Yet another brainchild of Lady Syeda Sarwat Abed, Director, BRAC Institute of Languages, BRAC University, aiming to go one step further to do something noble for society attained fruition on Saturday (17 December 2016) with underprivileged students confidently taking to the stage to speak their mind, all in English.
Their speaking skills matched the confidence and belief Lady Syeda Sarwat Abed had in BRAC University Communication and Language Club (BUCLC), the members of which, under the supervision of the BIL faculty members, provided free English speaking classes every weekend for the past three months.
Saturday’s programme at the BRAC University auditorium saw some 60 school going students from around Dhaka aged 10-17 years perform dramas, tell short stories, give speeches and sing songs in English, a reflection of the hard work and dedication of the BUCLC members and BIL faculty. The programme ended with the awarding of certificates to the free English speaking course participants.
Farina Haque, a lecturer of BIL, the coordinator of the program and the co-adviser of BUCLC, remarked, “Having good skills on communicating in English are the precursor of development nowadays. These groups of precious juveniles need nothing but a good scope of learning English. We did our level best to improve their communication skill in English for real life needs.”
One participant, Dipu annotates, “I am having fun here. I did not have to memorize anything or study to pass any exam. I just learnt how to communicate in English and relate to real life contexts.”
The classes allowed more time for students’ active participation in activities solely based on the “learning with fun” theme, rather than a teacher “lecturing on how to improve English”. The syllabus is designed basically on the daily need of English in communication such as, asking questions, introducing own self, collecting information etc in a span of three months.
A bunch of remarkable BUCLC general members worked as mentors to the students. They remained present in the classes, co-ordinated different classroom games and assisted students in meetng classroom challenges. Their fathomless effort of making the classes fruitful and easy in various innovative ways for the students was quite perceptible.
Ejab group is the sole sponsor of the program.