ABSTRACT

Learning a language is an amazing fact and language acquisition is one of the most impressive and fascinating aspects of human development. Second language acquisition theories emphasize the role of the environment, especially opportunities to interact with speakers who adapt their language and interaction patterns to meet learners’ needs. The ever-growing need for good communication skill and speaking skill in English has created a great demand in the methods of teaching English. People generally want to improve their spoken English as it is ‘Lingua Franca’ of the world. Spoken English is a prerequisite for a successful career in many fields of employment. This paper is an outcome of a course under UGC – CAREER ORIENTED PROGRAMME titled as CERTIFICATE COURSE IN COMMUNICATION SKILL AND SPOKEN ENGLISH, conducted at the writer’s college for the final year students who are from rural villages and who had their regional language (Tamil) as the medium of instruction at schools. They are all in need of a good job and employers, too, insist that their employees have good communication and fluency in English. Many students display a lack of confidence in speaking English and this had motivated the teachers of English to explore the possibility of introducing a course which would help them gain more confidence in communicating in English and also provide them with more job opportunities. There are many methods and opportunities to teach English, such as, travel, study abroad, media and internet. This paper shows how among all the methods, Communicative Language Teaching, CLT, facilitates and fulfills the learning process to improve the spoken skill when done with various activities, even though the teachers face many challenges, while teaching the course. (more…)