An Intensive Course in Nepali

Book Specification

Book Description

Foreword

Established on the 17th of July, 1969 with a view to assisting and co-ordinating the development of Indian Languages, the Central Institute of Indian Languages, is charged with the responsibility of serving as a nucleus to bring together all the research and literary out-put from the various linguistic streams to a common head and narrowing the gap between basic research and development research in the fields of language and linguistics in India.

The Institute and its seven Regional Language Centres are thus engaged in research and teaching which lead to the publication of a wide range of materials. Preparation of materials in Indian languages designed for learning/teaching at different levels and suited to specific needs is one of the major areas of interest of the institute. Basic research relating to the acquisition of language and study of language in its interest. The instructional materials produced by the institute consist of a variety of books, audio cassettes, video cassettes, film strips and online courses.

Language teaching is an ancient profession in India. It has a long tradition of teaching classical languages following the Gurukula system. The teaching of a language was not considered to be independent of teaching philosophy, logic, grammar, poetics and for that matter even mathematics. But the teaching in those times addressed itself to a selected group in the society and thus was shaped in mathematics. But the teaching in those times addressed itself to a selected group in the society and thus was shaped in methodology and objectives by the motivations and purposes of this group. Through centuries and centuries the situation kept changing and the selected group multiplied into innumerable need based group of different age groups, professional groups, interest groups and groups of language learners who learn it for the sheer pleasure of learning a new language and not to exclude those learners who learn different languages as a result of policy implementation of the socio political system to which they belong.

Language teaching has developed as a sub-discipline within applied linguistics in modern time in India as it is elsewhere. All the segment of the society learn languages which may be the mother tongue/first language and/or the second language. The importance of language skills in the educational process, economic activities and cultural assimilation has been recognized and the population of second language learners is increasing by leaps and bounds. All these pose a challenge to the linguists and the materials producers to develop models, methods and materials which could meet each and every need of different learners and are suitable to the different learning abilities and aptitudes.

The Central Institute of Indian Languages has initiated and intensive Course Series in major Indian languages to provide suitable and comprehensive materials for learning and teaching the language concerned. In any language teaching situation, the teacher is expected to combine the roles of a psycho-linguist, socio-linguist, language pedagogue, a creator of materials, a literary critic and a testing and evaluation expert, Most of his competences are naturally reflected in the materials, which simultaneously are graded form known to unknown, simple to complex and contrived to the naturals. This is a very difficult task. After research and experimentation we have come out with more questions than answer at each stage of the material, for example, how basic is basic? What is grading? In what way can linguistic and cultural matter be graded? Is question, with which most learning begins, simpler than statement? How does one move from a purely language based competence to creating literary sensibilities? How does one move from a purely language based competence to creating literary sensibilities? How does one build into the material conceptual prose? How are lessons to be presented? Should the translated discourse structure be made to look similar to the original discourse structure? Different teachers and researchers have answered questions such as these differently. This search is a continuing phenomenon. Therefore, language instructional materials continue to represent linguists unfinished education in this area.

The format of this book An Intensive Course in Nepali is the result of a consensus arrived at by the lectures and principals of the seven Regional Language Centres and the researches in the centre for Materials Production of the Institute. This book is the product of six workshops spanning over six years and actual classroom teaching of Nepali to non-native adult learners who are school teachers from different states and union territories of India. This is the prescribed text for the three month Basic Course of the 10 month language training program in the North Eastern Regional Language Centre of the Institute at Guwahati, the institute has already published intensive courses in Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil Telugu and U