Teaching english communicative skills to technical students: A case of difference for english as second language and english as third language

Abstract

Effective communication is the essence of growth and development. The technical institutes in India have special courses designed to enhance and polish the communicative skills of their students. However, it may happen that some students benefit from the teaching practices more than the others. This does not always have to do with attention deficit from the students but the linguistic background of the students many times plays role subconsciously. It is the responsibility of the facilitator/ resource person to identify the students on the basis of the number of languages that they know and make groups where English communicative skills is to be taught as a second language or a third language. The research discussed in this paper presents the findings of four technical institutes where the underperformers in English mainly comprised of such students who were native speakers of another language using Hindi as their second language and trying to learn English as a third language. Proper intervention from the facilitators and the teachers and correct teaching practices can improve the skills of al students alike.