A scaffolding model — An assessment for learning of Indian language

Abstract

Marathi-Eguru is a Language Tutoring System (LTS) to teach an Indian language, specifically Marathi. It currently tutors students in alphabets, basic vocabulary building, inflectional operations and sentence construction. Our approach for language teaching is based on the model of children learning their first language, where no direct attempt is placed on teaching grammar rules. These grammar rules are to be learned through continuous experience, right time intervention and appropriate feedback. In this regard, scaffold is a useful model to carry out interaction/dialogue. Also, it supports problem solving approach in another sense assessment for learning, a significant component in maintaining student control, motivation and diagnosis of student's mistake and providing necessary feedback. Our focus in this research is on sentence teaching/construction, which is most critical component of any language. In the pedagogy, we included two scaffolds for sentence teaching. These scaffolds basically designed keeping in mind the inflectional aspects of sentence construction, an area where most of the language learners make mistakes. In this paper, we discuss various reasons of adopting a model of scaffolding and how it works, specifically focusing on sentence teaching/construction with conclusion and future scope.