Index

ABSTRACT

Languages play a vital role in human life. Language is a means of communication. It is the basis of human progress. It is the flesh and blood of human culture. Without language civilization could hardly even have begun and certainly could never have attained its higher forms. The teaching and learning of English in our schools are at very chaotic state. We have daily compulsory periods in English but our students passing out of schools perform very poorly in the subject and its practices. Counselling services play an important part in the development of the human being as an individual and education is the foundation for the development of human potential. Although the teaching-learning situation constitutes the heart of the educational process, yet counselling gives it a more meaningful purpose. The study here throws light upon the impact of counselling sessions on academic achievement of students in English at senior secondary level. The paper here reports the findings on effectiveness of counselling sessions which has been introduced in schools, KendriyaVidayalayas in particular on the achievement in English. The finding presented herewith is an outcome of an experimental research carried forward by the researchers on 72 senior secondary students. The study found out that the students those underwent with counselling sessions performed very well in comparison to the control group. It was also concluded that the effect of counseling sessions were sex as well as stream (science vs. commerce) neutral.

Keywords: Achievement in english, Counselling, Kendriyavidyalayas students.

DOI: 10.20448/801.41.111.117

Citation | Vikramjit Singh; Jay Kumar Jha (2019). Effect of Counselling Sessions on Achievement of Students in English at Senior Secondary Level. American Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 4(1): 111-117

Copyright: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Funding: This study received no specific financial support.

Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

History : Received: 14 March 2019 / Revised: 24 April 2019 / Accepted: 27 May 2019 / Published: 22 July 2019.

Publisher: Online Science Publishing

1. INTRODUCTION

Languages play a vital role in human life. Language is a means of communication. It is the basis of human progress. It is the flesh and blood of human culture. Without language civilization could hardly even have begun and certainly could never have attained its higher forms. Different linguists have defined language in different ways. According to Sapir (1921) “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily reduced symbols.”

Bloch and Trager (1942) says, “Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group co-operates.”

The place of English in school education has been a subject of debate ever since Independence. When India attained Independence on August 15, 1947, there were a certain people who wanted to banish English from the country lock, stock and barrel. Consequently, the study of English in many states was delayed. Not only was that, the number of periods spent on teaching English at school stage drastically curtailed. Some states even made the study of English optional.

Our Constitution envisages that Hindi would replace English for all official purposes by 1965. But even before this deadline was reached, the Parliament passed in 1963 a Bill declaring English as the Associate Official Language of India till and indefinite period of time. This is the position till today.

The Kothari Education Commission (1966) which examined thoroughly the whole field of Indian education, assigned a compulsory place to the study of English. The Commission evolved a three language formula which is as under:
Every student should study the following:

a) The mother tongue (or) The Regional Language
b) The official language of the union (or) The Associative official language of the union as long as it exists.
c) A modern Indian or Foreign language nor covered under I and above and other than that as the medium of instruction.

The following comment by Prof. V.K. Gokak sums up very aptly the deplorable condition of teaching English in India. He says, “The teaching of English in our schools is in a chaotic state today. Pupils are taught English for about six periods a week for six years. But it has been estimated that they hardly know 150 words by the time they join a university. This means that they have hardly been able to learn English words at the rate of one word per period. They do not know how to use the commonest structures of English.”

The conditions of teaching English vary from state to state and even from place to place. By and large the performance of the students in urban schools is better than that of the students in rural schools. Some of the shortcomings in our programme of teaching English are as follows:

• Lack of clear- cut policy
• Little understanding of aims of teaching English
• Dearth of competent teachers
• Wrong methods of teaching
• Defective textbooks
• Faulty system of examination
• Insufficient provision of teaching aids
• Over-crowded classes
• Lack of motivation among the students

Counselling services play an important part in the development of the human being as an individual and education is the foundation for the development of human potential. Although the teaching-learning situation constitutes the heart of the educational process, yet counselling gives it a more meaningful purpose. The change taking place due to the rapid technological advancements, increasingly complex society, need for a dynamic personality and outstanding leadership, unusual demands upon the young people –all contribute to the need of counselling services in the educational system. Counsellingprogrammes aim at providing independence, resolving conflicts, reducing anxiety and provide information to the students.

