Spoken English initiative yields positive results in Delhi government school: DoE report
“2400 students (10 % of the total) across centers were assessed twice (pre and post [programme]).The results reiterated the goals of the Directorate of Education to improve the ability students in communicative English and indicate positive impact of the intervention,” states the report.
After the government’s seven-month programme on spoken English in its schools, an assessment by London’s Trinity College has found improvement in the students’ ability to communicate in the language although none was found to be proficient.
The assessment was quoted int a report prepared by the government’s department of education.
“2400 students (10 % of the total) across centers were assessed twice (pre and post [programme]).The results reiterated the goals of the Directorate of Education to improve the ability students in communicative English and indicate positive impact of the intervention,” states the report.
The Delhi government had launched spoken English programme for its class 11 students in June last year. Around 24,000 students were trained under the programme that concluded on December 31, 2018. Every student was attended 160 hours of classes, according to the DoE officials.
The assessment was done based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) norms. It describes language ability on a six-point scale — basic (Pre A1, A1 and A2 [a combination of A2.1 and A2.2]), independent (B1 [a combination of B1.1 and B1.2] and B2) and proficiency (C1 and C2).
As per the data shared by the DoE, around 573 students were found at the basic (A1) level of English language knowledge before the start of the classes. This number reportedly came down to 44 after the programme. The number of those found at the A2 level (basis reading and writing) during pre-assessment period was 974, which improved to 495. Students at B1 and B2 level increased from 79 to 199 and 23 to 56, respectively.
The B1 level is known as Independent level as per the CEFR scale. It requires skills such as randomly speaking on any familiar topic and the ability to explain or reason in the language. No student was found at the C1 level (reading and writing of longer texts) in the pre assessment.
Explaining the reason behind selecting class 11 students for this project, DoE director Sanjay Goel said, “We wanted to train these students because at that level they start planning about their higher education. Many of them start preparing for competitive exams as well. We wanted to make them confident in spoken English so that they do not feel left out when they join colleges with the students who come from private schools.”
The DoE had conducted the spoken English programme in two phases--June to July and August to November-- last year. The final final assessment was done in December. The programme was concluded on December 31, 2018. The department is planning to repeat it for the next batch of class 11 students this year as well.
