More people than ever before want to learn English. India’s economic growth has further led to the popularity of the language. However, according to David Graddol, linguist and writer, vernacular languages will play an equally important role in India’s future growth. “Instead of focussing on English-medium schools, the emphasis should be on the quality of English teaching in vernacular-medium schools. There will be an increasing demand for multi-lingual speakers by corporate India,” said Graddol, who is currently carrying out research on the growth of English in India.
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As part of its global vision for English, the British Council has launched the programme ‘Project English’ in India and Sri Lanka. The aim is that by 2010 every teacher and learner of English in the world will have access to skills, ideas and materials they need from the UK. “This global ambition got a local fillip when, during his visit to India in 2008, Gordon Brown, British Prime Minister met his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh and committed the British Council to train, directly or indirectly, 750,000 English teachers in India over the next five years (2013). In order to achieve this vision, we have carved our work into three strands: corporate training, state partnerships and direct teaching of English,” said Chris Gibson, director, Project English (India and Sri Lanka).
On the corporate side, British Council is working with companies such as Barclays, Orange, Tata Sky, Microsoft (on an employment skills programme), and are webcasting with Infosys to reach 86,000 employees and some 300,000 college students. “We have developed a low cost, language test for recruitment for the BPO sector. The test takes only 20 minutes to deliver yet produces detailed data on a candidate’s spoken English level across five parameters: fluency, accuracy, range, interaction and pronunciation and the results are internationally benchmarked. Around 35,000 tests have been administered by Barclays alone as part of their India-wide recruitment drive,” said Jill Coates, head, Corporate Training, British Council India.
Elaborating on the second strand, Alison Barrett, head, State Partnerships, said, “We are currently engaged with a number of state governments and state boards across India, in Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Punjab and Kerala, delivering teacher training, developing new curriculum and materials for teachers as well as pupils. In 2008-09 we worked with 1,300 master trainers reaching over 4,00,000 teachers who teach some 17 million learners across the region.” For example, in Delhi NCR, British Council worked with the department of education to train 40 mentors and 400 master trainers, which will eventually impact over one million students. Also, in November 2008, “we launched the Indian edition of English Teaching Professional, a journal for English teachers in the UK, in partnership with Macmillan India, which will reach over 5,00,000 teachers across India by 2010,” she added.
In April this year, a new Direct Teaching centre was opened in Chennai and there are plans to open two more in 2009-10 in Kolkata and Hyderabad. The centres aim to provide quality English language at affordable prices to young people. Details of the courses on offer are available at :
www.britishcouncil.org/india-english-learnenglishinchennai.htm
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“The Project English team works closely with local experts, for example with English and Foreign Language University (EFL-U, formerly CIEFL) and regional institutes of education, to find solutions to India’s needs. We are supporting the reform agenda for India in education and economy by focussing on developing the skills of teachers, English language teachers, teacher trainers and language learners so that they can fulfil their wants and needs and support India’s development,” summed up Debanjan Chakrabarti, head-Project English (East India).
Traditionally, in India, only a certain segment had a strong command over English, but initiatives such as Project English would help to widen that segment, and Graddol is optimistic that fluency in English and a vernacular language would give Young India a global edge.