Interactive Radio Programme for Teaching Spoken English to Students in Regional Medium Elementary Schools

The Interactive Radio Programme "We Learn English" consists of 245 radio lessons of 15 minutes each. These are to be broadcast over three academic years, one lesson a day. The concept is that teachers and children listen to the programme together. During the radio lesson, there are opportunities for students to listen to entertaining content in English along with their first language, to learn a few new words, phrases and sentences in English in each lesson, and to respond to questions asked by the radio teacher. The classroom teacher moderates the lesson, selects children to answer questions, corrects responses etc. The lessons can be conducted by teachers with limited abilities in English, as the main teaching is done by the radio teacher. The lessons incorporate humour, values, entertainment and education, all in a seamless mixture, so that children are engrossed for the duration of the programme, and loose their fear and shyness. The product has been developed after a lot of research into the technical aspects of second language teaching, formulation of a curriculum specially for the target audience, and with stringent formative and summative evaluation.