Category IV - Specialist Teachers (Languages and Other Specified Subjects)
Category IV is for specialist teachers: language teachers (for example Arabic, Urdu, Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, Kannada) and teachers of other specified subjects such as Art, Music and Physical Education. The common parts are Child Development and Pedagogy, Language I and Language II (30 each); the specialisation part carries 60 questions. Total: 150 questions in 150 minutes. The paper asks how your subject is learned, not only what it contains.
Core concepts to command
- Additional-language learning: comprehensible input, listening–speaking–reading–writing order, communicative competence, and contrastive awareness of the learner's first language.
- Script and sound: auditory discrimination before writing; orthographic patterns taught in meaning-bearing words.
- Art: line, shape, colour, texture, form and space; process over product; inclusive participation.
- Physical Education: motor development, health-related fitness, modified inclusive games, safety and first aid.
- Shared CDP: dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia; Individualised Education Plans; inclusive pedagogy.
Worked example
A Class VI Hindi learner writes 'लड़की खेल रहा है'. Malayalam, the learner's first language, has no grammatical gender agreement, so the default masculine form is transferred. This is interlanguage transfer, not carelessness. Remedy: present contrasting pairs in meaningful context (लड़का खेल रहा है / लड़की खेल रही है) with pictures of known people, drill orally in short exchanges, then set a brief writing task and give feedback only on agreement. Isolated verb-form drills would not transfer.
Traps that cost marks
- Correcting every spoken error and destroying fluency.
- Teaching the script before the sounds.
- Treating PE as unsupervised free play.
- Choosing only 'talented' children for art or music.
- Ignoring the difference between a learning disability and a language difference.