In 1999 during an Intensive teaching Course in Bengali for six weeks, Prof. V. 1. Subrmoniam, the eminent linguist of the country, Hon. Professor (then Hon. Director) of International School of Dravidian Linguistics (ISDL), Thiruvananthapuram, wanted the teachers of Bengali to prepare their fresh teaching materials for the students. His encouraging words inspired me to undertake this work. Due to my involvement in two Speech Synthesis projects of DST, Govt. of India the preparation of the teaching materials has to be delayed for some time. But I continued the survey on the Bengali studies in the ISDL since 80s of the last century. Dr. Abhay Kumar Banerji, Dr. Nilina Abraham, Dr. Sanghamitra Saha and some others conducted occasionally a few short term courses for the South Indian students.
Since 2002 the course has become a regular program of the department i.e. in each year once or twice the course is organized for effective teaching. The teachers are using the instant teaching materials or they are using the materials published by other individuals or institutes like Central Institutes of Indian Languages, Govt. of India, Mysore etc. Naturally the need of our own material was felt badly. Hon. Professor reminded again for the materials and I began to recollect my experiences in the classroom and other literature. But only in 2008, after the 36th AICDL at Erode, Tamilnadu, Prof. B. Gopinathan Nair, Hon. Director, ISDL wanted me to concentrate on the work and complete it as early as possible.
For the preparation of teaching materials I preferred the real classroom experiences of both teaching and learning. Occasionally informal discussions with the teachers and students were conducted. The dissatisfaction of the students and their expectations were noted as the sources to locate the problems of learning. Of course the experience of success has also been noted. Teachers' observations and limitations, students' observations on teaching and teaching materials etc are taken as the basis for a meaningful dialogue to make the participants more confident in their learning.
All Students are not attending the course with an aptitude for language learning. Some of them are coming mainly to enjoy the fellowship, though a group of them are very serious. But the role of a teacher, I felt, is to make the course attractive to them. The environment of the classroom in the ISDL campus, presence of Prof VIS, Hon Director, other senior scholars, academic facilities of the institute, teachers' attention and sincerity etc are always available during the course. But one of the important limitations is the unavailability of the good teaching materials to satisfy the student in the classroom. Our experience shows that the student, who comes for fellowship only at the beginning, becomes gradually interested in learning the language due to the attraction of the said environment. They need a type of self-learning textbooks covering grammar, vocabularies and communicative texts etc, which were not available.
In the introductory classes the materials should be obviously simple but the text materials should be attractive to the students covering grammatical and literary aspects along with their gradual progress. It is found that the poetic rhythm or the vocabulary selection in running texts or the theme of the text helps to create a natural environment in the learner's mind.
"bagha ache amabane. gaye tara caka caka diga. The tiger is in the Mango Forest and the round marks are on its body' was an attractive text to the students. The experience also shows that similar texts of Sahajapatha (1") by Rabindranath Tagore made for the first language learner, is very attractive to the second language learners when those are used as the rapid reading etc. In one of our intensive course when a text was introduced first for the development of hearing ability, the students were enthusiastic to recite it frequently outside the classroom despite the fact that they didn't know the language. They were native speakers of Tamil or Malayalam from Pondicherry University or Kerala University or Madras University etc. Certain texts are found to be very impressive when they were gradually introduced in the classes during the progress of teaching and learning. A student from the Department of German, Kerala University, a Malayalam native speaker who attended the course was found reciting frequently 'mama citte nece nrtye ke ye nace 'a song of Tagore in the outside of the classroom. He was highly impressed by the text.
Another problem raised by some students is that no reference grammar on Bengali written in English is available. Some standard books are available but those are not meant for the primary learners. Similarly the method of teaching also needs the text and other materials according to this need.
Considering all these facts of teaching and learning a decision has been taken earlier that if a set of teaching material is made ready with texts and introductory grammatical notions it may serve the purpose of communication as well as knowledge on the language structure. It may also satisfy the students' interest. Of course it does not deny the teacher's role as teaching is an art in itself. How the grammar, literature and the students' desire will be exercised in the classroom demands the conscious, clever and emotional attention of the teacher.
The text collection from other writers is a tedious effort due to the copyright problem. So that it was avoided following a discussion with Hon Professor and Hon Director. Self-generated text was advised for the work.
During the text preparation a serious contradiction was observed between the development of discourse of the texts and the need for grammatical sections relevant for the systematic learning of the language. Generally a text is a onetime representation whereas the learning of a grammar expects to follow an order of different sections in the temporal axis of learning within a certain period maintaining structural hierarchy. When a writer writes a text s/he does not bother the order of grammatical phenomena in learning but that is important during the course preparation. At the beginning chapters without introducing the simple script, one has to use the conjunct scripts like 'ক্ষ' 'ks' in a word like শিক্ষক 'Siksaka [sikkhok]' 'teacher' or without learning the formation of a compound verb like 'gaane kar-' 'to sing' the author needs to use such forms which is a violation of the order of learning a grammar. Such contradictions were faced frequently even in the classes. Students need the explanation for that. Similarly for the generation of the texuality in a text for the preliminary classes during the use of vocabulary one has to consider the order of learning, order of grammatical function, need for cohesion and coherence etc which are really a difficult task but has been tried to consider to some extent in this work. Finally throughout this book the Roman Transliteration has been used with some IPA symbols to avoid the burden of scripts. Students from any language group can go through the texts as a self-learner without facing any problem either in spelling or in pronunciation. If it helps the student as well as teachers in Bengali teaching and learning the effort will be fruitful.
1. Demography
Bengali is the fourth most popular Language of the world. More than 207,000,000 people use Bengali as their first language, out of which 100,000,000 are in Bangladesh (1994 UBS), 70,561,000 are in India (1997) and 36,439,000 people are in other countries like Malawi, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, USA etc. The total population including the second-language speaker is 211,000,000 (1999 WA). They belonged to different religious groups like Muslim, Hindu, Christian etc (Source Ethnologue Report for Language code).
In India the language is used in West Bengal; Triperah, Jharkhand; Dhanbad, Manbhum, Singhbhum, Santal Parganas in Bihar; Goalpara, Kachard in Assam; Garo Hills in Meghalaya; Mizoram, Nagaland. The map, drawn below, has recorded the distribution of Bengali population in different provinces following the report of the 1991 census.
[Source: Census of India on Language and States by Dr. M. Vijayaunni, Register General - Census Commissioner, India. Some states have no data as it was not in the report. The information for Chatrish Gardh, Jharkhanda, and Uttaranchal was not included separately in the report, which have been formed after the census.]
2. Official and academic Status
The speakers of Bengali enjoy the official status in India and Bangladesh, regional official status in West Bengal & Tripura and sub regional official status in Kachada district of Assam. The language has national status in Bangladesh and it is the main language there. As medium of instruction the language is used till the postgraduate level in different disciplines especially of arts subjects in West Bengal. There is no such bar to use the language in Degree Level. Now a days in Engineering and other Professional courses Bengali is used in Text books. Other than India and Bangladesh Bengali is taught in different universities of foreign countries.
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