Sunrise from RIE rooftop A view of RIE, Bangalore

It has been a long time since I blogged...because I was too busy being a student. I was at Regional Institute of English to take the examination for the Post Graduate Diploma in English Language Teaching, for about 15 days.

9 days of sitting in classes from 10 to 6.00 and 6 days of examination - teaching, oral and theroy papers was just a bit too much. I was caught twice doodling and talking.

However, all said and done, it was a good experience to see young teachers from the primary level to the tertiary level showing so much of creativity in their teaching methods.

I've learnt a lot, since the exam questions were all application based and there was no cramming possible...that was heaven sent for me, because I've never been able to remember all the definitions that have to be memorised.

I've come back rejuvenated and refreshed and a little more wiser than before about...how students ought to have pages and pages of encomium written for their patience to sit through long lectures and assignments; and more importantly, how much of love and dedication young teachers put into their teaching.

They were the best part of the training. Their simple tricks to make children remember words, their quickly drawn up teaching aids that were so interesting even to adults in the class...I am still to recover from the shock of all that intensity that they packed in. I feel all humble and exhilirated.

I strongly feel that an English teacher gains a sense of purpose and wonder after such courses. In fact, I wish the programme is specially offered to English teachers in Engineering colleges, since English Language Teaching - technical, communicative, business etc. is altogether a different game, considering the fact that we are all literature graduates. We have the love for the language and perhaps the flair for the language, but the skill to teach it as a language?

I do hope somebody in the higher rungs of technical education takes cognisance of the fact and forces us to take up training in teaching the four skills under the guidance of ELT trainers as at RIE or CIEFL.

The campus is quietening down...the first years are the only poor souls to haunt the corridors. A few final year students came to bid good bye. It is sad to see our boys and girls leave us...but there is happiness that they go into the world as GCEians, well armed with enough preparation for the real world. The ELA team was also there...there was a great response to this team's efforts to bring some fun into language acquisition. There was Ancilla, one of the finest students the college has ever produced. God bless all. There were a few moments of sadness when some of them said that their offers from companies such as Feld, Caterpillar and a few other companies had been withdrawn. I can imagine the pain and the sense of low self esteem that these children must be going through. However, I believe things will pick up momentum sometime at the end of the year.

Another development of interest is the oral examination that students of the first year are taking up for the semester for the Cambridge certification. They have an introduction session, a mini presentation and an interaction session with the examiner. All of this recorded in a cassette - two students per cassette; it is a slow process and I hope we will finish the recordings by the 30th. However, it is heartening to see our young first years with so many of them from the Tamil Medium at the school level making such splendid efforts to speak in English. Not always accurate but then fluent enough to make communication possible.