To improve written and spoken English and comprehension of the language among students in schools, a read-to-me software has been introduced in seven schools in the capital. The software, introduced in four government and three private schools here on Friday, enables students to master spoken as well as written English through a text-to-speech reader. “Children have lost their reading habits.
We took into account that they pick up better from sound and spoken words, so why not use technology to make the lessons interesting for them,” said V. Maithali, principal of DTEA senior secondary school in central Delhi. K. Shiva Kumar, vice president and head of operations for EnglishHelper, said, “The software is also used by the voluntary organization ‘Pratham’ to reach out to nearly 18,000 students in Maharashtra. It is a licensed product which we are trying to make more socially viable.”
“We will talk to more schools under Delhi government and will expand the project by the end of 2011,” Kumar told the sources. Sandra Swarup, principal of Arwachin Public school in east Delhi, said, “It is not just about English, children have even lost their grounding with Hindi as their mother tongue.” “All the well-known private schools can do without the software as they have trained teachers and staff. But the tier-two city schools need to be equipped with such modern-day measures of teaching,” added Swarup.
