemporary reality to point the way out of the methodological difficulties as the followings:

1.     The distinction between pure and political knowledge.  Most knowledge produced in the contemporary West is that it be non-political, scholarly, academic, impartial, or small minded doctrinal belief. However, in practice, the reality is more problematic since no one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar for the circumstance of life, from the fact of his involvement with a class, a set of belief, or a social position. Therefore, Orientalism is not merely political subject, nor a large collection of texts about the Orient, nor representative of some nefarious “Western” imperialist plot to hold down the “Oriental” world. It is a distribution of geopolitical awareness into aesthetic, scholarly, economic, sociological, historical, and philological texts. It is an elaboration of a basic geographical distinction and a whole series of interests as scholarly discovery. It is a discourse corresponding relationship with political power in the raw, but is produced and exists in an uneven exchange with various kinds of power (p.12) 

2. The methodological question.

                     Much of what Said does in his study is to describe both the historical authority in and the personal authorities of Orientalism. His principal methodological devises for studying authority are what can be called strategic location, a way of describing the author’s position in text regard to the Oriental materials he writes about, and strategic formation, a way of analyzing the relationship between texts and a way in which groups, types, genres of texts acquire mass and referential power among themselves.

3. The personal dimension. 

                      Much of the personal investment of this study derives from Said’s awareness of being an “Oriental” as a child growing up in two British colonies. All of his education in Palestine and Egypt, and in the United States has been Western and that deep early awareness persisted.  

E-C-304 English Language Teaching

Assignment Paper: - E-C-304 English Language Teaching

Topic                     : - Teaching English as a second Language 

                                   in India Focus on Objectives

Student’s name     : - Makwana Jayshri D.

Roll  no                 :- 14

URL                      :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com

Semester               :- 3

Batch                    :- 2010-11

                                                 

                                  Submitted to,

                                                 Mr. Devarshi Mehta.

                                                 Department of English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

Teaching English as a second Language in India: Focus on Objectives

                                                             Shivendra K. Verma

ABSTRACT:- After highlighting certain the theoretical aspects of notion “Objectives of language teaching”, We discus the functionally-determined sub-categorization of languages into First Language, Second Language, Third Language, Foreign Language, and Classical language. We then focus on the objectives of teaching English as a Second Language in India.

    The Objectives of Language teaching:-

            The global objectives of language teaching can be defined as helping children learn a language to perform a variety of functions. This range from the sociable use of phatic communion and a network of communicative uses to its use at the highest level of “cognition”, “catharsis”, and “self-expression”. Underlying these functions are two fundamental: helping children learn how ask questions, the most important intellectual ability man has yet developed, and helping children use this language effectively in different social networks.

         Languages in a multilingual setting form a system-network. Each language in this network has a function- determined value contrastive to the function-determined values of the other languages. A society or a government can assign new terms of its own policy of language planning, but the society or government must realize that this assignment of a new value to a language will produce a chain reaction in network. The values of the languages in the other languages in the network are bound to undergo changes.

           The notion of “link language” or “lingua franca” has an important significance in a multilingual setting. It encourages wider mobility, national integration, and a sense of tolerance. It enriches other languages in contact and gets enriched by them. Effective bilingualism or triligualism or even multilingualism is a powerful way enriching the linguistic repertoire of individuals. These resources offered by used for rapid social and economic changes and modernization programmers.

            Teaching is not a unidirectional process of pumping bits and pieces of unrelated and undigested gobbets f knowledge into empty sacks. It is a bidirectional, interactional process. Learners are not just passive recipients of socially accepted language patterns. They play an active role in this teaching-learning process. They actively strain, filter and recognize what they are not photographic reproductions but artistic recreations. The learners are meaning- makers. The main objectives at every level of teaching should be to help learners learn how to draw out their latent creativity.               

