Visit to English classes

Date: 16/11/07

Yesterday, I got an opportunity to visit some of the English classes being run in Delhi.
My level of excitement and desperation to see children learn English language from one
of the community teachers was high. I had the idea that teaching English to a bunch of
out of school children and/ children studying in govt. school was not an easy task,
English being an alien (though not for all of us in the 21st century) and complicated
language.
The first class we visited was supposed to be one of the best classes, so that I could
understand the class processes in a better way. The afternoon classes in Nandnagari area,
North-East of Shahadra, generally comprise of girls in coordination with the school
timings (shifts for boys and girls separately). The sight of 15-16 girls from a slum
community learning to read English was wonderful. All these children were school going.
The class had been organized in a temple with all the relevant material to support it, like a
blackboard, alphabet charts and English reading material. Apart from learning English, it
was apparent that children had also been taught basic etiquette.
The children were very excited to put questions to me, when asked by their teacher. There
were questions ranging from What is your name?, What does your father do? to
Which is your favourite song? When I counter questioned them, they were hesitant but
tried hard to answer back in english. There were few words (like- vehicle, doing etc.) not
understood by children. All this made me wonder as to how far had the question and
conversation part of the curriculum (run for about 3-4 months) helped children with their
English skills. There were some children studying in Std. VI, who were far below their
expected level in english language. However, I was told later that Reading part of the
curriculum takes care of word and sentence formation, which was started in the class only
a few days ago.
Though the children found it difficult to frame long answers, but they made a point to
answer back simple questions in Yes and No rather than Haan and Nahi. Both the
classes visited by us had good attendance.