Counselling helps in developing abilities, interests, talents and personality characteristics in order to develop realistic academic and career goals. Counsellors use interviews, counselling sessions, interest and aptitude assessment tests and other methods to evaluate and advise students. The competent school counsellor understands:

• The learning process and the academic environment and develops programmes and interventions that promote achievement of all the students.
• The concepts, principles and strategies that enable students to achieve and be academically successful.
• The relationship of academic performance to the world of work, family life and community service.
• The positive direction for academic programme planning and for implementing academic support systems.
• Works collaboratively with all school personnel and parents to ensure student academic achievement.
• Initiates interventions that maximize learning, identifies learning styles, and teaches good study habits.
• Motivates students to learn and achieve.

On the basis of the above discussion it can be safely said that change is the objective in counselling, change which is positive, action based and constructive. Since an educationist prime responsibility is to bring a desirable change in the behaviour of his students and to inculcate in them attitudes which are needed for positive thinking, a general thrust is upon the school system to impart counselling to the needy students for maximum transaction of the curriculum. Similar to the other subjects, the classroom transaction in English may also be maximized by organisingcounselling sessions as a pre-learning activity.

The study thus throws light upon the impact of counselling sessions on academic achievement of students in English at senior secondary level. It is intended to provide on the valuable inter-relationship between counselling sessions and achievement in English. The introduction of counselling session in the curriculum is a must if our education system claims to be a modern system. At the senior secondary level, we deal with adolescent students. It is a period of rapid change. This time the adolescent, if not counselled properly, undergoes a lot of problems. Right information and assistance in goal setting need to be provided so that they can make best use of their time and resources. The selection of right subject and focussed teaching-learning will help them to achieve better.

Of late, it has been seen that while opting the subject/stream at senior secondary level, peer pressure, parents’ choice, social prestige, socio-economic background etc become the dominant factors. Little consideration is being given for students’ interest, aptitude, intelligence, creativity etc which results in under-performance by them. In most of the schools affiliated to CBSE, English becomes their one of subjects at the senior secondary level, irrespective of their streams and inclination. Moreover, students concentrate more on the subjects which are directly related to their stream and consider English as a familiar, easy and time- pass subject. Subsequently, they lose their interest in English and adopt the practice of cramming important answers just before the examinations to get through. Often it has been seen that the students who were very bright in English at earlier stages become mediocre or some time weak students in English at the senior secondary level. The gravity of the problem demands the intervention of the counselling for restoring interest in English among the students of senior secondary level and their better achievement in the subject. The paper here reports the findings on effectiveness of counsellingsessions which has been introduced in schools, KendriyaVidayalayas in particular on the achievement in English. The finding presented herewith is an outcome of an experimental research carried forward by the researchers. The title of this study is thus-

1.1. Objectives of the study

The present study aims to investigate the effect of counselling sessions on academic achievement in English of Class-XI students and the following objectives have been formulated:

• To find out the significant effect of counselling sessions in the achievement in English of Class-XI students.
•  To find out the sex related differences in the achievement in English of Class-XI students facilitated with counselling sessions.
• To find out the significant differences in the achievement in English of Class-XI students from different streams facilitated with counselling sessions.

1.2. Hypotheses of the Study

• There is significant difference in the gain scores in achievement in English between experimental (facilitated with counselling sessions.) and control groups.
• There is no significant difference in the gain scores in achievement in English between the boys and girls of Class-XI those are facilitated with counselling sessions.
• There is no significant difference in the gain scores in achievement in English between the Science and Commerce Stream students of Class-XI those are facilitated with counselling sessions.

2. METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY

The present study was an experimental study. The specific design used here was a true experimental design i.e. Pre-test –post-test equivalent group design for studying the effect of counselling sessions on achievement of students in English at senior secondary level. Through one to one matching of the subjects score on their performance in Unit-II Examination of English experimental and control groups were formed. Initially the groups were administered with Pre-test on Achievement in English.