              Every learner is born with a built- in language-learning mechanism. This mechanism gets activated when the learner is exposed to that language. What is, `therefore essential is to create an atmosphere where learning can take place. Children learn the language they hear around them. Exposure to a rich variety of linguistic material is as important in first language acquisition as in second language learning. The teaching of English as a second language, in , in particular , has often been less successful than it might have been , as a result of the restricted variety of linguistic contexts with which students are provide. Learners should ideally be exposed to a variety of contextualized language material. They must hear and see language in action. 

                  The object in teaching a language…is to enable the learner  to behave in such away that he can participate to some degree and for certain purposes as a member of a community other than his own. The degree to which any particular leaner may wish to participate will vary. He may seek only to read technical literature, or he may wish to preach the gospel in a foreign country. These varying degrees of participation require different levels of skills in language performance.

               A teacher full of life and vigour, resourcefulness and innovative power, love and understanding, can turn a dull class into a lively two-way international game. A well qualified, energetic and inventive teacher can be a “living “model, and act as the best audio-visual aid.

Functionally-determined sub-categories:-

  First Language (L1)

          L-1 is used for performing all the essential, personal functions. These are gradually expanded to cover all types of interpersonal functions. “In order to live, the young human has to be progressively incorporated into social organization, and the main conditions of that incorporation is sharing the local magic- that is, the language (Firth 1957;185).L-1 is an indispensable instrument of national culture. It is the primary means for the through the transmissions of culture from one generation to another.” “Learning through the mother tongue is the most potent and comprehensive medium for the expression of the student’s entire personality” (Government of the India 1956), for it is learning the basis of all his or her future actives, the means by which he or she is going to learn almost everything else (Abercrombie 1956;23). The Education commission in 1902 recommended mother tongue as the proper medium of instruction for all classes up to the higher secondary level.

Second Language (L-2)

        education people living in towns and cities, English as a second language functions primarily as an interstate or international link language of . Some of them also use it as an international language of knowledge, trade and industry. An important question here is; is L-2 the main or associated medium of instruction at all levels or at a particular level, or is it taught as a subject listed under “other languages”? When an “exoglossic” language s used by a country as its official language and/or as a medium of instruction at all levels, it generates its own problems.

 Foreign Language

        It is used by a select group of learners in a very restricted set of situation. The main objective of learning a foreign language is to have direct access to the speakers of these languages and their cultures. It enables the learners to participate in a foreign society in certain roles and certain situations. A foreign language like Russian is used in India for absorbing the cultural patterns of the USSR; English as a second language is used in India as an alternative way of expressing Indian patterns of life.

Classical Language

       A classical language like Sanskrit provides access to ancient culture, learning and philosophy of life and is assumed to contribute to the intellectual enrichment of its learners. Its real value can not be measured in terms of helps you do in everyday life but in terms of refining your sensibility, and sharpening you tools of analysis, enriching the modern language and offering “insights” into a variety of linguistic problems.

Objectives of teaching English as a Second Language in India

                   The objectives have to be formulated in light of what we perceive our needs for English to be in a multilingual setting, at both the national and individual levels. This is related to the following questions: What are the roles of Hindi, English, regional language, classical language, foreign languages and languages of minority group in our multilingual setting? What are the topics and situations that will necessitate the use of English? What is the kind and amount of English that the learners will need?

                                   As the associate official language, an international “link language”, the language favoured by all- India institutions, the legal and banking systems, trade and commerce and defense, English has important functions to serve internally, in addition to its role as our “window on the world”. It is clear, therefore, that English has important functions in communications of diverse types. The skills of communication will continue to be at a premium, and teaching will have to try to impart a certain minimal competence in these skills. Kipping in view these functions, the primary aim of teaching English as a second language at the secondary level should be to give the learners an effective mastery of the language, that is, to help them acquire

    The ability to read easily, and with understanding, books in English written within a prescribed range of vocabulary and sentences structure, and to read with good understanding (if not with speed) easy unsimplified texts on familiar topics, fully glossed and annotated in their known language.

