The Undergraduate General English Syllabus with Special Focus on Spirit of the Times: Aims and Achievements.

Dr. Vineetha Mareeta John

Lecturer

Aquinas College, Edakochi

The Ministry of Education as early as 1985 pointed out the need for shifting the focus of teaching English. Instead of the so far teacher–centered programmes and syllabus, it stipulated the need for switching over to a student-centered method of teaching. This shift of emphasis spells out a marked demand for “new syllabuses, new instructional materials and in-service teacher-training programmes” (Aslam 19). At present this emphasis has been widened to be not only learner oriented but also need conscious. The paper is a study of two chapters from the undergraduate prescribed prose text Spirit of the Times.

Integration of personality is one of the basic concerns of any curriculum-maker. The chapters taken from the prose text “The Intensive Care Unit” (hence forward The ICU) and “The Commencement Address” is apt springboards for the student generation. “The Intensive Care Unit” provides a slice of the typical technology-addicted generation that very often takes the service of the nursing staff and doctors in the hospital for granted. The pathetic dependence of the doctor on instruments in order to convince the relatives of the patients of their service are all sharp reminders to all who take pleasure in hunting for complaints against the hospital community. Will Durant’s “Commencement Address” is packed with practical knowledge which directly addresses the all-time current issues among students like junk food, sex, health etc The first volume of .Encyclopaedia of Curricular Development clearly states that while deciding about the selection organisation and administration of curricular materials and methods, it should always be done in terms of their “contributions to the integration of personality” (4). But personality sans social responsibility is still incomplete.

While selecting teaching material the curriculum maker should be conscious of instilling principles of social responsibility. “Commencement Address” successfully couples the twin purposes. Even as Durant reminds the student that “you are what you eat” he does not fail to highlight the fact that a healthy mind requires a healthy body.

The paper further goes into the market based demand of English which is often ignored by the teaching community due to reasons beyond their control. More than that, the text books prescribed by the University for the purpose of providing practice in communicative skills, often fail to focus on spoken aspect of the language. .The development of curriculum should be in accordance with the consolidated conclusions of seminars and workshops. Even more important is the need to hand over the conclusions of the seminars to the Board of Studies of the universities.