Facilitating Communication: The Way (Book- 1)

The University feels proud and also appreciates the efforts of the faculty in the Department of English and the members of the Textbook Committee to have prepared and produced the English Reader "Facilitating Communication: The Way" - Book I for the 1st year of the Prak - Shastri (Intermediate) Course. A change in the curriculum for the 1st Language Paper - English of the course is the need of the hour. This is because the methodology and the approach to English Language Teaching have undergone a major change in the recent years. Moreover, the present English Readers have been in use since the 1990s.

I am sure the selection of reading passages, the well - defined sections and the exercises prepared would meet the requirements of the Sanskrit students who come from varied backgrounds and with very little exposure to English. The illustrations too would undoubtedly be motivating and create interest in them; as also the colour scheme used to highlight important points.

The University extends its gratitude to Prof. S. Mohanraj and Prof. Jayashree Mohanraj (Formerly of English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad) for the services and expertise rendered right through the project, from the selection of materials and the preparation of exercises to the process of going through the manuscript.

I congratulate Prof. V. Sujatha for the initiative taken and for her perseverance to complete the textbook which will be beneficial to the students in the long run.

I appreciate the internal members of the Textbook Committee Prof. R. Deepta (Department of English), Dr. R. Chandrasekhar and Dr. K. Kadambini (Department of Education) for their coordinated efforts. I also thank the faculty members of the Department working on ad-hoc basis Mr. Sai Krishna, Dr. Pothan Pratap and Smt. Ganga Bhavani for their involvement in the project.

I am happy to know that the work on Book - II has already begun for the 2nd year of the course.

I hope the Department would come out with many more such teaching materials for use in the classrooms and wish it all success.

In the past fifty years, importance of the English language globally has shown improvement enormously, especially, the Communicative Skills in the social, educational and business sectors. As a result, the pedagogical researchers, the teachers, the Course writers, officials concerned with Education have been working for a way out to make the Teaching / Learning of English easier to Indian students, for whom English is unfathomable.

Therefore, considering the present era and thinking of society, the students who choose to study Sanskrit need to equip themselves with Communication Skills in English so as to pass on the knowledge embedded in the Vedas, the Puranas, the Epics, etc., to posterity. Though we find a flood of books in the market today, they do not meet the needs of Sanskrit students in matters relating to the content, the methodology to be used, etc. The focus of study of these students is Shastras. Moreover, the students come from various states, socio-cultural background and regional medium. They have very little communication competence and their exposure to English is minimal. Keeping these issues in mind, the Faculty in the Department of English took upon themselves the work to produce an English Reader which would be user-friendly for use in the Prak - Shastri (Intermediate) course.

"Facilitating Communication: The Way" - Book I is the first part of an innovative and task-based course for the two-year Prak-Shastri Course. It is designed for an intensive study for students who have studied English at least for four years. It would also serve as foundation course at the Undergraduate level. It comprises 6 Units in all. Each unit covers the major areas, viz., Speaking Activities, Reading, Comprehension, Vocabulary (Word Building), Writing Tasks and Project Work.

Based on the Constructivist Approach to Language Teaching, special features such as Communicative Activities, Grammar through pictures and context have been included in the book. The authentic materials used to present a teaching item would allow the students to learn how language is used in the actual day-to-day life. The Project Work is aimed at making the learners work in groups outside the classroom and interact with society at large. Some materials have also been added under Extensive Reading to widen the knowledge of the students and to inculcate in them the habit of reading for pleasure.

**Contents and Sample Pages**