3.Let’s try the moving image in the ESL classroom in India - Ms.Atiya khan

The growing demand for English language instruction in India:

Over 4,000 government schools spread across Maharashtra state of India are facing closure ahead of the new academic year 2015-2016 as these schools have less than 10 students on their rolls; in some extreme cases, the figure even comes down to one or two (Srivastava, 2015). This is happening at a time when private schools are clocking new records in enrolment with every passing year (Srivastava, 2015). Most of these schools are facing serious functional crisis. Rising demand of English language in Indian job market, negative perception of the society towards vernacular medium of education, poor teaching quality, indifference of the government towards own schools are said to be the major factors behind this "never before" situation. Moreover, India lacks quality teachers who can teach English to students in vernacular schools. In these schools, most teachers themselves don’t know decent English. Due to this lack of quality English medium teachers in vernacular medium schools, the English medium schools are winning over vernacular medium schools in India. Private schools in India are more inclined to employ English as a medium of instruction (Muralidharan & Sundararaman, 2013). As a result, parents in India are more interested in placing their child into a private English-medium school, a school where subjects are taught in the English language, rather than in a local/regional language school (Galab, Vennam, Komanduri, Benny, & Georgiadis, 2013). The enrolment scale has already tilted towards private schools in urban India. According to estimates of private school enrolments in India, more than 50% children in urban areas of India were enrolled in private schools (Desai, Dubey, Vanneman, & Banerji, 2009). Moreover, enrolment at vernacular medium schools, that is, schools that teach primarily in regional or native language, happens to be declining drastically, as India's poor manage to scrape together the funds to send their children to more expensive English-medium private schools (Masani, 2012).

There are several other reasons for this exodus to English medium schools. While students may perform well in vernacular medium schools, they face severe difficulty in higher education institutions, because most higher education institutions in India are in English medium. Indian students who have completed their education from English medium school and college are also more likely to find jobs than their vernacular medium peers, even without completing university education (Jayakar & Tejaswani, 2013). The Indian call centre industry, which hires millions of Indians, requires candidates to have a basic understanding of English, and is therefore unlikely to hire those from vernacular medium schools (Rani & Jayachandran, 2014). The fact of the matter is that employability and higher education are directly linked to English medium education.

Many brilliant students from vernacular medium schools are found lagging in academics, job interviews, seminars, presentation of projects and in other contexts of communication. In most of the situations, such as job interviews, academic projects, elocutions, debates etc, which require communicative competence, students with convent education background are stealing the march over the vernacular medium students. As a result, vernacular medium students are understood to have been depressed and felt marginalized by their own peer group members on various occasions. (Jayakar & Tejaswani, 2013, p. 17).

While the demand for English is high, the supply of efficient English teachers is extremely low in vernacular schools, and this rift between demand and supply affects the students who study in these schools the most.

The gap between the supply and demand of quality English education in vernacular medium schools is yet to be filled. Vernacular medium schools in India need to empower their students with good English speaking skills to prepare them for the competitive job market.

The role of audio-visual literacy in English language teaching and learning:

It is widely known that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is nowadays a key factor in the teaching of ESL, especially in developing countries which lack efficient teachers. Within this structure, multimedia materials are considered as extremely valuable resources for teaching, especially for English language teaching. Computers, internet and social media have received a lot of attention in the English as a Second Language (ESL) literature and in the research which is gradually informing English teaching practices in India.

Although technology is recognized to have a transformative effect on teaching and learning, videos are not widely used as an instructional tool in the classrooms in India. More precisely, television, a multimedia technology which combines sound and visual information and presents language use in rich social and cultural contexts, has not had the same impact as these technologies, and is an often misunderstood, underused and undervalued pedagogical tool in India. Multimedia technology has a long history in English Language Teaching (ELT). Since the 1980s, researchers (Candlin, Charles, & Willis, 1982; Eisenstein, Shuller, & Bodman, 1987; Meinhof, 1998) have been exploring the ways in which popular multimedia technology can be used effectively to enrich the English learning experience. It is often said that an image is worth a thousand words and, as a matter of fact, moving images have proved to be especially effective when it comes to teaching English. It seems obvious that there is a connection between the application of video as an instructional tool and improved learning in English. Recent psycholinguistic research (Bisson, van Heuven, Conklin, & Tunney, 2013) shows that incidental vocabulary acquisition takes place even if learners do not make any conscious effort to learn the words. While ESL learners in vernacular medium schools can deliver written examinations, many of them find using communicative English in academic or professional settings challenging. To these learners, television material is particularly valuable in addressing learners’ lack of experience in casual, everyday English.

Television is an excellent resource for second language learning. Children like it and are happy to spend their time watching it in the classroom. An extensive and regular exposure can develop ESL learners’ skill of English phraseology, which is identified to be particularly lacking in ESL learners (Siyanova & Schmitt, 2007, 2008), and help them to establish an ability of phrasal expressions (Lin, 2014). Rucynski (2011) integrated television into English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instruction by demonstrating how a range of English lessons can be taught with The Simpsons, a famous American animated TV series.

Research in Second Language acquisition over the past three decades has shown that learners remember better when they see, hear and do (Doughty & Long, 2003). The level of a students’ understanding of a subject when they see, hear and produce materials during instruction is higher (75%) compared to students who only see during instruction (20%), and see and hear only (40%) (Lindstrom, 1994). Thus, learning with multimedia elements, such as videos, seems to be effective for ESL learning activities (Zahn, Pea, Hessse & Rosen, 2010). Viewing videos support ESL learners in developing more conceptualization of words than plain verbal instruction, as words which are presented in audio and visual form will support learners of second language better (Silverman, 2013).

Solanki (2012) in her analysis of the use of multimedia technology in English language teaching and learning revealed that multimedia technology promotes the students’ English communication capacity and creates a relevant context for English language teaching. ESL learners should be particularly encouraged to watch television and videos since research shows that they can support the learning of English vocabulary and better communication skills (Lin, 2014).

Recommendations and conclusion:

The aim of this article was to explore the potential of multimedia technology and set out a framework for using television material in English language teaching and learning in non-English medium (vernacular medium) schools in India. Television material can be a foundation of the English course, especially where the learning goals relate to communication skills, or an occasional activity, supplementing the textbook. Either way, it is likely to be most successful where some consensus to work with multimedia technology in general and television in particular is integrated in the teaching-learning context by schools in India.