A PAPER ON ALTERNATIVE PEDAGOGIES.

Civilization is the miracle of human thought. Language is the vehicle of thought. Language transports ideas across boundaries- geographical, political, social and cultural. English has come to occupy the status of the lingua franca of the world. Globalization today has necessitated increased efforts to gain conversance in English. It is only a century and half ago that English education came to be introduced in India. The preferred medium of instruction in the Indian subcontinent is English. Majority of the professional courses are invariably studied in English owing to the fact that expert study material in pure sciences, engineering, medicine, astronomy, management and many other subjects are available in English. With the vision of preparing our youngsters use these resources with considerable ease, it becomes inevitable for us to teach English in the most receptive ways. English being a foreign language, if taught with the native environment and contexts in view, learning becomes natural, easy, effort less and eventually, we would inculcate love for this target language which will help youngsters excel in their passionate subjects of study. Thus, innovating teaching techniques of English language based on the group in hand would for us mean devising, designing and executing language learning techniques that have an Indian touch, and are derived from the known to the unknown. This paper states alternative pedagogies to cater to students with varying degrees of proficiency in English language skills. Experiences of trying alternative pedagogies in teaching English for B.Tech. students have been elaborated in the paper. The overwhelming positive transformation that becomes evident by the end of each course motivates us to carry forward our efforts to innovate.