Programme to make students fluent in Malayalam in Kannur

KANNUR: Malayalam language proficiency of High School students of Government and Government- aided schools in Kannur District has been cited as abysmally low, according to an inspection conducted by officials of the education department of the district. The inspection pointed to the inability of High school students to read and write Malayalam fluently.

Hence with the aim of making students completely thorough with the language – think, read and write in Malayalam - a team headed by Deputy director of Education has come forward with a 45-day training programme for every High school student in the district in Malayalam. The training that started last week comprises a detailed worksheet in Malayalam for students to help them understand and learn Malayalam alphabets, including different vowels, consonants, vowel diacritics, conjunct consonants and consonant diacritics.

Speaking about the initiative, Benny Peter, a faculty from the district who leads the training programme said, “The need analysis was conducted to investigate the level of teaching and learning Malayalam in high school classes. This revealed the grave status of students who often tend to forget mainly the diacritics in the language, which leads to losing the fluency both in writing and reading.”

He added, “With this worksheet, we are trying to help students understand the language and make them thorough in it. Actually the training programme is a kind of revision process that students studied during lower primary sessions.” The department has also decided to conduct similar training programmes even for the students studying in CBSE schools in the District with the same worksheet. Inspired by the initiative, the education department of other districts has also decided to implement this in the schools in their respective regions.