Chhattisgarh Field Trials for CLIx English

We conducted these trials at two schools in Dhamtari, Chhattisgarh, on 26-27 April 2016. The recent heatwave led to schools being shut down at 10:00 AM, which made for very short, focused, yet extremely productive sessions.The visit allowed us to glean, first hand, student proficiency in English. Besides a Listening and Writing Baseline Test, we carried out trials of Lesson 01 and of the Open Story Tool. This visit was also meant to test the schools’ lab readiness for CLIx, and some troubleshooting was found to be required. Many students had little comprehension of written or spoken English, but they nevertheless tried to follow the conversations and activities.

Students of Std 9 attempting the Listening and Writing Baseline Test

They most enjoyed the Audio Recording Tool – especially hearing themselves speak in playback – and worked to improve their recordings.The superhit offering was Story Time. The students not only listened multiple times to the story in Lesson 1, but went on to listen to the Lesson 2 story as well, without any prompting. We had not even planned to test the second lesson and, given the paucity of time, eventually had to urge students to go home.We also conducted Focus Group Discussions with teachers in both schools and with the English, Language Teaching, Institute teachers at SCERT. The eagerness to innovate, and to help enhance opportunities for their students, were strongly evident in teachers and administrators.