A lecturer from Telangana on a mission to teach English to rural kids

KARIMNAGAR:  With the belief that English is becoming increasingly important to make a mark in the world, a teacher from the district has prepared a 40-hour programme to help rural students, who haven’t been exposed to the language too much, to pick it up easily. An English lecturer at the Jyothishmathi Institute of Technology and Science (JITS), K Prasanna Latha designed activity-based learning methods to develop writing and reading skills.

Speaking to TNIE, she mentions that though she had been teaching English for the past 12 years, her heart lay with the rural students. During her leisure, she would spend time with rural students, most of whom come from financially poor backgrounds.

Seeing them struggle with English, which she considers one of the most important things needed for success in the modern world, Latha prepared a 40-hour-long programme. Recently, she presented the entire initiative as her PhD thesis, ‘Developing the Reading and Writing Skills in the Zilla Parishad Secondary School Students in Karimnagar District’, at Osmania University. She used cross-tabulation, chi-square test and one-way ANOVA from Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) to show her initiative’s effectiveness.

“Once reading and writing skills improve among the students, it leads to a habit of reading books, which is a good sign for them and their careers,” says Latha. While stating that her work has just started, she says that her goal is to serve as many rural students as she can. Her efforts have garnered appreciation from educationists and educators across the State, especially for her passion to teach English.