Interactive Radio Project For Teaching English Skills
In Rural And Urban Government Schools
It is important and a great challenge to impart basic functional skills in English to students studying in schools where the medium of instruction is one of the many Indian regional languages. Without basic English skills these students are handicapped in terms of opportunities for higher education and employment, and access to various bodies of knowledge and to new technologies. The Centre For Learning Resources (CLR) - has taken up this challenge and is broadcasting English lessons directly to rural and urban school children in Pune District, as well as municipal school children in Mumbai and Delhi, and both urban and rural students in the entire state of Jharkhand. For Hindi-speaking listeners the radio programme is entitled 'We Learn English/Aao Angrezi Sikhe'
Why Radio
Given the erratic electric supply in urban and rural India, radio is the cheapest, most widely available and reliable distance education technology, since it can also function on batteries.
The Instructional Process
- We are using an innovative, interactive pedagogy known as Interactive Radio Instruction, which is being used for the first time in India. This allows listeners to not only hear English being spoken, but gives them opportunities during the radio lesson itself to speak in English. This pedagogy has been very successfully used to teach English, other school subjects and educational programmes for adults in a number of other countries.
- Our radio lessons contain a variety of child-friendly formats - drama, songs, language games, etc. in both Hindi and English - which hold the interest of middle school children.
- Along with the focus on teaching spoken English, our radio lessons promote appropriate attitudes related to democracy, secularism, gender, health, small family norm, etc.
