Oakridge Students with Flying Colors Again

Oakridge has fulfilled its promise again. Students of this India’s largest international school have excelled well and came out with flying colors in CBSE-2013 with remarkable results. Among the 100 students from Oakridge International School Newton campus who appeared for the grade XIIth exams, all of them succeeded making the school proud with a 100% pass percentage.

Oakridge International School is always regarded as a bench mark for world-class holistic education in India. While, the school is known for its revolutionary activity-based education, we always prove it a point that Oakridgers surprise everyone with their academic and non-academic excellence. This year results are just a reflection of the same. 

Some champs who were outstanding... 

 

Blaming Generation Gap

Every generation complains of the existence of what is known as the generation gap. What is this generation gap? It is a common debate amongst most of the parents and their children in the family. Generation gap refers to the poor or rather lack of communication between parents and their children. As a result children often feel left out, ignored or not cared for, as they believe that there parents whom they place their trust upon, do not wish to make an attempt to understand them at all.

For every small child, their parents are there superheroes, whom they believe can do anything in the world. Their parents are capable of solving all their problems, punch every bad guy who comes as a villain in their lives. To be precise, parents mean the world to the kids, but when children approach parents with a different set of ideas or a different kind of behavior, parents often lose their temper as they do not wish to accept this new idea, for reasons of their own and instead of listening patiently and then trying to explain to the kids their violent reaction invokes temper tantrum in the kids and thus begins the war of difference in generations.

Children usually confide in their parents with the belief and the confidence that they will not be rebuked or punished for what they have done. This kind of emotional security is very important at times for every child in this world. However, teenagers who exhibit a very aggressive behavior face from the problem of attention seeking behavior and this is a way they portray their concern before their parents. Such kids are often unable to express and communicate their feelings, which often results in verbal fights with parents.

Adulthood pains and adjustments made to the world outside the safe cocoon of their family’s guidance, often is the fundamental cause of emotional vulnerability undergoing amongst the children. Children often try to mask their actual feelings and exhibit a strong outlook of their character.

Thus, it is the parent’s responsibility of creating and opening up the communication channel with their kid through constant communication and not pestering. Until and unless parents make an attempt to create the right environment for their children at home and help their child to express themselves. Parents have to extend their hand of support and make the child feel safe and secured so that child feels comfortable to reach out to hold their parents hand.

Why to Teach Grammar to Children

Grammar is central to the teaching and learning of languages. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of language to teach well.

Many people, including language teachers, hear the word "grammar" and think of a fixed set of word forms and rules of usage. They associate "good" grammar with the prestige forms of the language, such as those used in writing and in formal oral presentations, and "bad" or "no" grammar with the language used in everyday conversation or used by speakers of non prestige forms. Language teachers who adopt this definition focus on grammar as a set of forms and rules. They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them. This results in bored, disaffected students who can produce correct forms on exercises and tests, but consistently make errors when they try to use the language in context.

Other language teachers, influenced by recent theoretical work on the difference between language learning and language acquisition, tend not to teach grammar at all. Believing that children acquire their first language without overt grammar instruction, they expect students to learn their second language the same way. They assume that students will absorb grammar rules as they hear, read, and use the language in communication activities. This approach does not allow students to use one of the major tools they have as learners: their active understanding of what grammar is and how it works in the language they already know.

According to the old translation method, too much emphasis was placed on grammar. Grammar was thought to be all important and it dictated the terms of language usage. Children at very young age were made to study the complicated rules of grammar. But modern educationists are of the opinion that a pupil who is good at grammar and has studied all the rules will still make the most elementary mistakes in grammar.

Which method works the best is up to the individual teacher, but one thing is certain: "there, they're, and their" all have different meanings, and it is the English teacher's job to make sure this information is cleverly presented. If it is not presented for the benefit and advancement of the students, it must be done at least for the sake of nail-biting, socially disenchanted Grammar police everywhere who look at their news feed on the internet and shed a little tear with every non-agreeing subject/verb pair.