Story reading: Tasks as tools to facilitate values among second language learners

Pages:531-533
Shashirekha, S. M. (Department of Education, Davangere University, Davangere, Karnataka )

Values are powerful determinants of human accomplishments, progress, and fulfillment. Due to advancement and development of technology, the face of the world is changing very quickly. Technology is influencing all aspects of human life, way of living, and therefore everything changing very rapidly. We observe more influence in the field of education, economy, social and cultural climate. Through mass and electronic medias, there is information explosion in every moment that one finds it very difficult to keep pace with this. We find change in the classroom conditions, change in the learner behavior, change in the style of learning, new innovations in teaching and learning process. Because of aforementioned changes, it is difficult kindle moral and aesthetic sensibilities of learners, to raise their level of value consciousness, stimulate them to think freely and critically, to develop the ability to judge actions and events rationally. Hence, the general tone and ethos of the school act as a powerful source of value education. Value education is not separate activity that is distinct from the teachers other academic activities. It is necessary to facilitate values with reference to the concrete realities in which children live and function. The value education should be rooted in realities of school and teachers. Teacher may facilitate different values directly via different classroom learning tasks. This paper presents some of the story reading tasks to facilitate values among second language learners. Teacher can select the stories such as “The Enchanted pool”, “The three questions”, and “Justice above self”, which are prescribed for 9th standard second language learners. Using these stories by giving reading task teacher can facilitate values like patience, sympathy, kindness, honesty, helpfulness, faithfulness, forgiveness, truth, conscience, and justice among second language learners.