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Teaching and Researching Reading in Indian Context

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Megala M1 & Anil Premraj J2

1Research Scholar,  2Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Social Science and Languages,Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore. Email: megalamanisharaj@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.17

Abstract

The importance placed on reading skill emerges from the necessity of performing well that starts from primary stage of learning to the workplace scenario. One of the first things children are pressurized to do at early schooling is ‘Learn to Read’ and of course that remarks their progressive transformation to become an expert in reading. Using descriptive method of research, the study traces the importance and efforts taken by second language teachers and students towards the development of reading skills from primary class to university education in Indian context. It also addresses the existing lag in English language education, necessity of infusing the requirement of specially designed curriculum, and to fulfil the need of learners especially who felt difficulty in reading. The study suggested skill-based instruction in detail at each level as a remedy for rectifying deficits in reading.

Keywords: ESL, Subskills instruction, Reading skill, NCERT.

Performative Subjects & the Irresistible Lack of Understanding in David Mamet’s Oleanna: a Butlerian Discourse Analysis

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Hojatolla Borzabadi Farahani1 & Mariam Beyad2

1Department of English language, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran

2Associate Professor, University of Tehran. Email: n_bfarahani@yahoo.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.16

Abstract:

The present study tends to explore the constitution of power and its formative effects on David Mamet’s play, Oleanna, a very controversial work dealing with sexual harassment and political correctness. The analysis is going to be done applying views and results of Judith Butler’s notion of gender and identity trouble to the play first through explanation of related key concepts like difference, decentering, subject and language, and then utilizing them to analyze the roots of sudden, surprising transformations and role-reversals of the involved characters, John and Carol, through the three acts. Furthermore, it is tried to find out the causes of unavoidable violence within the contexts of the relations going between the characters.

Keywords: gender, identity, difference, decentering, performative, understanding, violence, discourses, language

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Features of Adolescent Deviant Discourse in Social Networks

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V. V. Gridina1, V. N. Antonova2, I. G. Malanchuk3, A. V. Kipchatova4, O. I. Katlishin5

1 Samara State Technical University, Samara, Russia. ORCID: 0000-0003-3183-0448. Email: samavera@mail.ru,

2 North-Eastern Federal University named after M.K. Ammosov, Yakutsk, Russia. Email:  antegor@mail.ru

3 Independent Non-Profit Organisation Expert Union KONTEXT, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Email:  cora1@inbox.ru

4 Krasnoyarsk State Pedagogical University named after Viktor Astafyev, Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Email: allakipchatova@mail.ru

5 Perm State Agro-Technological University named after Academician D.N. Pryanishnikov, Perm, Russia, ORCID: 0000-0003-2869-2312. Email: katol81@yandex.ru

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.15

 

Abstract

The flip side of “networking” was the emergence of new types and ways of social interaction between individuals and social groups, characterized, among other things, by socially dangerous manifestations. These manifestations are expressed in the absence of a system of sanctions and control over the dissemination of any type of information on the Internet, difficulties in identifying ideologues and leaders of extremist and separatist associations that also conduct their activities using social networks and much more. The younger generation easily perceived the entire multilateral network world with its ambiguous consequences for the system of its own norms, values and behaviors. It is not necessary to mention once again that the informal, youthful groups of a criminal nature today have changed their internal structure, mission and functional features. It is enough to recall a number of mass protest actions regularly organized using the internet and other social networks, including offline. Recently, quite often mass actions of a destructive nature have occurred with the participation of adolescents of middle and senior school age, whose activities were coordinated through the global Internet and other modern means of communication. At the same time, the scientific and expert community does not yet have reliable data on the mechanisms of such interaction, its trends and patterns. The social network of a teenager with deviant behavior will be interpreted by us as a special type of connection between the social positions of adolescents, the closest social environment, including the school environment and close relatives, which are formed on the basis of social capital resources, goals of interaction between these actors interplay between their positions.

Keywords: adolescents, deviations, social networks, social interaction, communication, age psycholinguistics, discursive behavior.

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Artworks by Ansel Oommen

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Ansel Oommen, MLS (ASCP) is a Clinical Laboratory Technologist, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University Medical Center. His artworks and poem emerged out of his intense experience of the pandemic situation. He writes:

“As a medical technologist working in clinical microbiology in NYC, I have been caught in the epicenter of the American outbreak. Since mid March, I have been conducting SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests on hundreds of patient samples to aid in the diagnosis of COVID-19. As the first human being to see the results of those tests before releasing them out into the world, I was bound by an immense gravity. As an artist, I processed my losses by dissecting, excising, and reconstructing my grief into various collages. These collages were composed of bio-hazard labels, a familiar laboratory item, to convey how elements of politics, public health, mental health, and ecology overlap. The use of bio-hazard labels also alludes to my academic training in toxicology. By capitalizing on aposematic color codes, these pieces are visual warnings for viewers to stop and reflect on the various threats that plague our world.”

