I must say, Indian schooling is pretty tough! My host brother would be at school all day and after he got home, he would have to go to tuition, where he would attend five more classes and get even more homework there. I would not be able to survive that much class in one day, not to include the massive amounts of homework.
Adjusting to the Indian way of teaching was a huge challenge for me. Everything is based on memorization there-- in essence, whoever has the best memory gets the highest scores on the tests. Whereas, in America, I have noticed that there is a lot more focus on applying the knowledge. I feel like in the real world, memorization gets you to a point, but after that, it's about innovation and creating something new to contribute to the world.If your brain is tuned to just repeating word for word what someone else said, it will be really difficult to invent something new. That being said, don't actually take my word for it because I'm just basing my opinion on a mere six week observance.
Anyway, my Hindi teachers were incredibly awesome and truly loved us. They did everything possible to make our experience amazing, even on the weekends, they would come on our excursions with us. Their dedication and commitment to us was something I hope I will have to my job someday. However, it took a while for me to get adjusted to their teaching style. I was used to having everything explained and given to me in the form of handouts. In my Spanish class in America, we get a list of prepositions that we are supposed to memorize. In India, our teachers expected us to take the initiative to look for the prepositions while we read, define them, and memorize them ourselves, purely out of the interest of learning, not even as an assignment. In order to learn in India, we were required to put a lot more effort into it. So much vocabulary was thrown at us everyday, as our teachers would only speak to us in Hindi-- it really was an immersion experience. It was frustrating at first but now looking back, I learned so much as a result of this immersion technique.
Adjusting to the Indian way of teaching was a huge challenge for me. Everything is based on memorization there-- in essence, whoever has the best memory gets the highest scores on the tests. Whereas, in America, I have noticed that there is a lot more focus on applying the knowledge. I feel like in the real world, memorization gets you to a point, but after that, it's about innovation and creating something new to contribute to the world.If your brain is tuned to just repeating word for word what someone else said, it will be really difficult to invent something new. That being said, don't actually take my word for it because I'm just basing my opinion on a mere six week observance.
Anyway, my Hindi teachers were incredibly awesome and truly loved us. They did everything possible to make our experience amazing, even on the weekends, they would come on our excursions with us. Their dedication and commitment to us was something I hope I will have to my job someday. However, it took a while for me to get adjusted to their teaching style. I was used to having everything explained and given to me in the form of handouts. In my Spanish class in America, we get a list of prepositions that we are supposed to memorize. In India, our teachers expected us to take the initiative to look for the prepositions while we read, define them, and memorize them ourselves, purely out of the interest of learning, not even as an assignment. In order to learn in India, we were required to put a lot more effort into it. So much vocabulary was thrown at us everyday, as our teachers would only speak to us in Hindi-- it really was an immersion experience. It was frustrating at first but now looking back, I learned so much as a result of this immersion technique.
Dr. Kalmadi Shamarao High School School Bus
Our Classroom!
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