Session 10, Room B, Presentation 10 2023 FL OER Conference

okay let's go ahead and get started then um welcome back I hope you all had a chance to grab some lunch um and this is then our afternoon sessions we have three sessions uh one on Hindi one on Urdu and then the last one on um Spanish so our first Speaker this afternoon is Mansi banjaj from Yale University and the title of her talk is open textbook for Hindi Heritage language Learners the plan so we're going to listen to you monsie what is the plan thank you so much Carl um I'm excited to share the plan with you all so but this is just the plan this is like you know before I have even started talk like you know working on it um so there is a textbook that I want to work on for Hindi Heritage Learners um which of course um is a different um set of students from the foreign language Learners so it's not that there's no textbook textbook available for learning Hindi there are a lot of textbooks available and some of them are very good for example Rajiv ranjan's book which he will talk about in the next presentation um which is also an oer and but those books are meant for foreign language Learners therefore uh Learners who are looking at Hindi language as a foreign language and they have not um they've not had exposure to the language or as much to the culture before so unfortunately um there's not been any book or for Heritage language Learners of Hindi however in many of the universities such as at Yale at University of Texas Austin at Columbia and some other universities there is a separate tracks there is a separate class for Heritage language Learners so there's there's so much demand but unfortunately there is no book um um however there's no book but then even for foreign language Learners there's um you know it'll be um you know the books that are available are not the books that are Heritage language learner would be able to relate to because both of them come from a very different background for example a foreign language learner will have to start from the beginning and we'll have to even learn how to let's say introduce themselves or have a basic conversation versus a Heritage language learner already comes with um with that knowledge they know how to introduce themselves they know how to carry on a basic conversation uh it's just a Hindi language either sometimes needs to be ironed out there's some vocabulary uh that needs to be developed or some grammar structure which needs to be um um like you know discussed and um they also have good understanding of the culture of the language they also have a fair idea of politics of Bollywood and so on therefore what is needed for Heritage language Learners and what is needed for foreign language learner is very different therefore there is certainly a need for a textbook for Heritage language learners um and then it's very important that the that we also include real life conversations um so we do expose our students to literature we do expose them to newspaper articles but it's also very important that we actually give them um a window into how native speakers uh talk at the present moment right for example like you know sometimes um if um if you're watching let's say a movie it is only representing a section or a class or um a particular scenario um whereas what you want your students you what you want to expose your students to is a different like you know you want to expose them to the entire set you want to expose them to speakers speaking Hindi in Jaipur speakers speaking Hindi in Varanasi or Bihar uh Delhi Maharashtra um and um Tamil Nadu right so you don't want to restrict them to just one um one dialect of Hindi for that so example it's it's also very important that we have real life conversations included in the in the textbook and um another thing is that when a student is learning language they're not just learning language but then they're also trying to see themselves like where do I fit in there right where where do I like you know when I'm learning a language I always want to like also see that where am I fit going to fit in that world right so that is also very important like those questions to answer therefore um so when you when you um um when um you start or when thinking about writing a textbook or when you start even looking at textbook there's a few decisions that one has to make uh for example like how are your readers going to navigate that book is it meant for individual readers it is let's say for a person like you know just to pick up that group like book and just should would I be able to work with that book by myself or do I need a group to practice it with or do I need a group to work on the book win what kind of um is this like book for self-study can I just pick up that book and just start learning myself or do I need to be in a class do I need an instructor in addition to the book right so one has to make those decisions before you start working on the group then what kind of end result you are envisioning like which level like you know you're you've already understood that your students are coming with little background and now um in Hindi so they they can they can have basic conversations they can put the point across but then where do you want to take them what is your end goal what are the learning outcomes going to be right um and then what kind of approach you want to um um adopt for long uh for for writing the textbook there's so many pedagogical approaches right like um for I am for example gonna like you know these are the three that I am planning on incorporating in my book so I'm going to talk about those three so I'm doing genre based language learning which means that the um Concepts would be uh genre based so there's for example like the genres that we're gonna talk about in the book that I'm mentioning um I will I will talk further um