Afterwards both the groups were taught some of the topics from the syllabus of English during which the experimental group participated in regular counselling sessions. The investigator kept close observation on the students during the classes. After the treatment period of 15 days both the groups were again administered with Post-test on achievement in English. The main aim of the study was to examine the effect of counselling sessions on the performance in English of the experimental group. The design of the study can be thus understood through Table 1.

2.1. Sample

72 students of Class – XI of KendriyaVidyalaya New Bogaigaon, Assam, from both Science and Commerce, were selected by in the investigator. Two equivalent groups of 36 each were formed through one to one matching of the subjects’ scores in their Unit-II Examination of English. The details of the sample were as below:

2.2. Tools of the Study

The investigator has used the following tools and techniques for conducting the experiment and collecting the data of the study.

1. Counselling session as conducted by the expert counsellors during the treatment period. The entire counsellingprogramme consisted of different stages of counselling like primary stage, responding stage, integrative understating and decision making.
2. Class-XI students’ score of unit Test- II was taken as the Pre-test scores. This paper was for 40 marks and was set as per the latest pattern of CBSE and KVS. The investigator has prepared an English Achievement Test for Class –XI which was used as the Post-test. This paper was again for 40 marks and as per the latest pattern of CBSE and KVS.

3. RESULTS

The data collected through the experiment conducted has been analysed and the findings on the framed hypotheses have been presented below.

Ha: There is significant difference in the gain scores in achievement in English between experimental (facilitated with counselling sessions.) and control groups.

The above hypothesis has been analysed using the t-test for comparing the differences between the gain scores of experimental and control groups and the results obtained has been presented below in Table 2.

The obtained t-ratio value (8.91) has been found to be significant and thus the frame hypothesis is accepted thus there is significant effect of counselling sessions on students’ achievement in English. The comparative view on gain scores in achievement in experimental and control group is thus presented below in Figure 1.

To test the hypothesis below t-test statistics has been used and the findings have been summarised inTable 3.

H0.1: There is no significant difference in the gain scores in achievement in English between the boys and girls of Class-XI those are facilitated with counselling sessions.

The above table results revealed that the differences in the gain scores between the girls and boys have been found to be not significant. Thus the framed hypothesis is accepted and the sex related differences are not there in terms of effectiveness of the counselling classes on the achievements in English. This finding has been shown in Figure 2.

H0.2:There is no significant difference in the gain scores in achievement in English between the Science and Commerce Stream students of Class-XI those are facilitated with counselling sessions.

The testing of above hypothesis and the findings thus obtained through t-test is as shown in Table 4.

The above table shows that the obtained t-ratio (0.206) is not significant at 0.05 level of significance and thus the null hypothesis is accepted and it can be concluded that there is no significant difference in the performance in English between the science and commerce stream students when they are facilitated with counselling classes. This finding has been also shown through Figure 3.

4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The results obtained in the table reveals that the counselling sessions organised for the students has worked very well. The counselling of the adolescent students regarding their difficulties faced during learning, their confusion regarding their career choices, life decisions etc. has helped them to concentrate on their studies and do well in their examinations. The students of class XI are at very critical stage of their life. Their age group which falls in the stage of adolescence itself is a very challenging stage from which they have to successfully pass through and achieve success in life. This age group is a stage of stress and storm and thus the sudden physical growth as well as abrupt hormonal changes may mislead them in many fronts. It has been found that many students of high calibre in their studies have miserably performed in their studies at senior secondary level. The schools as well as the parents find it very difficult to keep their children focussed in their studies and not to go out of track. The study done here and the findings thus obtained here may encourage the stakeholders to streamline the students’ energy in the direction of their studies. Once this is done they may excel in their board exams as well as select appropriate career options which are suitable for them. The findings also suggest that counselling must be a regular exercise in the schools to keep the students disciplined and for the smooth functioning of the school activities. It also has the scope for providing value based education to the children.

REFERENCES

Bloch, B. and G.L. Trager, 1942. Outline of linguistic analysis. Special publications of the linguistic society of America. Baltimore: Linguistic Society of America.

Kothari Education Commission, 1966. Article shared by Bhawna Bawa. Available from http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/education/kothari-education-commission-1964-66/76816 [Accessed 15th June 2019].

Sapir, E., 1921. Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 7: 7-8.