Teaching LSRW in Rural Engineering Colleges of Tamil Nadu—Where We Are? Where We have to be? —An Insight into Teaching Language Courses Effectively for Regional Medium Students

Abstract

In the announced list of rank holders of Anna University, many rural colleges have made their mark and continuously outperforming their city counterparts. While the top ten colleges of the city always have the highest number of university rank holders, many engineering colleges in other districts and rural areas boast of at least 20 university rank holders each. At least 12 colleges from rural areas like Dindigul, Sivakasi, Nagerkoil and few parts of down-south India have also made it to the list of institutions with a high number of university rank holders this year. There are 557 engineering colleges across the State affiliated to the Anna University which is the affiliating body for engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu. Over the last few years, it is a proven fact that mostly city-based engineering colleges and the colleges located in the satellite cities score better with high University ranks. But the real ground reality is— it is mandatory for the rural colleges to outperform their city counterparts to get more and more admissions and it seems to be an uphill task for them. One of the main parameters that affect the results is the lacuna in the communication skills which puts the regional medium students under pressure while attending the engineering program. Rural colleges are struggling hard to heighten the knowledge and communication acumen of the students, but in vain. Teaching Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing (LSRW) skills to the engineering students from rural colleges requires certain acumen which should be acquired with experience and interest. In this paper authors share their experience in teaching LSRW. Author’s experience conveys that making them understand the importance of having potential communication skills and teaching them the simplest and practical methods for learning LSRW only will help them to communicate effectively rather than adopting general language training methods which fail to draw their attention.

Keywords: LSRW skills, English coaching, communication skills, training students