in a little bit and then do you want it to be a grammar book or do you want it to be a literature book or um how or is it communicative approach what kind of approach are you taking so however I'm taking a communicative approach but then there's also other aspects that I'm adding to it I do also want my students to work on projects I do want my students to look at literature um in a genre based way I want them to learn vocabulary in genre based manner and I also want to expose my students to multi-modality not just one way of input but then various um like the whole plethora of uh options that we have I want my students to be exposed to that I want them to listen to the uh to the Hindi that they speak in Bollywood I want them to listen to the Hindi that they listen to in um in TV shows I want them to listen to uh listen expose them to Hindi that is spoken in new um in news channels I want them to also listen to Hindi that people just listen on social media right the kind of language they use on social media and so on right so I I do not want my students to be restricted to just like one way similarly for um for reading I want them to definitely look at literature but then I also want to um them to look at like you know the blogs that people are writing I want them to look at the newspaper articles I want them to look at like all of these um like advertisements that are there the Billboards that you see around you right so um and then one of the other decisions that you like you know when you talk about what the learning outcomes are going to be for it to actually work for it to be practical you also have to decide on how many weeks or how many months do you expect your students to dedicate um into this book for them to reach the outcomes that you're planning on how many hours each week are you expecting that the students would dedicate to the book or how many do you recommend that they dedicate to the book for them to reach the level where you want to take them so so um it's very important when you start talking about a book or when you start uh about writing a book that you also make a manual on how to work with the group with the book especially for the learners for instructors for teachers that may be teaching it so for the book that I am planning on um working so especially keeping in mind that it is for her it is going to be for Heritage language Learners one is that they do come with vocabulary as they can put their points across but then they do not they have very restricted vocabulary they have the habit of simplifying everything so it's very important to build on that vocabulary by introducing them to like the literary and formal vocabulary terms similarly pop culture they do have Fair understanding or exposure to Bollywood they even know uh like you know just culture um that they also know what is happening in the country in terms of religion and politics but very often they just see one uh perspective I'm not Define like I mean I definitely have no rights to tell which perspective is right or not right I mean every student has to make that decision for themselves but um if I'm exposing if I'm making my students learn a language I would also be interested in exposing their students to the different perspectives not just restricting to one um one perspective or like one understanding but a broader understanding of the pop culture right so now this can also be embedded in the stories in the literature or the short stories or the real life conversations that I'm hoping to record and expose my students to so that is how you broaden the horizons and um um yeah um next um is that um this is what Gabriella um from New York University talks about in her podcast with bhavya Singh from UCLA that um Heritage Learners when you when you just talk to them even if you're asking them a question like even if they are very often let's say advanced in an advanced class and you ask them a question which is very abstract they do answer it but this simplify it a lot and they just break down um you know what they are trying to put across so it's very important that we also in the book like when you're exposing them to literature to all the readings the different readings and the different um listening material um you know through multimodality it's very important that you also give them grammar explanation for um or for at least certain Concepts that they are struggling with so for example um very often Heritage speakers struggle with using subjunctives they um have uh sometimes a hard time working with passives post positions being one of the most common uh like you know the oblique forms being one of the most uh common struggle for Heritage Learners right so those definitely need to be explained to the students and there is absolutely um you know um one should not hesitate from including grammar explanations why even if you're taking a communicative approach or Project based approach or multi-modality or genre based approach so um because a different strategies work for different students and then when you're writing a book you're not catering to this one student but uh but a lot of students right who are going to benefit out of the book so also when you're writing the book of course as we go and look at the themes or genres that we're going to talk about we will see that how they go from more concrete to more abstract as you progress through the book and as for the interactive component um so I'm hoping to include you know activities or um you know through h5a and then um some projects will be there uh that the students that would give students an opportunity to actually engage with the community and learn more about what is happening in the society at the present moment um and therefore it's very important that we include the interactive component and um well how much a student gains out of the book is