PROMOTION OF TECHNOLOGY ENABLED READING AMONG SCHOOL STUDENTS DURING COVID 19 PANDEMIC CONDITION

                                                                ABSTRACT

The period of lockdown associated with Covid-19 spread was  a time of emotional breakdown for human beings, especially children. The article attempts to state how technology enabled reading can give relaxation to the children and also how they will automatically develop their linguistic skills through this process of reading. The article recommends the usage of E-books, E-readers,journals and digital libraries to ensure the easy availability of reading materials for children.

KEY WORDS: Pandemic, stress, technology enabled reading,linguistic skills,mental stress    

INTRODUCTION

“The Covid-19 pandemic has spread worldwide, has made millions of people sick and triggered an international response spearheaded by WHO to halt its spread.From Wuhan, China it spread like wildfire.The virus has now visited almost every country in the world,bringing about death and debility.Covid 19 is presently ravaging the whole world without sparing anybody. Somehow or the other, almost every person in the world has been affected,” (Koley and Dhole, 2021).But the age group who are the worst affected was children .Children were forced to live within the four walls of their house. They were forbidden from going to school, playing with their friends or even from spending some time outside.Along with the threat of Covid-19, they also faced the much larger threat of depression and absence of mental well being.”The Covid-19 pandemic has affected us both physically as well as emotionally, be it adults or children. The lockdown was a big transition, necessitating variable degrees of adjustments. This ‘adjustment’, by definition, is stress. For children, uncertainty, social isolation, lack of peer to peer interaction and no outdoor activities have led to signs of irritability, boredom, anxiety, depression, stress, fear, worry, and other negative feelings. “(Taneja, 2020)

IMPORTANCE OF TECHNOLOGY ENABLED READING

The best means to relieve mental stress of children in the lockdown period is to encourage them to spend time reading. Reading is one of the four language skills along with listening,speaking and writing.”Reading is an extraordinary achievement when one considers the number of levels and components that must be mastered.”( McNamara, 2007) It is process by which we gather information,entertain ourselves and enhance our linguistic skills. Because of the recent advancements in the technological field, numerous opportunities are available for children to engage in reading, even when they are not able to access libraries physically. The first one is  the chance to access E- books or electronic books. Electronic books are seen to promote literacy skills and reading skills in students. “As the literacy world adapts to the transformation of reading options offered by ebooks, the choice of reading on paper or screen seems rarely to be an ‘either/or’ situation for most readers, with each form of reading suiting a different situation. However, it is important to recognise that the use of electronic texts is becoming an increasingly important part of students’ literacy learning, and the number and quality of ebooks available for children and young people to read for pleasure is increasing year on year.”( Picton,2014), Here comes the importance of e- readers such as Kindle in fostering the reading skills of students.

Another means to enhance the reading skills of children is to encourage them to read blogs. A blog is a regularly updated webpage or website. Blogs give a platform for students to improve reading comprehension skills and also to improve their literary skills. By accessing blogs, children can maintain an up- to-date track of recent events, familiarise with reviews of famous books and become autonomous learners. Thus blogs become pathways to wide vistas of the literary world.The  blog software is easy to use and can be a motivational tool for learners. “As students seek out and read the blogs of other bloggers, they will need to develop their reading skills and learn to be critical of what they are reading, thus again developing their literacy skills”( Clughen and Hardy, 2012)

Also the reading skills of students can be enhanced by accessing online or digital libraries. A digital library is a collection of textual, numeric data, scanned images, graphics, audio and video recordings that provides access to digital collection for ease of retrieval of information to the users. Digital library is characterised by features such as flexibility and ease of accessibility. In India we have National Digital Library of India which is a project under the Ministry of Human Resource development of the Government of India.

CONCLUSION

“The experience of stress is so unavoidable that attempts to eliminate all stress would simply create more stress….Even small steps towards stress relief can bring great pay offs, as they lead to a chain reaction of positive change.”(Scott, 2013). Reading is one such means to remove stress and improve mental health of children especially in this period of Covid-19. Through the strategic use of technology that the children possess, they can make it a fruitful period of acquiring linguistic skills such as creativity, vocabulary expansion, broadening of perspectives and thus attain a purgatory effect. In addition to this, reading promotes cognitive development and  cultivation of values among children.In short, reading gives pleasure to the young hearts of little children and make them well equipped with a sagacious attitude and good literary skills.

REFERENCES

Hardy,.C & Boulton.,H.Writing in the Virtual Environment.Writing in the virtual environment - CORE.https://core.ac.uk/Display/30636812

Koley, Topos., & Dhole, Monika.(2021). The Covid-19 Pandemic:The Deadly  Coronavirus Outbreak.Routledge.

Taneja, Vikas.(2020, November 20). Is the Covid-19 Pandemic Making Children Introverts. The New Indian Express.Is the Covid-19 pandemic making children introverts? | Parenting News,The Indian Express.

Picton, Irene.The Impact of E-books on the Reading Motivation and Reading Skills of Children and young People.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED560635.pdf

Scott, Elizabeth Anne.(2013).8 Keys to Stress Management.WW Norton & Co.

Beginning Lines of Famous Poems in English

                                     Famous Poem Beginnings

*To a Skylark- Percy Bysshe Shelley

                                                   

                                 "Hail to thee, blithe spirit

                                  Bird thou never wert,

                                  That from Heaven, or near it,

                                  Pourest thy full heart

                                  In profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

*The Waste Land-T S Eliot
                                 
                                    "April is the cruellest month, breeding
                                     Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
                                     Memory and desire, stirring
                                     Dull roots with spring rain."

