Lingua Soft
Introduction
The importance of English, both as an international language and as a link language, is now widely accepted. It is also well known that students belonging to the rural areas have problems in learning and speaking English. Recognizing this urgent need, St. Antony's college of arts and sciences for women, has for some time been focusing on the teaching and learning of English to all students. With the upswing in economic activities and with the service sector booming in the country, there is an explosion of opportunities available to persons at different levels of competence and skills. All that is required is the added advantage of the ability to communicate effectively in English. This is the main reason behind starting a short- term course in spoken English for all I year students. It is a known fact that students in rural semi - urban areas do not have adequate exposure to communication skill and that there are not many institutions which can impart training. Hence, the Department of Computer Science and English with collaboration has taken on a pilot project to conduct skill development course for all I year students to train students to develop their skills.
An effective training program will prepare students for job interviews, will elevate their confidence levels and enable them to use English whenever the situation demands. For this, they need practice in speaking that starts them with the basics and takes them to an advanced level through carefully guided activities. Proficiency in oral communication also needs an exhaustive and systematic practice of the micro - skills of listening and speaking. The language inputs that are necessary include essential vocabulary, grammar and functions of English. To make listening interesting, it is useful to have stories, jokes, puzzles, jumbles and songs in the text to motivate the students to be active learners. Role play and dialogues based on day - to - day interaction make thelistening and speaking interesting. As the course progresses, it will be necessary to train students to understand the meaning of words through contexts without the frequent use of the dictionary. Similarly, they will need to understand newspaper captions, related them to different social issues and use them to debate on these.
This course prepared by experts in the field and by practicing teachers fulfils the requirements of average students and relates to their sociocultural backgrounds. This course will become part of the regular curriculum,attracting and benefiting many students in the long run. The principal and faculty members of the college offers the course with wholeheartedly in this program to ensure its success.
The skill based course for the year 2017-2018 was organized by English and Computer Science department for the Ist year Students, The course was inaugurated with lighting the lamp. An entrance test was conducted to check each student's English and they were divided into fiveclasses in I semester and 8 classes in II semester.
Aims and Objective of the course are as follows:
Aim
The overall aims of the course are:
To enable the leaner to communicate effectively and appropriately in real life situation.
To use English effectively for study purpose across the curriculum.
To develop and integrate the use of the four language skills is Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing.
To revise and inforce structure already learnt.
Objective
Reading Skills:
The ability to read English with understanding the student is able to
Grasp meaning of words and sentences.
Acquire the ability to use a suitable dictionary.
Form the habit of reading for pleasure, and for information.
Develop correct reading habits, silently, extensively and intensively.
Comprehend material other than the prescribed text and comment on the passages read.
Develop reading speed.
Enrich Vocabulary.
Listening Skills:
The ability to understand English when it is spoken the student should able to
Understand statements, questions, instructions and commands.
Grasp the substance and central idea of what is heard.
Listen and understand passages, and maintain her listening attention for a reasonable length of time.
Writing skills:
The ability to write English correctly the student is able to master the mechanics of writing the use of correct punctuation marks and capital letters.
Spell words correctly.
Write neatly and legibly with reasonable speed.
Use appropriate vocabulary.
Use correct grammatical items.
Write coherently in more than one paragraph.
Write paragraphs, letters, simple, narrative pieces, reports notices, massages, diary entries etc.
Make notes and summaries.
Speaking skills:
The ability to speak intelligibly the student is able to pronounce English correctly and intelligibly.
Use appropriate word stress, sentence stress and elementary intonation patterns.
Speak intelligibly while making statements, asking question, giving instructions and commands reporting events.
Put ideas in proper sequence.
Narrate simple experiences and series of events to covey its essence and intention.
Use polite expressions in appropriate ways.
These communication skills have been fairly well distributed through this 5 units. Where the students first introduced to the alphabets of English language and spelling, basic question structure through googo, basic vocabulary and the use of different tenses and preposition in contextualized text.
Understand and use the letters of alphabet correctly in speaking.
Recognize the present /past /past participle tenses in contextualized passage.
To follow a shorty passage by dictation
To take notes on the short passage by listening.
