Forty minutes of translation four times a week

Partly right about the starting point, wrong about the method. Using the first language to check meaning is sound practice for beginners - it lowers anxiety and confirms comprehension. The problem is that translation has become the medium of the lesson rather than a support within it, so children never have to process the English they hear; the Hindi arrives immediately and the English becomes background noise. Grammar taught as labels (articles, prepositions) before children have heard the forms in use gives them names for things they cannot yet do. The silence is therefore predictable: they have had four years of English as a written, translated object, and no practice in English as something spoken to them and by them. Also note the arithmetic of exposure - 160 minutes a week of translated text is a very thin input base. The fix is not to abolish Hindi but to change the sequence: hear and do first, speak next, read, then write; use Hindi for a 30-second comprehension check, not as a parallel text.

Use a 'listen, point, do, say' sequence around classroom and body vocabulary. Minute 1–3, listen and point: give five instructions the children already know in Hindi - stand up, show me a window, touch your head, open the door, sit down - spoken once, with the teacher modelling only the first time; children who are unsure copy a neighbour, which is allowed. Minutes 4–7, listen and do with a twist: same instructions but chained ('stand up, touch the door, sit down'), performed by the whole class, then by four volunteers in front. Minutes 8–12, pair speaking: each pair gets three picture cards (no text) and asks 'What is this?' / 'It is a ___'; the answer is a single word at first, then 'It is a bag'. Walk the room and note who speaks. Minutes 12–15, chain game: 'My name is Sunita. I have two brothers.' Each child adds one new sentence; the class repeats the chain. Everything is oral, whole-class, and needs only the blackboard, ten pictures drawn on paper, and the children's own bodies.

Correct selectively and late. During a fluency activity, do not stop a child mid-sentence for a missing article or a wrong preposition - recast it naturally ('Yes, it is a bag') and let the child hear the correct form; keep a small tally of recurring errors on a slip and address only those, briefly, after the activity, with the whole class. Immediate correction of every error teaches children to avoid speaking, which is exactly the pattern in this class. For assessment, use a daily speaking register rather than one test: ten children a day, each asked two questions and one picture prompt, scored on a three-point scale - answers with a word, answers in a phrase, initiates a sentence. Record it as a tick chart in the register; over four days the whole class is covered. Pair work gives additional evidence through observation of two or three pairs per lesson. School-based assessment for Class 5 does not require marks in a separate speaking paper; it requires documented evidence that the teacher listened to each child, and this provides it.