    The readiness to proceed to a more advanced reading stage, that of reading unsimplified texts, particularly those bound up with personal studies and interests, with the help of bilingual dictionaries;

    The ability to understand a talk in English on a subject of general experience and interest, clearly spoken and restricted in vocabulary and sentences structure to the range of the syllabus;

    The ability to write comprehensible in English, and without gross errors, on a familiar topic which leads itself to expression within the range of vocabulary and sentence structure that has been taught;

    The ability to carry on comprehensibly a conversation in English on a topic fully within the range both of their experience and interests and well within the range of active command postulated by the syllabus.

                       It is important that we should be able to identify the English requirement of various groups of students precisely, and try to provide for each such group the pattern of courses which will be relevant to the needs of learners. This is important because not all students will need English to the same level of competence. We must ensure that English (1) functions as a “service-language” for the various categories of learners, (2) promotes intellectual and cultural awareness of the contemporary world we live in, and (3) provides “information content” necessary for the modernization of our country. It is also important that special opportunities are made available to help the weaker sections of our society to acquire an adequate competence in English so that they do not remain forever disadvantaged in areas of higher education and in terms of upward social mobility.

Work Cited

Verma, Shivendra K.  “Teaching English as a Second Language in India: Focus on Objectives”.English in India.Ed. Omkar N. Kaul. Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad.Print. 

               

         

             

  

               

            

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E-C-302 Research Methodologies

 Assignment Paper: - E-C-302 Research Methodologies

Topic                     : - What is Research and its Characteristics

                                   of Research.

Student’s name     : - Makwana Jayshri D.

Roll no                 :- 14

URL                      :-makwanajayshri261011.blogspot.com

Semester               :- 3

Batch                    :- 2010-11

                                                 

                                   Submitted to,

                                                 Dr. Dilip Barad

                                                 Department of English

                                                 Bhavnagar University.

Introduction:-

                       The genesis of research lies in the progress of human life. As man embarked upon the road to progress his curiosity to know the happenings around his surrounding became very intense. The saga of development of man from ancient times to modern era is the result of research. Superstitions and some traditional beliefs in ancient times were used to be wrongly ascribed to knowledge. Man guardedly came out of these beliefs by way of research and inclined towards scientific knowledge. This scientific knowledge is nothing but the outcome of research.  Man from the very beginning strived to understand the nature and the universe. He also observed harmony every where in the universe and tried to find out the causal relationship underlying this harmony. This is how the beginning of scientific research was made. Initially inquiry into any matter or happening was used to be made by scientific method but there was lack of planning in making this inquiry. Much emphasis was given to experience of an individual to draw interences or conclusions from any happening in the nature or the universe without any cognizance of sufficient evidences or rational.

                        In the era of Aristotle and Greek philosophers new directions of research were opened up and foundations of scientific methods for research were established. Francis Bekom then made a strong plea for direct observation or experimentation. Initially deductive method of logic came into operation and later on inductive method of logic came into practice. In order to eliminate the imperfection of these methods, Charles Darwin suggested a new method known as deductive – inductive method by combining these two methods. This is how a new era of scientific method was started. Thus it can be said that the basis of scientific research lies in the implementation of deductive - methods of logic. The intensive use of scientific research was initially made in physics and later on it was extended natural sciences and social sciences.

                    Thus the scientific research has played a significant role for achieving human progress. The advances in research in the fields of physics, biology, social science and psychology have largely contributed to the creation of new knowledge, new invention and new ideas as well as new methodologies for carrying out further research. The modern research is not confined to laboratories only but has made strides in every field of human life. The scientific research has playing an important role in the progress and enrichment of education and educational research.

Verbal Meaning and Definition of Research:-

            One can comprehend the meaning of research while undergoing the process of gaining experience of doing research by the way writing project report or Ph.D. thesis or dissertation on any topic of research. The use of research work of others by teachers in teaching a course, one can clearly understand the meaning of research. The dictionary meaning of research is construed as invention or investigation or formal study or scientific enquiry or discovery. The formal meaning of research is invention or scientific or scientific investigation or scientific enquiry to extract truth. Standards dictionaries describe research as “Endeavour to discover new ideas by scientific way”, or “A course of critical investigation”.

