Eleven-year-old Prajwal asks his mother in English to give him milk. He leaves to his school by saying “goodbye”. His routine conversations with his classmates are now in the same language.
Prajwal, a Class 5 student of Upgraded Government Higher Primary School in Mundur village in Puttur is among those who attended ‘Gubbachi speaking,’ an initiative taken up by government teachers in Puttur taluk to train primary school children in spoken English. This programme is being held in 31 government schools in Puttur.
Not only the students, but their parents also have shown interest in the programme and are attending classes held once a week at the Mundur school. Apart from Prajwal’s mother Parameshwari, there are nearly 40 parents, panchayat members and local postal departmental staff attending the programme there.
The idea of providing communication skills to students originated at a meeting the teachers had with Block Education Officer G.S. Shashidhar in April.
“We want our children to do their routine conversation in English. By the time they reach Class 7, these students will be in a position to effortlessly read newspapers,” Mr. Shashidhar said. Students, he said, had been exposed to spoken English classes conducted by a Chennai-based firm last year. But it was hard for them and their and parents to meet their fees.
A team of nine government teachers, including Jaganannath Ariyadka from Government Junior College Kombettu and Vimal Kumar from Upgraded Government Higher Primary School Nellyadi, who have been conducting spoken English classes, was formed to prepare a module for training students in nine months.
The advice of H. Madhava Bhat, former Principal of Vivekananda College, too was taken. “It’s through experiential learning that we are trying to improve language proficiency in children,” Mr. Bhat said. The module has been designed to have different activities in the course of a 40-minute-long period every day.
Sessions
It includes 10 minutes each for story telling or reciting rhymes; for exercises (where students are made to repeat some sentences); and for talking (where students are told to say five sentences based on a situation). By the end of the week, they will be able to use 60 sentences, recite a rhyme or narrate a story and have a collection of sentences on situations they can relate to.
Most of the 31 schools have employed separate teachers for this programme. The school development and management committees and old students will pay the honorarium for the teachers.
The module has been designed to have different activities in the course of a 40-minute-long period every day
