The Hindu-STEP classroom workshop_ Oct 03
The session started with an introduction about the resource person who had been exposed in teaching ventures in gulf countries. The resource person was a qualified CELTA & BEC trainer with Fine Arts and English major as graduation and post-graduation subjects.
The importance of teaching was explained to the teachers on the first hand. Later the teachers were made to discuss the strength and weakness of teaching in mother tongue & teaching in English. The teachers were divided into equal teams and were asked to discuss and their points were asked to write in a handout given to each team.
Each team justified their point of view which was either mother tongue based teaching was effective or English teaching was effective. Finally the justified points were put forth and English teaching and its effectiveness in a country like India with several language as mother tongue was emphasized. Hence, the need and understanding from the student perspective or learning perspective was given due importance in the first half of the session.
Later the teams were given an activity where two subject based topics were asked to be presented. The basic objective was to focus on the importance of the teaching pedagogy to be used accordingly to attract the student. Ultimately the session gave inputs on effective classroom teaching with the specific focus on English language based teaching.