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Autoimmunity

We are not immune as we once believed

We are not immune to business as usual
When business has always been busy
Prescribing profits over prudence
With false prophecies of golden years

We are not immune to the viral strains
Of rabid voices coughing up empty words
Ever mutating sense into missense
Each echo more feral than before

We are not immune to the dissemination of lies
Aerosolized and transmitted as truth
For even with repeat exposure
We still react to what was never foreign

We are not immune to the poisons of privilege
As we amputate left to save what is right
As we amputate right to save what is left
When instead, the diagnosis was truly systemic

We are not immune to being the greatest
When we fill our graveyards to be the least

As we reach the end stage of life as we know it
While we await a vaccine for all our ills
Let us remember:
The disease was always within ourselves

The pandemic was just a symptom.

Artworks

Pandemicon
Silent Spring

 

Published on May  04, 2020. © Artist

Artworks by Joydip Sengupta

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203 views

Joydip Sengupta is a Visual Artist based out of Kolkata. He had his education from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Scotland, UK, College of Art, New Delhi, India, Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. While working with imagery he quite often finds himself combining organic forms along with structural elements to create contrast and to project the viewpoint of human expansion through the man-made and its implications on nature. He relies on a combination of accidents and chance encounters with form and imagery to build up the narration. A certain space triggers a certain response. This depends on the interplay of drawing, painted surface and abstract shapes that intermingle to create a sense of ambiguity. He is interested in creating mystery by tweaking reality where the familiar and the unfamiliar fuse to create a distinct realm that represents the world we live in and yet transcends it.

A few of his solo exhibitions are as follows:

  • 2019: “INTERFACE”, Artworld, Sarala’s Art Centre, Chennai
  • 2018: “CONUNDRUM”, Ganges Art Gallery, Kolkata
  • 2013: “Sensoria”, Artworld, Sarala’s Art Centre, Chennai
  • 2011: “Dialectica”, Ganges Art Gallery, Kolkata, India
  • 2008: “Elastic Dreams”, Pundole Art Gallery &Arushi Arts, Kitab Mahal, Mumbai, India
  • 2007: “Equinox Shift”, Gallery Bose Pacia, Kolkata, India

More information can be found at https://joydip.portfoliobox.net

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Artworks

Biomorph, 29.5 x 29.5, Acrylic on paper
Encounter, 36 x 24 inches,Acrylic on Canvas
Resonance, 54 x 54 inches, Acrylic on Canvas
The Claw, 36 x 30 inches, Acrylic on Canvas
The Following, 54 x 60, Acrylic on canvas, 2020

Published on May  04, 2020. © Artist

Poem by Angela Duggins

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210 views

Angela Duggins is currently a Ph.D. student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Il, USA where she studies rural performance and the efficacy of persuasive performance. She holds two previous degrees in performance and communication: one from Harding University and another from East Tennessee State. Her original compositions have been performed on stage at festivals across the United States. Through performative and autoethnographic poems, she explores themes of access, oppression, and exoticization as they particularly apply to Ozark culture and performance depictions of Ozark culture. Her research has been presented at the annual conferences of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, MidAmerica Theatre Conference, the Association for Scholarly Theatre Research, and the Denver University Women’s Conference. She currently serves as the junior cochair of the graduate student subcommittee for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. She has a coauthored chapter in the forthcoming Handbook of Organizational Autoethnography.

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Before the World Stood Still

Before the world stood still, I did not exist.
I left my exoskeleton behind
when I ripped myself out of my home,
stumbled,
to climb the halls of green ivy.
I knew
that only when I ground my voice
down to its smoothest form,
bashed it against echoing cliffs,
would I get to speak for the shell of my memory.

I am Ozarker.
I am a child of the red clay.
I know which fish to fry.
I know which mushroom to eat.
I know which path to hike.
I know
the cold of a 5:00 a.m. gun
as dawn melts away.
I can provide when food cannot be bought.

I am wounded.
I know the feeling of a hand flat across my face.
“don’t tell anyone”
I know when to look away.
“Nobody gets to know our business”
Take a trash bag out to the dumpster and walk away.
Wait ten minutes.
It will walk away
Maybe it had something white in it.
maybe it had something green.
Maybe it was harmless.
“Maybe you need to mind your own business.”

I’m safe now
in a university town
with quaint little shops
and consent posters
and a script on my desk
that says
“my people are good
and they deserve to be heard”

But the world has stopped,
and there are people
watching the decay of the shell float by:
Winters Bone
Ozark.
They see the darkness.
They see the hand slam into my face,
the cigarette press into my leg.

I get a text
“Is that your life?”

And…
And…

“Yes”

But there is more.
There are sunsets
and red clay towers
and bonfires
and baby showers.

Before the world stood still,
I did not exist.
Now, I half exist,
And I don’t know which is worse.

Published on May  04, 2020. © Author.

Eco-psychology and The Role of Animals to Heal Trauma in Life of Pi

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540 views

Diren Ashok Khandhar1, Hardev Kaur Jujar Singh2, Rosli Talif3, Zainor Izat Zainal4

Universiti Putra Malaysia.

