Name: Zafar Hossain

133 1345 655

ID#

Course Code: 582

Content Title: What factors influence the current views of selection and
gradation in English for Today of class Five of NCTB.
To learn or teach a language, the basic units of that language are
vocabulary and grammar. Selection of vocabulary and grammar is then the
fundamental task to form a viable syllabus. As we know, random selection of
lexical and grammatical items is wasteful activity. In English for today
materials are for the students to learn pronunciation of the English sounds,
to learn to read, write, and to know the fundamentals of English grammar
and vocabulary. There are no direct grammatical rules applied on the
learners of Class V in the book, all are situational and phenomenal chapters
to be taught. The first chapter has started with the basic of how to introduce
myself. The whole primary chapter talks about the useful expression. The
teachability of each chapter is quite friendly for the instructors since there
are pictures and demonstrations of the situation on each chapter being
discussed. The basic and centralized grammar structure of Subject+Verb is
selected and used primarily in the book. Frequency of vocabulary and ranges
of words are quite limited but sufficient for the 5 th grade students. There are
29 chapters in the book which may usually take 3-5 months for a group of
fresh language learners of 5 th grade to learn its content and materials,
whereas, a time frame of 12 months is given to teach these jumbled
selection of contents based on inter crossing grammatical practices to the

teachers which is in consequence prove to be of use or no use or less use.

Though its not based on Linear Syllabus rather on Cyclic Syllabus, I
appreciate its content set up, pictures, exercises and so on. But the only
thing students of Bangla Medium lack are of exposer out of their classroom.
Selection and formation of story based chapters in the book cover the daily
life, sports

and game, a

great day, moral

sense, self judgement,

professionals that take risk to save people, rhyme based learning, home
town, healthy food habit what are really appreciating and effective for the
learners. All the chapters have enough range of primary level of simple and
compound sentences, vocabularies as well in some manners which also refer
to teachability, similarity, availability, coverage and defining power. But then
again, this is the concern for teachers that the student after getting out of
classroom gets no exposer and mix up themselves with Bengali language. On
the other hand, English Medium students views on English Language are
friendly enough. They indulge and connect in English language with their
friends and sometimes family, which automatically provides them enough
exposers. Hence, a minimum amount of practice (which is at least necessary
to learn a language) should be provided to the English language learners of
all the versions of English for Today.
The basic structures of language learning are selected from the basic
and minimum core needs of communication. Simplicity and centrality is
somehow maintained in chapter to chapter, eg, in the first chapter
Subject+Verb (Im Saima) and later on in chapter 21 complex sentence She

cannot see the colors because she is visually impaired come orderly. The
Gradation of grammatical and lexical items is stuffed into the syllabus in
such manner which deals with the step by step manner but there are some
likeable issues that can also be taken into account by rearranging the
chapters based on interest of the learners of this (5 th grade) age. Gradation
means whether particular learners have learned the specific chapters before
diving into the next level of tasks. The gradation of this book is done with a
view to make students learn to pronounce, read and write. They acquire their
knowledge of fundamental grammatical structures and functions (e.g.
sentence types, tenses, voice, parts of speech, word order, expressing
possibility,

obligation,

preferences,

making

necessity,

assumptions;

prohibition,
asking

for

criticism;
or

refusing

expressing
or

giving

permission; making offers, suggestions, etc.) They acquire their fundamental

vocabulary to fulfill the above mentioned functions in roles, topics and
discussions. The table shows the lexical gradation.
Chapter 1 to 6
Chapter 7 to 20

Chapter 21 to 29

Fine, nice, go, come, home, do, good,

meet, have, look, say, listen
Pyramid, plenty, cereals, moderately,
vegetables, fruits, influenza, volunteer,
professions, headquarters, population,
location, neighborhood, continuation,
conversation, competition, swiftness,
international, permission
Impaired, programmer, co-curricular,
bullock, liberation, museum,
independence, anthem, mountain,
earthquakes, tsunamis, river erosion,
newspaper, grocery, government,
sufficient

While the question is of Gradation, there is another fact which arouses

the concern is that rural vs urban learners also female vs male learners.
Everyone is generally given the identical contents for developing their
English language skills. Urban students in their language and cultural
exposers get to learn the basic words from the elders conversation whereas;
rural learners are totally or slightly deprived. However, if the instructors take
the responsibility to teach the books content perfectly then there will be
hardly any comparison between them. Among the 29 chapters of this book,
the chapters are quite well organized and formulated. Merely, they are not
graded as per to the interest of the students. The basic Gradation should
come from the core interest of the 1 st language which is likely to be learned
fast and effectively. I found chapters in this 5th grade book are jumbled. Not
graded properly as per the interest of the students.