"Critical Pedagogy" Adopted by High School English Teachers with reference to Listening Skill of Students in Manipur

This paper presents the results from a qualitative research study that explores the experiences of high school teachers in the field of pedagogy. The study considers teachers who may not have explicitly learned about or applied innovative practice in teaching English. It investigates how feasible and desirable they find the techniques and pedagogical approaches to be based on their teaching experiences in school with largely upper -middle class students, so the issue of applying pedagogical approaches with affluent students adds a dimension of interest to this study. It was generally expected that school teachers would be implementing several teaching approaches prescribed in NCF-2005 but these pedagogies were found only partially implemented by them at Elementary stage in Manipur. Probably this could be one of the main reasons that the students are not excellent in communicative skill which are emerging demand of English. Therefore, there is a need to address this issue because it may not help future careers of the children in this global market of English. After the identification of this problem, ten schools (5 Private English medium schools and 5 Government schools) were selected for our study. Among these 5 Private schools, 2 of them were convent schools. Of the 5 Government schools, one is a model school where relatively more facility has been created by the Government. In order to carry out the investigation, questionnaires were administered to the teachers of English, who are working in these ten schools; and their responses were analyzed. In addition, the Heads/Principals were also consulted by the investigator in relation to teaching/learning process, evaluation systems and their administration. We found some discrepancies in methods, approaches and techniques adopted by teachers due to which low achievement in English occurs. We assess listening of the students with some of techniques which could be used as innovative practice in the classroom transaction for developing life skills. Key words: Pedagogical pedagogy, Elementary stage (Primary +Upper Primary), NCF-2005, Listening skill, Teaching Methodology, Teaching English.