ELT World » india

India: English for Progress

david — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:00:31 +0000

According to the Times of India, as part of its global vision for English, the British Council has launched the programme ‘Project English’ in India and Sri Lanka. The aim is that by 2010 every teacher and learner of English in the world will have access to skills, ideas and materials they need from the UK. “This global ambition got a local fillip when, during his visit to India in 2008, Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister met his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh and committed the British Council to train, directly or indirectly, 750,000 English teachers in India over the next five years (2013).

In order to achieve this vision, we have carved our work into three strands: corporate training, state partnerships and direct teaching of English,” said Chris Gibson, director, Project English (India and Sri Lanka).

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India: It’s back to basics for teachers

david — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:13:25 +0000

It’s back to the classroom for English lecturers at various government colleges in the state. Under the project high TEC’ (teaching English through conversation), the commissionerate of collegiate education and the US department of state have organised a training programme to arm teachers with interactive teaching skills and internet know-how.

Notes the Times of India: “It is for the first time that an initiative has been taken to help the government college lecturers in the state. About 184 English lecturers have been inducted under the programme,” said Alka Kumar, programme coordinator.

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India: Primary schools to convert ‘fearsome’ English into a friendly language

david — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:19:41 +0000

In an effort to get rid of the fear attached to English language learning among Gujarati medium students in rural areas, suggests the India Express, the Surat District Primary Education Officer (DPEO) has ordered schools to observe Saturdays as English Day.

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India: Multiple factors for scoring difficulty in English

david — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:43:50 +0000

The Times of India notes that a decline in reading habits, a weak foundation vis-a-vis understanding and the lack of expressive skills are the prime factors that continue to make English language a difficult subject to score at the higher secondary certificate (HSC, Class XII) level, feel academicians.

It doesn’t help matters that teachers, who are supposed to be the major link between the students and the language, often lack adequate expressive skills themselves, feel the experts.

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India: A lab to enhance language skills

david — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:24:05 +0000

India: Though not a conventional laboratory with scientific equipment and the like, the Language Laboratory at the Brihan Maharashtra College of Commerce (BMCC) is well equipped to impart language training, suggests the Times of India. Established in 2007, the laboratory teaches five languages-English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese. The authorities now are looking at adding a few more languages.

The Principal of the college, Aniruddha Deshpande, states that while their written English is grammatically correct, students’ oral skills need improvement, he feels. “It is the era of globalisation and so fluency in spoken English is essential. Apart from this knowing foreign languages would increase their employment prospects.”

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India: Foreign faculty on a mission

david — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 11:04:17 +0000

India: It is like an annual pilgrimage for them. They come every year in August from Ireland and England to teach English to teachers of primary schools located in rugged hilly areas of Uttarakhand. From the road head, one has to trek for hours to reach these schools. For the past four years, the group of foreign teachers has been coming to the office of Dehradun-based reputed NGO Rural Litigation Empowerment Kendra (RLEK), to start their teaching mission. They provide teaching training and English-language tuition to teachers of the RLEK primary schools which are meant for children of the marginalised community. Rutger Kortenhorst, vice-principal of John Scottus School in Dublin, Ireland, started this programme in 2005.

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Schools adopt the language of change in India

david — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:55:31 +0000

India: Seven-year-old Inaara is busy doing her English comprehension. Pallavi Akkalkotkar, Inaara’s mother, is happy that comprehension is no longer about lifting sentences from the text, by way of an answer. “Inaara has to think for herself, and take the trouble of constructing sentences, as all the questions are open-ended ones. I’m glad language teaching is getting more creative,” she says. In an age where communication is key, an increasing number of schools in the city are laying emphasis on language teaching.

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UP kids call up Californians for an English lesson

david — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:51:29 +0000

India & California: Every afternoon, a group of children in Kannar village, about 30 km from Lucknow, gather in a school to learn English – through cellphones. The handsets are loaded with e-learning games, designed by students of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology (DAIICT). A brainchild of Matthew Kam, a PhD candidate from the Berkeley Institute of Design at the University of California, the novel project is called MILLEE (Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies). The project is being promoted by a wing of the University of California.

India: New lessons for teachers and kids

david — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 09:33:06 +0000

India: What is laptop?’ asked one of the children studying at Thaltej Primary School on Thursday, as she stared in awe at the gadget in volunteer Gopi Gadhvi’s hands. It was her first brush with a mobile computer. The class huddled around and watched transfixed as images popped on the screen by pressing a few buttons. It was collegian Gadhvi’s Teach India class where laptop was being used as an aid for teaching English alphabets.

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Teaching with West Bengal’s New Book

david — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 09:25:27 +0000

India and United Kingdom: The less than innovative decision to teach English using language that is accessible to the children of West Bengal was taken by the team of local teachers and education staff recruited by the state education department to write the new primary level course book, reports Guardian Weekly.

They attended an initial training session in communicative language teaching led by Scottish ELT consultant Ray MacKay and over the past 12 months they have been working with MacKay and the British Council to develop and design the five-level syllabus.

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