For each subject offered by the Central Board of Secondary Education, a fixed curriculum that contains the academic content that is to be taught to the students in each academic year is published. The teachers are to follow the instructions given in this curriculum to ensure a wholesome learning experience for the students. It includes the prescribed textbooks for each grade and the syllabus that is to be taught along with how to choose the best way to carry it out. It encompasses general objectives of learning, courses of study, subject-wise instructional objectives and content, and assessment guidelines. The curriculum strives to enhance self-awareness and explore the innate potential of students. Each subject has a specific academic framework and they are set in such a way that it promotes Life Skills and lifelong learning without ignoring to foster cultural learning and international understanding in a society where inter-dependency is one of the core foundations. It intends to support young students to move up the social ladder by preparing them to be capable of being independent, respectful and self-aware adults. The English curriculum throughout a student’s academic journey is structured with the aim to promote the importance of the language and also mould students to have excellent communication skills and proficiency in English. At a stage where English is being often addressed as a global language, the need to be English educated is increasingly demanding. Such a situation prompts educators to be more conscious of incorporating English as one of the core subjects in the curriculum. It chooses to enable students to have a good command of the language. The lessons included in the syllabus for each class have similar motives. They look to bring in stories, poems and excerpts that inculcate some moral values and leave the students to ponder on those.
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The CBSE English class 9 syllabus is rich with themes ranging from childhood and adolescence to disability, talent and achievement, to music, science, and contemporary social and environmental concerns as mentioned in the book. The content included is as inclusive as possible, keeping in mind the possible interest and the overall development of the learners. The book draws attention to the students on different genres such as story, biography and autobiography, science fiction, humour, travelogue, and the one-act play. The different variety of prose and poems have been chosen for their simplicity and suitability in terms
of language and thought. It is an amalgamation of a different and interesting bunch of lessons each focusing on a mix of themes that lead the readers into a thought provoking realm. The selection of the poems and proses are quite exemplary and they encourage students towards inculcating a good reading habit. NCERT Books for Class 9 English are an excellent source for students to uplift themselves in terms of knowledge and learning. They are compiled in such a manner that it not only takes the effort to include a careful selection of poems and proses but also has innovative and thoughtful methods to reach out to the students in the best way possible. A rich variety of reading material has been provided in the NCERT books as prescribed, to include the literary, cultural and sociological dimensions of the content within the book. The textbooks by themselves discuss the various sections included in it to help students understand what is being taught and guide them through the process in a way that is as simple as possible. A mixture of different attempts to let students enjoy both fun and informative learning experiences can be seen with the inclusion of various sections such as ‘Before you read’, ‘Thinking about the Text’, ‘Thinking about Language ‘. They attempt to move from surface-level understanding of the text to critical thinking and through a variety of tasks on the usage of words closely related in meaning, matching words to meanings, word building etc, vocabulary enrichment has been made to achieve. There are a variety of writing tasks included as part of the content and touches upon writing a newspaper report, an article for a school magazine, argumentative writing, narration, description, and picture interpretation. Along with a main English textbook named ‘Beehive’, a supplementary reader in English under the name Moments is prescribed for Class IX and is meant exclusively for extensive reading. It is structured in such a manner to promote reading habits by exposing the learners to a variety of reading materials to spread their interests. An attempt has been made to provide students with a rich reading experience through stories covering a vast variety of relatable themes of mystery, adventure, courage, growing up, romance, wit and humour. These carefully selected pieces are included in the hope that it would cater to the thoughts and interests of adolescents and hold the mirror up to different aspects of life and people. The textbook has numerous sections included in it to initiative writing, reading and speaking skills within students. Students can expect long answer questions and essays from the chapters included in ‘Moments’ as different from the MCQs and short answer questions that are usually asked from the main course textbook. The curriculum also includes a workbook along with the other two main literature books. It contains a variety of exercises the students can work out with respect to grammar lessons. The different concepts in English grammar such as Tenses, Modals, Subject-verb agreement, Reported speech, Determiner, Use of Passive Voice, Clauses: Noun, Adverb clauses of condition and time, Relative Clauses, Prepositions etc. are explained in detail along with examples. The exercises in each chapter contain a mix of questions ranging from easy to hard and the book itself provides solutions for the same. This way students can check their answers once they are zone working them out and correct themselves of any mistakes made. Any student who has done their homework in being thorough with the literature textbooks has practised their writing skills by attempting sample questions from the syllabus prescribed under the writing section and is fairly well suited in terms of English grammar can easily crack the exam and score a higher percentage.
