THE IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGICAL INSTRUCTIONAL PRACTICES ON ENGLISH LISTENING AND SPEAKING ACHIEVEMENT IN GRADE 3 OF PRIMARY SCHOOL IN MAHARASHTRA

A tremendous expansion of primary education has taken place during the post-independence period under various program instituted by the Government of India. Post-independence, the policy of the government has been to provide free and compulsory education to all children up to 14 years of age. Several programs have been initiated by the government of India as well as state government of Maharashtra to provide universal access to education, to reduce the drop-out rates and the ensure achievement of minimum levels of learning. Operation Black Board (1986), District Primary Education Program (1994 to 2001), Serva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) (2001 to till date) are a few of the programs launched in the last couple of decades. Attempts have also been made to make education available to school drop-outs, children from habitations without school, working children and girls who cannot attend schools through the Non-Formal Education Programs. As a result of these efforts 94 percent of country`s rural population have been brought under primary school within 1 Km. At the upper primary stage 84 percent of the rural population have schools within a distance of three km. Now Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) has been launched to pursue universal elementary education on mission mod however the processes inside the classroom are a different issue all together. A disturbing finding of Annual Status Education Report of Rural Maharashtra is that of the children surveyed in classes up to the eighth grade in primary school, 28 percent students can read simple statement in English up to 8 standard (grade). It means 72 percents of students could not read simple statement in English up to the eighth grade in school of Rural Maharashtra. The teaching English is the major issues in the class room of primary school. In this project, researcher focus on the deficiencies in English, This one of the subject is the major subject to promote children for higher edcucation outside the rural areas. The English language was introduced in Maharashtra in all schools (Grade I to IV) in the year 2000. A large scale teachers’ training programme under the heading SMART PT (Statewide Massive and Rigorous Training for Primary Teachers) was undertaken. In 2000, English at Primary level was introduced and 168.290 teachers of Standards I and II were trained in 1997-98 and 170.353 teachers of standards III and IV were trained in 1998-99 (pages 84-85, Human Development Report, Government of Maharashtra, 2002). However, it is still unclear how effective the delivery of the course content was. Undertaking an intensive training programme on a regular basis on a statewide scale may not be feasible and hence, Technological instructional practices offers a pragmatic solution. So that the technological instructions had been made in this research was one of the important issues. Therefore a technological instructional practices had been implemented as an experiment in the selected primary school for the 3 grade students. The impact of technological instructional practices on English Listening and Speaking achievement in grade 3 of primary school of rural Maharashtra had been studied. To assess the minimum level of learning of Listening and speaking in 3 grade students. To develop the technological instructional program for overcome the deficeancies of English language among primary school children are the main objectives of the study.