Govt school students to learn Spoken English from this year
Bengaluru: After a failed start last year,
spoken English classes
for govt schoolchildren in Karnataka will be launched this year with Department of
School Education and Literacy
drawing up a comprehensive plan with better resources.
Spoken English classes were to be launched over weekends last year in select govt schools. Even though Regional Institute of English conducted a state-level training for master trainers, the programme never took off.
Now, the department is contemplating having 180 hours of teaching in an academic year. Around 1,000 schools, based on student strength, are likely to be selected for the programme, which will cover Karnataka Public Schools too. It plans to recruit one guest teacher to handle spoken English classes.
"In regular English classes, we are obsessed with exams and completing the portion. Teaching gets restricted to the prescribed content. Also, there is no environment where they can speak in English class. At least if teachers conduct their classroom instruction in English for at least 40 minutes, it could lead to a natural conversation, giving some exposure to the natural bit of English speaking," said an academician.
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"Teachers have to create situations to design activities in the classroom. We need language functions like how to introduce oneself, how to ask questions, among others," he added.
Most spoken English modules start with very simple activities where students name objects, places, and people and later build sentences based on those pictures. Language functions like questioning skills in English, simple conversations in English, like making inquiries, asking for information, directions or help. In higher levels, there will be activities based on art and craft, culture, festivals, and life experiences as well. The modules are yet to be fleshed out.
'Ek Step' announced in the budget with AI-powered language learning is also being launched. English-medium sections of govt schools have become extremely popular with the masses, encouraging the govt to announce more such sections. Around 4,190 schools currently have English-medium sections. The govt announced another 4,000 such schools in the previous budget.
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