LEARNING AND COUNSELLING

ABSTRACT

Today’s technological development needs the improvement of

communication skill. The technocrats should be able to express their

innovative ideas to compete in the competitive job market.

At this context, English language teaching has a major role to play in

order to make the students excel in their communicative skill.

This paper explains the various innovative steps taken in an

engineering college with II year engineering college students to improve their

speaking skill.

It elaborates the importance of four basic skills and how each one is

interlinked and in what way the four skills pave way to improve the

communication skill. But most of the students are from Tamil medium & they

are afraid of speaking in English though coaching is given to them. So they

need counseling to come out of their fear & speak.

The paper gives the analysis of the results obtained from the students

along with the innovative steps & counseling followed to make the students

attain fluency in speaking skill.

This paper concludes with the suggestions to incorporate innovative

methods in the classrooms to teach the four basic skills & enhance fluency

among students.

Keywords: Awareness, Employment, Improvement, Confidence, Practice

Introduction:

Today there is vast development in the field of Science and Technology.

Engineering Education is at the peak and thousands of graduates and passing

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out every year. We are producing engineering graduates but are we really

producing engineers is a great question mark? It is so in all the other degrees

which the students attain. It may be any degree for that matter (B.Sc., M.A,

B.A etc.,). They are only graduates, but they are not able to express any of

their ideas. Since I am working in an engineering college I want to present a

data of my II year engineering students. My paper gives a detail analysis of the

students’ improvement in the speaking skills due to continuous practice along

with counseling during regular hours in our College.

About the sample:

10 students from II year Mechanical Engineering was taken for experimental

analysis. They were asked to select topics of their own interest. The students

were given 12 weeks which had 2 period of 50 minutes duration.

Strategies adopted:

In the first week during the 1st hour the students were given awareness about

the importance of 4 basic skills and how it is important for their career

development to attain good employment. In the 2nd hour they were asked to

write 10 sentences of their own on any topic they liked, but nearly 15 of them

were not able to write more than 5 sentences. The sentences what they wrote

had many grammatical mistakes. After having got an idea about their

grammatical knowledge in the 2nd and 3rd week they were taught basic

grammar. The students were taught Parts of Speech, Tenses, Concord, Active

and Passive, Simple, Compound & Complex sentences.

During the 5th week they were given a test on grammar for two periods. They

showed 75% improvement in their grammatical knowledge.

During the 6th week the students were given simple topics and they were asked

to speak on that topic. They spoke with confidence which made me feel that I

have achieved some extent in my goal.

From 7th week to 11th week various topics on recent developments where given

to them and they were asked to prepare on that and submit it. The grammatical

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mistakes were corrected. They were asked to by heart it with understanding.

The speech was for only 3 minutes. It was checked by making them read it the

previous week itself. On the 12th week they were given some tips to improve

their speaking skill which motivated them.

While the students spoke on it, it was noticed that there was a steady increase

in the time they spoke.

The detailed analysis of the students speech is given below.

Students Performance:Roll no 7th week

Time in sec

8th week Time in

sec

9th week Time in

sec

10th week Time in

sec

11th week Time in

sec2K9207 30 32 46 50 62

2K9208 20 15 48 55 68

2K9209 23 28 32 40 65

2K9210 25 30 48 52 60

2K9211 26 35 34 38 52

2K9212 32 40 42 45 59

2K9213 25 30 38 50 61

2K9214 27 30 34 48 62

2K9215 32 38 40 52 61

2K9216 35 42 48 60 65

The analysis shows that there is very low, but steady increase in time, but only

few seconds which shows that speaking skills can be improved by regular &

constant practice.

Conclusion:

The above results shows clearly the facts

(a) Students should be motivated to speak.

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(b) Students should know the basic concepts of grammar.

(c) They should be corrected for their mistakes them & there.

(d) They should be given time in the regular stream to express their

ideas without fear.

Bibliography:

1. Farmer,M.L(1971). Counseling Services for adults in higher education.

Metuchen : The scarecrow Press Inc.

2. Brookfield,S.D(1986).Understanding and facilitating adult learning

San Fancisco :Jossey-Bass Publishers

3. Cohen,A.(1994). Assessing language ability in the class room (2nd ed).

Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

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