Outlook India | English Language
E-Education Playing Professor Henry Higgins
As English is generally not spoken at home by most students in government schools, many of them have difficulty or are unconfident about speaking English, mainly because of issues with pronunciation. Outlook India’s article discusses how technology has the potential to address the problem of English language learning for children in government schools in India.
“The rush of children borrowing books and reading in the school library has suddenly gone up,” says V. Mythali, principal of the Delhi Tamil Education Association (DTEA) Senior Secondary School in R.K. Puram. This change has been brought about by the ReadToMe software of the Boston based EnglishHelper, a global company that offers technology-enabled solutions to promote English language proficiency. EnglishHelper works on the concept of how a child picks up his/her first language by first listening to the repeated use of a word, speaking, and later reading and writing. The emphasis is on phonetics and using visuals to put words in context.
Sanjay Gupta, CEO of EnglishHelper, says, “The multi-sensory experience greatly enhances comfort with the English phonics such that they don’t question why similar words are pronounced differently. If you repeatedly expose the early learners to words, they not only become familiar with the sounds of those words but also learn the meanings and how to use them in various phrases and sentences.”
EnglishHelper, in collaboration with American India Foundation and the IL&FS Education has witnessed positive outcomes in some 5000 government schools spread across eight states as a result of ReadToMe.
To know more about the studies of other similar initiatives, showing the growing and evolving role of technology as an educational tool, click on the link below.
The original article has been written and published by Outlook India:
https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/e-education-playing-professor-henry-higgins/297582
(January 2017)
An Effective Way to Improve English Language Skills
Learning is most effective if things are taught in an engaging way. Similarly, English language learning is most effective when learners are taught in a multi-sensory manner, using content that is both relevant to their context and at a difficulty level that they can comprehend while trying to learn English. English is one of the most widely spoken language in the world, so it is helpful to have a good command over written and spoken English.