The government will introduce a new model for teaching English to improve skills in speaking, listening and grammar in schools before the end of this year. The new model is titled ‘English as a life skill’.
Sunimal Fernando, the Convener of the Presidential Task Force on English and IT said school teachers are now being retrained under this program with the assistance of the English and Foreign Language University of Hyderabad, which designed the moduls on modern English training techniques.
He said teaching only grammar has not brought the much needed results in terms of English education in the country.
However Fernando revealed that under students will be trained to speak English, listen and also learn grammar.
Fernando said over 70 percent of the English medium teachers had already been trained and the rest would complete their training by the end this year. The new English teaching curriculum will be introduce to all 9500 schools from next year and Ordinary Level exam will test the English skills of students in all 3 formats - speaking, listening and grammar- from 2012.