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KARADI TALES
In Mumbai's Dharavi - the world's third largest
slum - children have picked up English rather easily after they were introduced to the Karadi Tales interactive audiobooks in 2000. This was a huge learning experience for CPViswanath and Shobha Viswanath the couple who had launched the Karadi Tales series in the 1980s. They were convinced that learning a language need not involve teaching the meanings of words or the grammar as the Dharavi children had no exposure to them.
"We wanted to understand the environmental stimuli that leads to children learning the language", says Viswanath, cofounder, director and CEO of Karadi Path Education Company, which specialises in pedagogy for language acquisition. Beginning in 2000 it took them 12 years of trial and error to finally settle on a teaching method that was proved to be 11 times more effective than conventional methods
With the language seen as a passport to success the obsession with learning English is understandable in a country like India.
"Over 90 per cent of the content online is in English. We are living in a globalized world and if you have to expand your horizon you need to understand the language the world has adopted. A trader who knows only Marwari cannot dream of business beyond the Marwari speaking districts."
More and more parents even from rural areas want their children go to English medium schools. They feel it opens better opportunities for them.
But English language classes do not impart the fluency needed.
" In the best of circumstances when you learn a language only from the classroom you never learn it. You speak not because you went to English classes but you were in an environment that gave you exposure to English."
The Karadi Path methodology uses music, stories and physical activities to encourage the use of intuitive intelligence - namely the intelligence that comes into play when babies learn to walk, learn their mother tongue or learn to sing. " A child will understand much about a story without knowing the language or story". The challenge is to keep the child engaged with narration by making it enjoyable.
What is surprising is that enquiries are coming from far away South America on the programme for implementation there.
I wouldn't have believed the concept possible if I had not seen a child pick up English, Malayalam and Hindi effortlessly and converse in the languages through interaction in the school and through watching cartoons for children in Television.
What the child conveys is sensible and with proper accent.
In Mumbai's Dharavi - the world's third largest
slum - children have picked up English rather easily after they were introduced to the Karadi Tales interactive audiobooks in 2000. This was a huge learning experience for CPViswanath and Shobha Viswanath the couple who had launched the Karadi Tales series in the 1980s. They were convinced that learning a language need not involve teaching the meanings of words or the grammar as the Dharavi children had no exposure to them.
"We wanted to understand the environmental stimuli that leads to children learning the language", says Viswanath, cofounder, director and CEO of Karadi Path Education Company, which specialises in pedagogy for language acquisition. Beginning in 2000 it took them 12 years of trial and error to finally settle on a teaching method that was proved to be 11 times more effective than conventional methods
With the language seen as a passport to success the obsession with learning English is understandable in a country like India.
"Over 90 per cent of the content online is in English. We are living in a globalized world and if you have to expand your horizon you need to understand the language the world has adopted. A trader who knows only Marwari cannot dream of business beyond the Marwari speaking districts."
More and more parents even from rural areas want their children go to English medium schools. They feel it opens better opportunities for them.
But English language classes do not impart the fluency needed.
" In the best of circumstances when you learn a language only from the classroom you never learn it. You speak not because you went to English classes but you were in an environment that gave you exposure to English."
The Karadi Path methodology uses music, stories and physical activities to encourage the use of intuitive intelligence - namely the intelligence that comes into play when babies learn to walk, learn their mother tongue or learn to sing. " A child will understand much about a story without knowing the language or story". The challenge is to keep the child engaged with narration by making it enjoyable.
What is surprising is that enquiries are coming from far away South America on the programme for implementation there.
I wouldn't have believed the concept possible if I had not seen a child pick up English, Malayalam and Hindi effortlessly and converse in the languages through interaction in the school and through watching cartoons for children in Television.
What the child conveys is sensible and with proper accent.
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