*Ode to Nightingale- John Keats
                                   
                                    "My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains
                                      My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
                                      Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
                                      One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk."

*Ode to West Wind- P. B Shelley
                                     
                                       "O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
                                        Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
                                         Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing."

Summary of the poem "From a Railway Carriage"

E-learning Material on the Poem “From a Railway Carriage” by R L Stevenson

Introduction

Travelling experiences are a source of great happiness for children. In our childhood days, we all had a fascination towards travelling in train because of its length, the sound produced by the mechanical movement of the wheels, the loud horn etc. Here, in this poem “From a Railway Carriage” by R L Stevenson, the poet describes his thrilling journey in a train and about those sights that he saw then.

Objectives

            By learning this poem you will be able to:

                        ⁎ Understand the theme of the poem.

                        ⁎ Identify the poetic devices used in the poem.

                        ⁎ Improve your observation skills.

About the Poet

            Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) was a Scottish writer. He was born in Edinburgh as the son to Thomas Stevenson and Margaret Isabella. He had literary interests even in childhood so that he used to write stories inspite of his several diseases. In 1880, he married Fanny Osbourne. He died on December 3, 1894, when he was just forty years old. He is well known for his evergreen works like Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Title of the poem

            The title “From a Railway Carriage” captures the essence of the poem, as it is a record of the poet’s journey in a train. The poem communicates the poet’s observations and thoughts as he was sitting in a railway carriage.

Source of the poem

            “From a Railway Carriage” was published in R. L Stevenson’s volume of poetry for children, A Child’s Garden of Verses.

Poem

            Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

            Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

            And charging along like troops in a battle

            All through the meadows the horses and cattle;

           All of the sights of the hill and the plain

            Fly as thick as driving rain;

            And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

            Painted stations whistle by.

            Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

            All by himself and gathering brambles;

Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;

And here is the green for stringing the daisies

Here is a cart runaway in the road

Lumping along with man and load;

And here is a mill, and there is river;

Each a glimpse and gone forever.

Summary of the poem

            The poet describes the sights that he notices while travelling in the train. The train is moving faster than fairies and witches. The train rushes forward like soldiers who are attacking their enemies in the battlefield. The speedy movement of the train leaves behind bridges, houses, fences and ditches behind. It also leaves behind the green fields where horses and cattles are grazing.

            Stevenson says that all the scenes of the hill and plain were being crossed by the train as quick as one drop of rain following the other in a storm. In the next moment, the train passes railway stations and it looked like painted pictures. The poet sees a child climbing a steep ground and collecting berries during climbing. He also sees a homeless person who looks at the train with amazement. As the train moves forward, he sees some ladies in a common village grassy land making garlands with daisy flowers.

            The poet then sees a cart moving slowly in the highway. It was full of load and the cart driver was sitting on the top of the load. He also gets a glimpse of a mill and a river by its side. All these objects appeared and disappeared so quickly.

            ⁎Let us see a video presentation of the poem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=466cF1d5V_Q&t=7!

Themes of the Poem

          The joy that we get from travelling is the major theme of the poem. Also beauty of nature comes as a theme in the descriptions like “meadows”, “the horses and cattle”, “sights of the hill and the plain” etc. The poverty of human beings too is a theme, as suggested by the scene in which a tramp looks excitedly at the train.

Poetic devices used in this work

* The rhythm of this poem echoes the rhythm of a train with the poem following a stressed followed by unstressed pattern.

* Poem is written in rhyming couplets. Eg: witches/ ditches, battle/ cattle etc etc.

* Similie- a figure of speech that directly compares two different things using words such as like or as. Eg: “like troops in a battle”, “fly as thick as driving rain” etc.

*Alliteration- a literary device in which a series of words begin with the same consonant sound. Eg: “faster than fairies”, “houses, hedges” etc

* Assonance- a literary device used to refer to the repetition of a vowel sound.

Eg: “All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Fly as thick as driving rain.”

Conclusion

“From a Railway Carriage” by R L Stevenson presents a series of realistic images, that enable the reader to experience the feel of travelling in a train.

Glossary

⁎Hedges- row of bushes that look like fences.

⁎Ditches- a long narrow furrow to enable water flow.

⁎Charging- to rush forward.

⁎Troops- soldiers.

⁎Clambers- climb or move in an awkward way.

⁎Brambles- a prickly shrub with berries.

⁎Stringing- joining.

⁎Lumping- carrying with difficulty.

⁎Tramp- beggar or a person who wanders.

⁎Gaze- look.

Exercises

1.     Which are the images that we can construct in mind on reading this poem?

The poem presents a series of lifelike images such as a speedy train moving in the midst of meadows, hills, river etc.

2.     Can we compare the speedy movement of the train with the passage of time?

Some lines from the poem suggest the transcience of life such as “Each a glimpse and gone forever.”

3.     What are the expressions used by the poet to show the amazing speed of the train?

There are several expressions used in the poem to indicate the fast movement of the train such as “faster than fairies”, “faster than witches”, “charging along like troops”, “fly as thick as driving rain”, “each a glimpse and gone forever” etc.

4.     What is the poem about?

The poem is about a fast moving train and the people, places and things seen from it.

5.     What is the aim of the poet while writing this poem?

To entertain readers with an exciting description of a train ride.

6.     Does the train move through a village or a city? Justify your answer.

The train moves in a village  like setting as evident in expressions like “sights of the hill and the plain”, “all through the meadows” etc.

References

⁎https: /// www.famous authors.org> robert- louis- stevenson

⁎https:// www.youtube.com/ Larry Sanger.

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