English training programme held for underprivileged Chennai students

CHENNAI: "English continues to be a barrier for several government school children and underpreviliged students. We found that many children are interested in learning English, but there was no opportunity. It is also found that a lot of them did not go for interviews and not able to get jobs due to lack of communication," said Ravikumar Arunachalam, a social impact counsellor, who is now part of a training programme beneffiting about 500 students from poor economic background.

A group of volunteers from different NGOs on Saturday spoke to children particularly from the poor economic background to understand the modes of improving communicative skills and English language skills among the underpreviliged.

"Unlike other spoken English classes that are focused on grammar, we approach differently as a team to develop their language skill to help interact and converse in English language. Majority of students' parents are daily wagers, where they cannot afford to spend money on sending their children to separate classes,” said Ravikumar.

"Tamil is our identity, but English is a necessity in today's life. Our aim is taking English to every student of the underserved population,” said another trainer in the free programme event. The volunteers started the programme in 2019 to help students who were interested to develop their skills.

"The team provides a lot of activity-based learning such as vocabulary building, role plays, conversations, describing pictures, group activities, and many other games so that the students are more interactive. After the project we conduct a refresher program, to ensure the students communicate in English,” said a volunteer.

The team along with Aramporul, Vaishnavi Trust, and Rotary club of Guindy, have been assisting the project providing stationary items and dictionaries. Previously, English programmes were conducted in shelter homes, government aided schools, and hostels for the less privileged. At present, at the Adidravidar welfare department girls' hostel at Vepery is one of the venue for the programme.