                   According to Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, research means “A careful investigation or investigation or inquiry especially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge.”

                  In the meaning of “Research’ given above three words are important (1) Study (2) Invention (3) discovery. The last two words require special description.

Inverntion:-

                   Inverntion is the application of an idea or thinking something new. For example, a new machine or an instrument or a new way of doing a task.

Discovery:-

                   Discovery is an accidental, unintentional and unexpressed search for the first time without any problem.

Research: Research is nothing but a scientific study in order to discover new facts. It has a problem and deals with activities and solution. Research is a planned activity for solving a problem which is purposeful, interitional with respect to outcomes. Research is a systematic investigation of problem in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.

           Some interpretations of research given in English language support the above meaning of research and we cite the following quotations which provide a comprehensive meaning of research. “Research is endless quest for knowledge or understanding search for truth. It brings to light new knowledge or correct previous errors and misconceptions and ads in an orderly way to existing body of knowledge.”

           “The knowledge gained by research is scientific and objectives and is a matter of rational understanding, common verification and experience”

Definitions of Research given by some well-know thinkers are given below:

(1)P.M. cook;

                    “Research is an honest, exhaustive and intelligent searching for facts and their meanings and implication with reference to a given problem.”   

 (2)J.W. Best (1993);

                    “Research is considered to be formal, systematic and intensive process of carrying on scientific method of analysis”. Research may be defined as systematic and objective analysis recording of controlled observation that may lead to the development of generalization of principles or theories, resulting in prediction and possibly ultimate control of events.

(3)George G. Mouly;

                     “A systematic and scholarly application of scientific method, interpreted in its broadest sense, to the solution of educational problems. Conversely, any systematic study designed to promote the development of education as a science can be considered as educational research.

(4) F.M. Kerlinger (1978);

                    “Scientific research is a systematic, controlled empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical proposition about the presumed relations among natural phenomena.”

Characteristics of Research:-

Some salient features and characteristics of research are stated below,

Research generates new knowledge.

Research is a skillful, systematic and accurate procedure of investigation.

Research is logical and objective.

Research is a sustaining and unhurried procedure of investigation.

Research endeavors to collect and organize data in quantitative terms.

Research requires courage and entrepreneurship.

Research is highly objective or purposive.

Research requires rigorous standards.

Research is a procedure of carefully representing and recording documents.

Research aims is extracting and generalizing common principles.

Research is meticulously planned.

Research requires perfect accuracy in collection, recording and analyzing the data.

Research requires neutral and unbiased approach.

Research is free from emotions.

Research is an objective process.

Research is verifiable and amenable to testing.

Research is an inquiry or investigation.

Research involves clearly defined parameters.

Research describes the problem.

Research explains and generalizes the problem under study and seeks its solution.

Research predicts the phenomenon under study.

Research is a critical, systematic and empirical inquiry conducted under controlled conditions.

l

What is Literature?

  From my point of view, literature is very important in our lives from several points of view. For example, reading is a means of gaining culture and enriching our knowledge in different areas of activity. It can help us have a great imagination and it makes things easier when

it comes to make compositions on different themes. It gives you the possibility to speak about science, even if you don't work in this domain, or you can express your opinion about a political aspect, just because you have read something connected to literature, and Literature helps us to understand and make sense of the world around us. Through literature, we explore the human condition and analyze how and why people think the way they think and feel the way they feel. Literature enables us to develop our minds analytically and promotes open minds. We see the world through the eyes of different writers from different cultures and in turn learn the ways to deal with things happening around us. Without literature, we lack insight and understanding of human nature. Everyone should, therefore, study literature. Sometimes, we identify ourselves with the characters in the stories we read and they can give us some clues to solve our problems and how to react in certain circumstances. Books are inspired from reality because even if authors are considered to be somehow different from common people, they are in fact preoccupied by the same problems as we all are and suffer like us, too.

                   To conclude with, I would like to say that literature is the perfect means to enrich our culture, to express correctly and have a rich vocabulary, to be able to interfere in conversations in different fields of interest and to really be considered an erudite person.