BU turns Henry Higgins for students
Awkward pauses, ungrammatical utterances and colloquial diction might be a thing of the past. Students of Bangalore University could soon converse with their peers in chaste Queen’s English if its latest innovation 'The Language Lab' proves to be a success.
‘The Language Lab’ will be set up at the University’s library in the Jnana Bharathi campus at the cost of Rs 50 lakh to improve the language skills of its students. The lab will be equipped with state-of-the-art software and video technology to help the students with their verbal communication and spoken language. Speaking to Deccan Herald, Vice-Chancellor Dr N Prabhu Dev said the initiative was being taken to mainly improve the communication skills of the students. “We have found that most of our students struggle with spoken language and verbal communication. The language lab is an initiative aimed at improving their diction and communication,” he said.
The VC added that the lab will have language coaches and video material, which will show the students the right way. “Our plan is to play instructional videos on spoken language and also to videograph the students while they are conversing. The videos will be played back so that they can watch, hear themselves and compare it with the instructional videos and learn,” Prabhu Dev said. In addition to the video material, the students will also undergo regular lectures on language and hone their skills with an existing software.
“Besides English, the language lab will offer the ten foreign languages which we offer currently and also the eleventh, Persian, which we will introduce soon,” the Vice-Chancellor said. The ten foreign languages offered by the University currently include French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Portugese, Finnish, Korean and Chinese. The language lab, which will be up and running by May in time for the next academic year and is part of the University’s plans to overhaul pedagogy and modernise techniques of instruction.
