Innovation in Language Learning

Large classes exist as an inevitable phenomenon in India due to disparity between the growing demand for higher education and the scarcity of resources available to meet this demand. As a result an ESL class containing 80+ students is a norm in most of the colleges in India. The educational administrators argue that teachers can still teach effectively in large classes if they teach sincerely and use better methodology. Teachers, on the other hand, favour small classes as they feel they can have better interaction with students and lesser work pressure in small classes than in large ones. In the context of a skill-based subject like English small classes are especially important because students need a lot of opportunities to practice language under the close supervision of their teacher and get corrective feedback from him. However, in a large class, with traditional ‘chalk and talk’ lecture-centred teaching, it is quite difficult to engage each learner in meaningful communication, address his individual difficulties and give him corrective/productive feedback.

In this kind of scenario the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be very handy. ICT consists of diverse set of technological tools and resources such as cellular phones, radio, video, television, computers and internet which are used to communicate, create, disseminate, store, and manage information. Judicious use of ICT tools by teacher can help him in not only presenting rich multimedia content to engage learners in the lesson but it can also enable him to reach out to each learner, address his individual difficulties and give him corrective feedback. In my paper I would like to demonstrate how with a little training in ICT, an ordinary college teacher can use such ICT tools  as interactive PPTs, Google sites and Web Quests effectively to teach literature and language skills to promote learners’ proficiency in English in large classes.  I would like to share some of my interactive lessons based on PPTs, Google sites and Web Quests to my fellow teachers in the conference.