CHENNAI: A
pilot project
to provide students of corporation
schools special training in English
, not shy of off-beat ideas, will mark a successful year by pushing its latitude for lingo several degrees further.
Instructors in the '
Read to Lead
' project are now looking to fast-track learning of the language for its target audience, by engaging 17 volunteers to not just teach students of classes VI and VII, of five corporation schools in Choolaimedu, Taramani and Mogappair, but also consistently record the pupils' performance with videography and progress analysis in four key components - listening, speaking, reading and writing (LSRW).
Having set up class libraries and using
audiotapes textbook lessons
to teach students by having them listen, read along and vocally present individual chapters, the instructors will from this year also engage the students in other classroom activities.
IIT-Madras humanities department professor
Rajesh Kumar helms the corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative by Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Ltd (TNPL). The project's managers are conducting 'Read to Lead' in two very different locales: one in government schools in Bihar and the other in Chennai.
TNPL officials say the company, which pumps nearly 15 lakh into the project annually, has given its representatives the go-ahead to scale up the operation. English Language Teachers Association of India national secretary K Elango says the project had done well and reached its objectives initially but its managers needed to jump-start it so as to prevent any slack from lack of consistency or awareness among its volunteer-teachers. He prescribes a two-dimensional change.
"The first is a change in content itself," he says. "The second, a change in the manner it is taught." Each audiotaped textbook is only about 80-90 minutes long, which indicates that the textbooks have only limited content for the teachers to work with, Elango says.