BEGLA-138 2025-26 SOLVED ASSIGNMENT

Description

BEGLA-138
Reading and Speaking Skills
Assignment July 2025 & January 2026 Sessions
Course Code: BEGLA 138/ 2025-2026

1.Education and Its Philosophy

Philosophy of Education is a label applied to the study of the purpose, process, nature and ideals of education. It can be considered a branch of both philosophy and education. Education can be defined as the teaching and learning of specific skills, and the imparting of knowledge, judgment and wisdom, and is something broader than the societal institution of education we often speak of. Many educationalists consider it a weak and woolly field, too far removed from the practical applications of the real world to be useful. But philosophers dating back to Plato and the Ancient Greeks have given the area much thought and emphasis, and there is little doubt that their work has helped shape the practice of education over the millennia. Plato is the earliest important educational thinker, and education is an essential element in “The Republic” (his most important work on philosophy and political theory, written around 360 B.C.). In it, he advocates some rather extreme methods: removing children from their mothers’ care and raising them as wards of the state, and differentiating children suitable to the various castes, the highest receiving the most education, so that they could act as guardians of the city and care for the less able. He believed that education should be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, music and art. Plato believed that talent and intelligence is not distributed genetically and thus is be found in children born to all classes, although his proposed system of selective public education for an educated minority of the population does not really follow a democratic model. Aristotle considered human nature, habit and reason to be equally important forces to be cultivated in education, the ultimate aim of which should be to produce good and virtuous citizens. He proposed that teachers lead their students systematically and that repetition be used as a key tool to develop good habits, unlike Socrates’ emphasis on questioning his listeners to bring out their own ideas. He emphasised the balancing of the theoretical and practical aspects of subjects taught, among which he explicitly mentions reading, writing, mathematics, music, physical education, literature, history, and a wide range of sciences, as well as play, which he also considered important. During the Medieval period, the idea of Perennialism was first formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas in his work “De Magistro”. Perennialism holds that one should teach those things deemed to be of everlasting importance to all people everywhere, namely principles and reasoning, not just facts (which are apt to change over time), and that one should teach first about people, not machines 17 Expository Text or techniques. It was originally religious in nature, and it was only much later that a theory of secular perennialism developed. During the Renaissance, the French sceptic Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) was one of the first to critically look at education. Unusually for his time, Montaigne was willing to question the conventional wisdom of the period, calling into question the whole edifice of the educational system, and the implicit assumption that university-educated philosophers were necessarily wiser than uneducated farm workers. Answer the following questions based on the passage.

1) What is the difference between the approaches of Socrates and Aristotle?

2) Why do educationists consider philosophy a ‘weak and woolly’ field

3) What do you understand by the term ‘Perennialism’, in the context of the given comprehension passage?

4) What were Plato’s beliefs about education? Were they democratic?

5) Why did Aquinas propose a model of education which did not place much emphasis on facts? Discuss.

2 a) Read the following excerpt. These lines are written in a Persuasive style.

Smoking is injurious to health. It not only kills you but also destroys the lives of your loved ones as well. Increase in the number of deaths due to lung cancer, which is a result of smoking habit, has taken away so many people from those who love them. It leaves a child fatherless and a partner without support in this life.

Write an argumentative paragraph on the same topic.

1. b) Read the following excerpt on the topic of Colgate as the best Toothpaste.

The lines are written in an Argumentative Style.

Colgate has been a trusted brand of toothpaste for over 40 years. Scientists at WHO have confirmed that Colgate kills up to 99% of germs and reduces 98% chances of plaque and bad breath

Write a persuasive paragraph on the same topic.

3. Write short notes on:
4. a) Skimming b) Scanning
5. What is the importance of feedback in the process of communication?
6. What are encoding and decoding in the process of communication? Why are they important?
7. What is information overload? How does it affect communication? How can we ensure the conciseness of our messages while communicating? Explain with at least two examples.
8. “We speak with our vocal organs, but we converse with our entire bodies; conversation consists of much more than a simple interchange of spoken words……” . Explain.
9. Discuss the importance of cross-cultural awareness in communication.
10. Consider the following domains: Playground, College canteen, College auditorium, Metro station, Lecture Hall, Father’s office, Multiplex, Police station, Hospital, Kitchen, Court room, Principal’s office. Classify them into formal and informal categories.
11. Think of two situations.

Situation 1: A conversation with your teacher about the unsatisfactory state of your home assignment or your performance in the examination.

Situation 2: A conversation with your mother about your unacceptable demand for a different dish as you complain about what she has prepared for the day.

Describe how you spoke in the first situation versus the second one.