absolutely on them but as um as a writer or author of a book it's very important that you include or you give them that those options to indulge in the language to indulge in the community to indulge in the culture as much possible so there will definitely be I would um definitely include some activities projects and tasks with the students to um you know to involve them or to give them chance or um you know fair chance to it indulge or like engage in the community so um as I just talked about um like you know adopting genre based um language learning so the first part of the book I'm hoping that the book would be in two parts and the first part of the book which is what I'm currently working on will begin with the first chapter or the first part of the book which is talk about reading and writing the students however do come with the um with speaking and listening abilities they very often do not know how to work with devnagri script the script that um Hindi is written in and then so it's very important to familiarize them with the script to make them comfortable with reading and writing what is very um nice is that the students already know a lot of words that they would be reading later on right so it makes reading and writing um I believe slightly far quicker or easier for the students so you would have to approach from a different perspective for example if I'm introducing them the sounds go and this is how you ride car and then when I introduce raw I can then actually give them the example girl and they would immediately know what that word means versus for a foreign language learner you would have to explain what car means you would be that with the help of a pitcher or some other way right but for um for a Heritage learner they would know how to pronounce it they would know it's girl and then they would also know what it means um so the second um well pretty much the first genre that I would be starting with is childhood so how their childhood um you know was and what were their dreams um you know during childhood and then you could also go on talking about child labor the next theme would be college life that is where you talk about relationships you talk about academics and from there you progress to talking about professional life um which also comes with the need to balance stress with um with you know regular life and so on um next theme is then family where you're talking talk about joint versus nuclear family you know you bring in all the culture there you talk about like how things were done originally and how they are done now and like what is expected of when you are um you know living in Indian society and so on um and then you also talk about generation gap because if there's a new if a joint family living all together then every generation may have a different way of thinking and then how things proceed then right so there's beautiful literature on it and you can expose students using that and then I would um finish that with the last um theme or last genre which would be aging it's very interesting that um to see two aspects in it one is that how when they talk about aging how they show it from Men's perspective and women's perspective is very different what is expect and then the second thing is what does society actually expect of you once you are um you know slightly in the older age um and um anybody who's learning the language would also appreciate feedback um well if it is an oer you I would keep an open Channel where the students can actually record their voice they can um write um you know the answers and send it to me some of the activities we'll just give them instant feedback but what is also very important is self-evaluation why because you can get it instantly and then you need it at like irregular steps there is no um you know you need evaluation to keep growing so it's very important to understand like the students um you know one of the ways is to participate right you can give them Reflections yes I'm sorry to interrupt you but I think we are really out of time and I'll wind up in two minutes or maybe one yeah so what I mean by participation does not mean like you know it's if it's not a class it does not mean that you cannot participate you can still participate for example you can elaborate on those things you can express you can generate or you can um express your curiosity about things you can do more research on a particular topic and that is participation so you can uh you know if there's some blogs or Vlogs that you're listening to if you're like liking them or you're linking some contributions or you're summarizing that is participation if you have cause and effect questions those are observations those that is all uh participation so participation does not restrict itself to being in class and then um just speaking in there right and um there's so many other activities that one could um you know include in the book to encourage that participation you could just ask them to draw um outline guides or concept maps you can ask them you know instead of having teacher Focus to learn a focus ask them to write a letter at the beginning of the um like you know a lesson and then after the lesson what like what have they learned about it and so on so there's um there's a few points that um you know are very important is that the book should be relevant relatable and appropriate to the students depending on what what background they're coming from so therefore there is a very dire need for um for a separate book for Heritage language Learners depending on what interests and life experiences they have had uh which may be very wide in itself but there's certainly very different from the experiences let's say that a foreign language learner is going to have and um with that um I'll just conclude the um presentation thank you so much thank you so much Mansi uh