Since the academic year 2009-10, Vidyarambam has been conducting a 3-month course ‘EASY LEARNING ENGLISH’ for the students of STD VI, VII and VIII of the Government schools in 5 districts of Tamil Nadu. The course content is focused on basic grammar of the English language.

Vidyarambam chose bright volunteers (all women) from their own group of  teaching staff who were engaged in taking classes in their Learning Centers, all in rural areas for children of 4 to 11 age group, and gave them intensive training to conduct the EASY LEARNING ENGLISH classes. A team of about 30 English teachers have been developed and they have conducted the English classes for the past 2 years and have coached 5,958 students.

In this academic year 2011-12 they are assigned to complete about 300 batches of 30 students each. In all, about 9,000 students will be benefitted this year alone.

Though our English teachers are thorough in basic grammar, they are hesitant to speak fluently in English. We have identified that non-availability of good English speaking people around them to converse with is the reason for not getting the opportunity to speak in English. They do not have the exposure to the English speaking community at all.  Even the headmasters and teachers in the Govt. schools of rural areas do not speak in English. There is no continuous practice as it happens very naturally in their native language. To overcome this problem Vidyarambam decided to give them an intensive training to enrich their skills in English focusing on vocabulary building, spellings, pronunciation, reading practice and spoken English.

The first training on ENRICHING ENGLISH SKILLS has been conducted in Chennai for 3 days on 27, 28 and 29^th of December 2011.  A team of 25 teachers attended the training program and have been benefitted. Many experts were engaged to take the training sessions on the contents mentioned above.

Srisridharan from the USA, a committed supporter of Vidyarambam, took sessions on all the 3 days on current global topics. First day he took Women’s status in Modern India and enthused the trainees (all women) by asking them to spell their opinion about the status of women in India.  On the second day he talked about corruption in India and what happens to the black money one accumulates out of corruption. On the third day he explained the advantages and disadvantages of mobile phones.

Kalyarnaramam an Electronics Engineer with a Post Graduate Diploma in Management from IIM Kolkatta showed the trainees how to build the Vocabulary  easily.  He started with one question and developed the same into umpteen questions still dwelling on the topic of the first question.  He also conducted a game to show how things can be remembered associating them to something relevant.  He showed a film in which how the Europeans and the Italians followed traffic discipline while using vehicles on the road and asked the trainees to state their observations. His approach was to guide the trainees to frame sentences in English.

Umashankari Chandrasekhar M.A. (psychology) with a Post Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education divided the trainees into groups and played word games like Bear Hunt, Category Bingo, Fast Thinking and Vocabulary Race. She also taught them songs in English with actions.

Jayanthi Natarajan B.A. a primary grade teacher in Hari Shree Vidyalayam handling English and Science showed many techniques for vocabulary building.  For example, she gave a word ‘family’ and asked the trainees to give as many words as possible relating to ‘family’. There was good response from the trainees and they managed to give more than 40 words. She asked synonyms and antonyms for scores of words.  She asked each trainee to draw a picture and describe the same in as many sentences as one could.

Shripriyaa Shankkar having a Masters degree in Marketing Management and pursuing another Masters in Teaching English Language went about demonstrating a story with intonation, actions, expressions  and asked each  group of the trainees to prepare a new story of their own and explain who  are the main characters, supporting characters, where and how the incident of the story occurred, what was the problem and how it was solved at the end. She asked the trainees to use the sounds of the 3 letters ‘e, ah, oh’ to express the exclamatory tone while addressing anyone.

Prema Daniel a Masters degree holder in Home Science and having vast experience in Early Childhood Education played games of framing sentences, making one’s own story book by sticking a picture cut from any magazine and writing descriptions about the picture.  The trainees were to pick the words for their sentences searching from the newspapers cut and stick them on the story book to form printed sentences for their story. As the next game, Prema Daniel asked the trainees to just tear the newspaper haphazardly and name the cut pieces as they imagine.  Many names emerged like crocodile, hill, dog, fish, car, ice cream, pistol etcetera.  Then she asked them to start each giving one sentence about the piece she is holding and the next trainee continue to give a connecting sentence to develop a story with the sentences of all the trainees.

Finally Srimathi Devarajan a Post Graduate Honors in Systems Management took a session on Vocabulary and Spellings on the last day of the program.  She used a different method of vocabulary building.  Giving a phrase she asked the trainees to give one word that will match the description of the phrase. Then, telling a story she asked questions to check the comprehension and the ability to give answers in correct English.

The highlight of the program was to engage all the trainees on all the three days in conversation only in English. Many volunteers came forward to play the role of Moderators. The team was divided into 4 groups and each group was helped by one or two moderators. There was no specific topic chosen to discuss. It was a conversation on any casual experience or event. The trainees were encouraged to speak only in English and were guided by the moderators to use the right words and phrases to convey their thoughts. At the end of the sessions, all the trainees felt that their inhibition is disappearing slowly and they have the guts to speak in English.

Thus the Training Program was very successful. While receiving the feedback received from all the participants, everyone expressed satisfaction. They beamingly stated that they have gained new confidence and would very soon start speaking fluently in English.

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