MCQ
Principles of Teaching English MCQ - Practice Questions with Answers
Solve 9 Principles of Teaching English questions for RAS/RPSC preparation.
Practice questions
Q1Which sequencing principle is best illustrated when a Class III teacher first lets children speak about a fruit they hold in their hands and only later asks them to read the printed word for that fruit?
The teacher delays the printed word and lets the child first say the name aloud while looking at and touching the real fruit. This is the oral-before-written principle: a young learner first hears and speaks a word in a meaningful situation, then meets its printed form. The other principles may appear around the same lesson, but the exact sequence described in the stem is speaking first and reading later, so option B is the best answer.
Q2Which option correctly describes the meaningful-contextualisation principle as it appears in NCF 2005 Position Paper on Teaching of English for the primary stage?
The meaningful-contextualisation principle says that young learners understand English better when new words and structures are introduced inside a recognisable situation, such as a story, game, classroom routine or everyday event. Isolated word lists, translation-only drills and worksheets before oral or activity-based exposure all detach language from meaning. Option A best captures this principle for the primary stage.
Q3Arrange the following stages of a single primary English vocabulary lesson on the word leaf in the order recommended by the principles of teaching English at primary level. 1. Children write the word leaf in their notebook with a small drawing alongside. 2. The teacher holds up a real leaf and talks with the children about its shape and colour in English. 3. Children chant the word leaf together while passing the real leaf around the circle. 4. The teacher shows a flashcard with the printed word leaf and the children read it aloud.
The principles taught for primary English line up cleanly here. Stage 2 begins with the concrete object — a real leaf — and an oral exchange about it, satisfying concrete-to-abstract and oral-before-written together. Stage 3 keeps the speech-and-object link active through choral chanting in a circle, which deepens listening and speaking. Stage 4 moves from speech to print with a flashcard of the written word, the standard oral-then-print transition. Stage 1 closes with writing in the notebook plus a small drawing, the slowest and most controlled output. The sequence 2 → 3 → 4 → 1 honours object-first, oral-before-written and progress from listening through speaking to reading and finally writing — i.e., LSRW.
Q4Consider the following statements about the learner-centred and activity-based approach in primary English. Statement I: The teacher does most of the talking and the children listen quietly so that the model is delivered without distortion. Statement II: Children take part in songs, role-play, picture-talk and short games as the main route to using English. Statement III: Errors are corrected privately and used as feedback rather than as public failure markers. Which combination of statements is correct?
The learner-centred and activity-based approach for primary English shifts the active role from the teacher to the children. The teacher sets up tasks and intervenes when needed, but the children do most of the using of English through songs, role-play, picture-talk, miniature games and small group conversations — Statement II is correct. Errors are treated as part of the learning process: they are noted, corrected gently and used as feedback to plan the next lesson, not held up as public failure — Statement III is correct. Statement I represents the older teacher-fronted lecture model, which the activity-based approach explicitly displaces, so it is not correct. The right combination is therefore II and III.
Q5Match the principle of teaching English in List I with its classroom illustration in List II. List I 1. Concrete-to-abstract 2. Known-to-unknown 3. Simple-to-complex 4. Multilingual classroom List II P. The teacher writes a Hindi sentence on the board and uses it as a stepping-stone for the matching English sentence. Q. The teacher first uses real apples and oranges, then a labelled picture, and only later the printed word fruit. R. The teacher recalls the village pond children know and from there introduces the new English word lake. S. The teacher begins with a single noun, moves to a two-word phrase, then to a short sentence and finally to a question.
Concrete-to-abstract begins with the real object — actual apples and oranges — and ends with the printed word, so 1 matches Q. Known-to-unknown leans on what the child already has, the village pond, before naming the new English word lake, so 2 matches R. Simple-to-complex grades the language load itself, walking from one word to a phrase to a sentence to a question, so 3 matches S. The multilingual classroom uses the home or first language as a scaffold for the English sentence, so 4 matches P. The remaining option strings shuffle these mappings and break the principle-illustration link.
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More questions
6Read the following Assertion (A) and Reason (R) and choose the correct option. Assertion (A): A primary English teacher should let her Class III children speak about a kite they made before she shows them the printed word kite on a flashcard. Reason (R): The oral-before-written principle of the NCF 2005 Position Paper on Teaching of English argues that a young learner anchors a new word's meaning more securely when speech in a meaningful situation precedes its written shape.
7How many of the following are standard sequencing principles used in primary English teaching? 1. Oral before written 2. Simple to complex 3. Concrete to abstract 4. Known to unknown 5. Translation before speech
8Read the following two statements about LSRW integration in a primary English classroom and decide which are correct. Statement I: The four skills — listening, speaking, reading and writing — are best taught in tightly separated periods so that each skill receives undiluted attention. Statement II: At the primary stage the four skills should be woven together inside a single meaningful task because they reinforce one another in early language learning.
9How many language skills are integrated together inside the LSRW framework recommended by NCF 2005 for the primary English classroom?