Starting young

Inculcating the fine art of communication is crucial these days, be it for your professional or your personal life. It is a universal fact that a person’s learning capacity is at its peak during his/ her childhood.
Therefore, it is more appropriate if the language and communication skills are developed at a young stage in a child. With this notion the Julia Gabriel Centre (JGC) has been successfully conducting development programmes for the tiny tots since 1983.
Started as a humble beginning with 20 students, now JGC has five centres in Singapore, two are coming up in China and one has recently opened in India at Hauz Khas in the Capital.
The lady behind the JGC, Julia Gabriel calls herself primarily a speech and drama teacher. She says, ‘‘We conduct development programmes for children in communication. Our main programme is language skills where we work on five areas — reading, speaking, listening, writing and comprehension. Our aim is to create confident people.’’
The methodology applied by Gabriel is drama. She says, ‘‘We employ drama as a medium of learning as it captures imagination of the young minds. Playing a role takes off the pressure of being themselves. For example, playing a scientist or dinosaurs, develops their faculty of mind. Child is enthusiastic about using language and especially the complicated one.’’