Corresponding author: ORCID: 0000-0002-0526-2435. Email diren.msa@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.14

 

Abstract

Psychological trauma brings about adverse effects on affected victims and the manifestations vary from an individual to another. Some of the more common traits identified in trauma victims include extreme anxiety, nightmares, hallucinations and flashbacks; in which there is no specific reference of time on when a victim may start to exhibit these characteristics. In addition, the mode and duration taken for recovery of psychological trauma may also differ depending on the severity of the initial trauma and assistance available to trauma victims for recovery to transpire. As such, this present article intends to study the varied manifestations of trauma in Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001) and to identify how trauma was negotiated through the human-animal relationship formed in the literary text. Besides employing concepts under Trauma theory, this article would also elucidate the concept of ecological unconscious under the lens of Eco-psychology to identify how the incorporation of nature, animals specifically, plays an integral part in the recovery process of a trauma victim.

Keywords: Animals, Eco-psychology, Recovery, Trauma.

 

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Bioterrorism & Biodefense: An Environmental and Public Health Preparedness

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Saira Gori1 & Anjani Singh Tomar2

1Gujarat National Law University. Email: sgori@gnlu.ac.in

2Associate Professor of Law, Gujarat National Law University, Gujarat

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.13

Abstract

Humans, plants and animals have always been susceptible to the threat of pathogenic microorganisms and their toxins which are present in the nature. Although these microorganisms occur naturally in the environment but they are unnaturally inflicted upon the society in the form of biological weapons. Bioterrorism is defined as the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria or other agents used to cause illness or death in people, and also in animals or plants. Biological weapons have often been referred to as the “poor man’s atomic bomb. Biological attacks are more likely to be covert. A covert attack is most disturbing because the event itself might be completely unnoticed until numerous victims fell ill and their common illness has been diagnosed. The spread of biological agent does not have an instantaneous effect because there is a delay between exposure and onset of the illness. Further, it is often very difficult for historians and microbiologists to differentiate natural epidemics from alleged biological attacks. The current concerns regarding the use of biological weapons result from the increasing number of countries that are engaged in the proliferation of such weapons and their acquisition by the terrorist organizations. The purpose of the present study is to analyse the growing threat of the bioterrorism in the world. It further entails to delineate the sub-sets of bioterrorism, which are agro-terrorism, environmental-terrorism. Further, the impact of bioterrorism on public health, environment is correctly spelled out. Major focus is also given on the current threat of bioterrorism on India and the legal framework which India possesses to counter such threat.

Keywords: Bioterrorism, public health, environment.

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An Obituary for Innocence: Revisiting the Trauma during the Khmer Rouge Years in Cambodia through Children’s Narratives

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Srestha Kar

PhD Research Scholar, Dept. of English,North Eastern Hill University, Shillong. ORCID: 0000-0003-4054-3213 Email: sreshtha.kar@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.12

Abstract

The totalitarian regime of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia under the dictatorship of Pol Pot initiated a saga of brutal mass genocide that exterminated millions and completely upended the social and political machinery of the country with its repressive policies. One of the most atrocious aspects of the regime was the deployment of tens of thousands of children as child soldiers through the indoctrination of the ideologies of the state as well as through coercion and intimidation. This paper intends to study the impact of child soldiering on child psyche through an analysis of two texts- Luong Ung’s First They Killed My Father and Patricia McCormick’s Never Fall Down. The paper shall explore how militarization and authoritarian rule dismantles commonly held perceptions about childhood as a period of dependency and vulnerability, where instead, children become unwitting perpetrators of horrible crimes that ultimately triggers trauma and disillusionment. In its analysis of the texts, the paper shall attempt to use Hannah Arendt’s concept of the ‘banality of evil’ in the context of the child soldiers whose conformation to the propaganda of the Khmer Rouge lacked any ideological conviction.

Keywords: Cambodia, Khmer Rouge, child soldiers, trauma, banality of evil, children’s narratives, agency.

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Indian Women at Crossroads: a Tale of Conflict, Trauma and Survival

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Sanghamitra Choudhury1 & Shailendra Kumar2

1Department of Peace and Conflict Studies, Sikkim University, India. Email: schoudhuryassam@gmail.com

2Department of Management, Sikkim University, India

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.11

Abstract:

Armed conflict across and between communities results in massive levels of destruction to the people- physically, culturally, economically and psychologically. The genesis of most of the conflicts that has engulfed the north-eastern states of India is either to preserve the unique identity or due to lack of economic development and opportunities for the large majority of the people or both. Women as heterogeneous group of social actors are arguably more affected than their male counterparts in conflict situations. Armed conflict exacerbates inequalities in gender relations that already exist in society. In an ethnically divided society in Assam, women bodies are generally used as ‘ethnic markers’ thereby have more specific manifestations. The paper aims to analyze the multiple roles that women are subjected to and play in armed conflict in the state of Assam. The paper is going to highlight that woman in NE India with a special reference to Assam cannot be categorized just as ‘victims’ of conflict. Even when they are victims; they exercise their agency and survival techniques despite adverse conditions. Beyond judicial measures, how women grapple with the problem of the ‘truths’ of the past in post conflict scenario will also be highlighted.

Keywords: Armed conflict, Assam, Ethnicity, Northeast India, Trauma.

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