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About the Broadway Series

A new school course in English today should be compatible with the changing roles and functions of the language in India and relevant to the present and future needs of learners of English in the country. Broadway is a complete course. It is designed to help learners communicate effectively and accurately in English and to take them to the threshold of proficiency in the language where they can confidently look forward to dealing with pressing areas of communication at the secondary and senior secondary levels. The central question that it therefore addresses is: What does the learner need to do with English?

Comprising course books, workbooks, literature readers, teaching aids, audio tapes and teacher’s books, Broadway is based on a specially developed syllabus that takes into account the themes and the linguistic and communicative needs of learners recommended by the National Council of Educational Research and Training ( NCERT). The comprehensive syllabus includes a discussion on the pivotal role of English; its implications for the classroom; the specific objectives for the teaching of listening, speaking, reading, writing, study skill, communication skills and literary appreciation skills; and linguistic content specified in terms of both grammatical structures and their functional exponents.

A primary objective of the course is to hone the learners’ reading skills and to provide them a rich reading experience. The course books consist of stories, folktales, legends, plays, poems, interviews, biographical and autobiographical writing, and expository texts that have a distinct native flavor. Importantly, the contents of the reading texts faithfully reflect the Fundamental Duties laid down in the Constitution (like having to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture) and the Core Elements specified in the National Policy on Education, 1986 and reaffirmed in the NCERT mandated National Curriculum Framework for School Education, 2000 (like national identity, empowerment of women and protection of the environment). Each reading text is prefaced by an interactive Starter intended to make the learner conscious of the theme concerned, and accompanied by a Glossary of potentially difficult words occurring in the text to aid the reading process.

The editorial work in each unit is divided into seven major sections: reading comprehension, vocabulary, grammar, study skills (alternating with spelling and pronunciation), Writing, speaking and listening. Comprehension is split into two: Learn to read-1 and Learn to read- 2. The former primarily deals with factual comprehension (i.e. the understanding of information explicitly stated in the text) and inferential comprehension (i.e. the ability to draw conclusions not explicitly stated in the text but implied by the facts provided). The latter encourages learners to evaluate character, make a personalized assessment of events, and extrapolate from the ideas in the text. Learn words generally have two tasks to help learners explore the deeper, and sometimes, the wider significance of words in context. The assortment of task types deals with major areas of word building like affixes, synonymy, antonym and collocation. Learn grammar is a meaty section that focuses on all structural items traditionally regarded as essential as well as their functional realization. As a rule, the grammatical item in question is explained with reference to its use in the reading text. The explanation leads to meaningful practice through a range of tasks that always emphasize language in use. Learn to use the dictionary is a key section: by working through the different exercises, learners will not only increase their knowledge of English but will also realize that the dictionary is resource book that ought to be used actively at the heart of a language course. In the Learn spelling section, the learner’s attention is drawn to the spelling of high-frequency words through exercises that require, for example, identifying missing letters and using semantic clues to complete words.

Learn to write aims to involve learners in the process of writing by encouraging them to do meaningful composition tasks, guidance for which invariably emerges from the content or theme of the reading text. The tasks therefore help them to integrate their understanding of the text with their need to make a purposeful, personalized and, often, an imaginative written response. Learn to speak offers high interest classroom material by encouraging learners to do oral tasks that highlight the use of English in dynamic and functional contexts. These fluency tasks are backed up by a range of accuracy-specific exercised on areas like pronunciation and stress under the rubric Learn pronunciation. The section Learn to listen takes a constructive approach to the teaching of listening by incorporating notions like listening for meaning (Where, for instance, learners are trained to identify the main point of the speaker’s message) and listening for a purpose (where, for example, learners are trained to carry out a set of instructions).

A significant feature of Broadway is the presence of contemporary selection of poems. Each poem aims to not only reinforce the theme of the preceding prose passage but also provide a distinct literary perspective on the theme. The editorial treatment of the poems sensitizes learner to the interpretative value of poetry through the section Learn to enjoy the poem and enhances their sense of literary appreciation through a thematically relevant Activity.

Support material in the form of workbooks, literature readers, audiocassettes, visual aids and teachers’ books give the Broadway package balance and roundedness. (For easy access, an icon a has been used to indicate the relevant link between the course books and the audio cassettes.)

The Workbook is a vital resource for users of Broadway. It plays three significant roles: a curricular complement to the Course book, a language practice book, and an examination aid. By dovetailing with the Course book, it provides an explicit pedagogic link: every unit in the Course book has a corresponding worksheet in the Workbook.

Each worksheet has at least four components. The first section focuses on reading skills. The pivot is a short reading text, often thematically similar to the corresponding text in the Course book.

Learners interact with the text to obtain additional training in the different kinds of reading comprehension introduced in the Course book, in particular factual and inferential comprehension. Learn to read uses a variety of task types to achieve its objective: open-ended responses, binary and multiple choice questions, true-false items and chronological ordering of events.

The second section, Learn words, reinforces learners” vocabulary as well as offering them opportunities for vocabulary expansion. The tasks cover a wide range of lexical areas like synonymy, antonym, word families, compound words and collocation.

Learn grammar is an important section that provides an overt grammatical link between the Workbook and the corresponding Course book. The chief objective of the grammar tasks is to help learners internalize the grammatical items concerned through mind-engaging activity. The tasks include reformulating and transforming sentences, combining sentences for a grammatical purpose and choosing contextually appropriate grammatical items.

The concluding section, Learn to write, is extremely important for learners: it provides them guidance and prompts to produce a range of functional and imaginative written texts. The tasks usually emerge from the theme of the reading text in the unit so that there is a natural integration of reading and writing.

What makes the Workbook genuinely user-friendly is the inclusion of two sample oral tests, two sample unit tests and a sample examination paper. These test papers have a dual purpose: to act as points of reference for revision and to provide models of formal assessment.

We hope that the Broadway Workbooks will contribute to the achievement of a basic goal of the course: to enable learners to use English accurately and effectively.

The Literature Readers are an intrinsic component of the Broadway package. They are designed to sharpen learner’s interpretative skills and to provide them a valuable literary experience through a range of literary genres like fiction, poetry, drama and autobiography. Selected for their interest, relevance, spread, pluralism and impact, the reading texts embody universal themes which will ensure that their appeal is wide enough for learners to read them with relish and motivation.

While the Literature Readers for classes 1 and 2 offer only the rudiments of literary appreciation, the Literature Readers for classes 3 to 8 provide a gently graded initiation into the many facets of literary discourse.

The warm-up note that precedes the reading text in the Literature Reader is a necessary resource. It is designed to put learners directly into the situation that will be encountered in the text and to illuminate possible ways of responding to the text. The questions that follow the text in the Read for appreciation section are intended to nudge learners towards a level of comprehension where they will begin to perceive the uniqueness of literary texts. They are also aimed at opening avenues for learners to express their personal opinions on matters of plot, character and style.

The Activity section that appears at the end of the unit is meant to cement learners’ Involvement with the reading text by encouraging them to branch out into a parallel context, or solve a crossword puzzle, or attempt a creative task like illustrating the theme or writing a poem, or explore the nuances of literary expression like figurative and idiomatic usage.

We hope that the Broadway Literature Readers will show learners that literary texts are deserving of close study and urge them to read extensively on their own.

We hope that Broadway will encourage students to become more successful language learners by becoming better thinkers, and that they will use English as an essential means to understanding India’s multicultural and pluralistic society.