You would find the following topics discussed under this blog...
- Brief History
- Who can learn Kannada
- Research
- Methodology
- Course Ware
- Who are we
- Where are we
Brief History
The desire to teach and assist others has led us to create this unique program. The initialization of this activity was done in 2000 when Mallya Aditi International School invited us to conduct and run a program for children to learn Kannada. The only instruction we got as a brief was that it should not be taught as Third Language or with any text.
The fact that the kids do not like the language the induction to the program was to enthuse them to learn the language. Starting from its rich history till how sweet it sounds was tried. This was very educative for my future training and teaching programs and laid very sound foundation to understanding - understanding.
The project was termed great success and later on was carried on to Sristhi School of Arts Design and Technology to assist the students to interact with their day to day work as an artist with local vendors. The target we had to achieve is to enable the attendees communicate effectively to the auto rickshaw drivers of Bangalore.
We used tools such as Movies, Videos, Audio Tapes, Little bit of narrative theater pieces. This was my first of the programs which was liked by one and all. The students of Sristhi and few companies with many of my friends have liked to attend.
Now the program has taken corporate shape. The initial foundation led us to take it to informal group of people from corporate who wanted to learn Kannada to clients like Infosys, Logica CMG, SAP Labs, Comat, HLL, Coca Cola, UB etc. We run regular corporate programs aiming at achieving KFC.
Who can learn Kannada
After MAIS and Sristhi we were considering to continue the training program as an academic add on in international schools. Till we met a software engineer in one of our soft skills program who mentioned to me that he wants to learn Kannada so that he could give something back to the city he lives in. This inspired us to create and run program for individuals and as well as companies.
He influenced us to rethink what we were executing. We too had some kind of social obligation in taking this program to corporate. The structure and the approach to the program changed and we made it our responsibility too to make sure we give quality and not quantity.
Any interested party or corporate who think the same way as the nice techie or us could learn Kannada. What we ask for is just the will to learn nothing else you could be from Timbaktu, our track record says that you would communicate in Kannada by the end of the program.
Research
The research helped us in uniting our thoughts into a strategy to communicate our message of KFC. The material has kept on changing as we do new programs. We have Kannada professors and well wishers of the language giving us inputs to make our material better. We also run periodic surveys to assess the effectiveness of KFC.
Methodology
We use the tried and tested new school "Experiential Learning" philosophy. Some of our exercises include
~ Preparing List of Places and Food items and festivals of Karnataka
~ Preparing List of Simple words they use in their own languages or English.
~ List of question sentences most commonly used
~ Most used sentences and role-plays
~ Field trips to markets and bus stand etc.
Course Ware
There are three levels of courses which are conducted for KFC enthusiasts...
1. Understanding and comprehension
2. KFC
3. Advanced Kannada Learning
The course ware is created in a way to assist a totally stranger to fall in love with the language. We have gone out of line to create and recertify content of our courseware. Non traditional approach has helped us in using the courseware effectively across cross-sections of audiences. The course is set to help people who have different levels of understanding of the language. A complete stranger to the language would perfectly use KFC by the end of the third module.
Who are we
We are committed professionals willing to give back to the city we live in.
P D Sathish Chandra, is a MS Mass Communication in theatre and literary field from past 15 years. He has conducted KFC and other training programs at corporate and educational institutions. He works as a freelance communications consultant and currently executing marketing communications project with Final Cut Productions.
Chandan works as a business analyst in one of the leading companies has a craving towards analysing something different. He has been involved in theater for a over a decade and started his career by literally sweeping the stages across various performing spaces in Bangalore.
No comments:
Post a Comment