To know the vocabulary from the given passage and to pronounce the words correctly.
Visualization of sentence were given by the activity of googo.
To follow up the short story to understand the moral of the story.
Many activities were formulated appropriately to the students from low to advanced level.
Students from various department gathered for SDC inaugural function.
To make learning more interesting and informal, the students were introduced into audio visual learning. Atmosphere was created for the students to speak in English and they were encouraged to communicate in English by the staff members. The course was fruitful. The students were taught about, what is English fluency? What does it mean to speak English easily and automatically? Definition is simple -- you speak English automatically when your speech is effortless. You speak fluent English when the words come out of your mouth -- without translation and without hesitation. Sometimes this is called "thinking in English", but truly automatic speech is even faster than that -- there is no thinking. You don't think about the language at all - you just speak as easily and effortlessly as you do with your native language. Why is automatic fluent speech important? It's important because automatic English speaking is the key to getting results with English. Automatic speaking makes it easy to connect with native speakers. As an automatic English speaker, it's easy for the speaker to make friends, participate in business meetings, talk to customers, understand movies, and get better jobs. To get real results with English, the student need to speak easily and automatically.
The Effortless English system is very simple and consists of three primary areas of mastery: Body, Mind, & Method. By mastering specific techniques in each area, the students will powerfully improve your English speaking ability. Their speech will become faster and the students will begin to speak English automatically. Each of these three areas is important and each contributes to the power of the Effortless English Teaching System. When we talk about "Body" in Effortless English, we are mostly talking about emotion. Emotion is energy. Emotion is what gives us the energy and the motivation to study every day. Emotion gives us the confidence to speak. Positive emotion helps us to learn faster, while negative emotions slow our learning. To learn very quickly, we must learn to master our emotions -- and that requires mastery of our body. In the Effortless English System, "Mind" means beliefs and focus. The beliefs about learning, education and our own abilities strongly influence the learning ability. Powerful beliefs lead to powerful learning, while weak beliefs lead to slow learning. Unfortunately, in school most learned very weak beliefs. Therefore, most English students lack confidence. They feel nervous about English. They think they are "not good at English". They believe that English speaking is very difficult. None of these beliefs are true. Finally, to improve English speaking quickly students must master the Effortless English "Method". "Method" refers to the specific teaching and learning techniques that we use in the system. In the method section, students learn exactly how to study and exactly what kinds of lessons to use. Method is very important, but students absolutely must first master Body & Mind in order to speak English easily. Remember, each part of the Effortless English System is vital -- they must master all three areas in order to master English speaking.
Speaking in English plays a vital role in advancing ones professional career to greater heights. It plays an equally important role during one's academic career as well. Here in this chapter, we explain the significance of English in achieving career progression and personal development of the students. Lack of effective communication skills is more often than not the primary reason why people tend to hate their jobs. With a little bit of improvement in communication skills, especially spoken English, they can realize their true potential and in the long-run would love the same job they used to hate so much! With the globalization of business, almost all the major companies have started looking for employees who can communicate better in English. This is now becoming a standard communication channel in the business world.
QUICK TIPS
While learning English, or any new language for that matter, one should always seek opportunities to interact with people who can converse in the same language. However, not everyone gets such opportunities on a daily basis. For them, we have listed a few tips here that can boost their level of confidence. Reading newspapers, books, magazines aloud there is a difference between reading and reading aloud. While many of us read newspapers which help us to build vocabulary, we hardly read its content aloud. When we read the content loud, our brain analyzes the information as speech and activates our speaking abilities. It is a good practice to read the text aloud every day for some time. Not necessarily, in front of someone. Playing word games to relax throat and mouth muscles Opening the mouth and manipulating the flow of air is one of the fundamental techniques of speech. Proper utilization of these techniques enhances our clarity and pronunciation of speech
Practice tongue-twisters and word puzzles frequently. Take a look at the following examples: The big black bug bit the big black bear, but the big black bear bit the big
Black bug back! The thought I thought wasn't the thought I thought I thought.
There was a fisherman named Fisher who fished for some fish in a fissure.
Till a fish with a grin, pulled the fisherman in. Now they're fishing the fissure for Fisher.