I attended a one-day training programme on the Cambridge certificate exam to be taken up by the II semester students in accordance with Anna University's decision on the curriculum for them. E-Bek to whom this has been outsourced arranged for the training. The resource person was Professor Robert Bellarmine, an expert in training trainers.

What a revelation the experience was! At 67 years of age, this professor retains his intuition for teaching and is able to sensitively understand the mood of the class, in this case, an 80 odd group of recalcitrant teachers, including me who has unreservedly accepted the challenge of the BEC module as trainer and examiner, unable to accept the change in the classroom.

I say this, because to most of us used to the regularity in teaching English - traditional, technical and communicative, the challenge to train students for an international certification was difficult. Teachers were apprehensive since they had no idea what exams they were preparing students for and what role they had to play in the present semester; they were in the dark about the certificate and the methodology of training students for the certificate course.

Though the whole training has come in late for all of us, Professor Bellarmine was outstanding as a trainer. His class did not have not one boring moment, as he took us through the various stages of preparing and training our students for BULATS, the certificate examination to be taken up by our second semester students. His impassive face cracks up into a smile when he notices his trainees enjoying the logic and mischief in his games, stories and activities. He is professional yet retains a humorous touch. He is so tuned to the intricacies of the trainees' responses that it was a joy to observe the manner in which he dealt with the questions, answers, ' worries and queries' (as he put it).

Now we can go ahead with our next batch of students with a sense of direction, purpose and particiaption.

As for the students, they love this pattern of examination. I also personally support this move by the University because the certificate examination has global acceptance and validity. It also assesses the level of language competence through well researched question papers in a manner that is much better than the subjective evaluation that is done in valuation camps.

However, several bottlenecks have to be removed to make it a more student friendly credit. If it can be done, nothing more revolutionary than this could come about in making students industry prepared from the communication and language skills perspective. From here, students can move on to other advanced certificates offered by Cambridge University. The opportunities are endless.