“The Art of
Speaking: The Art of Arts is an essential resource for anyone faced with any kind of speaking
situation.”
Prof. A. Rama Krishna Rao, (Retd.), J
N T University, Kukatpally, Hyderabad
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There has been a shift in hypothesis from teacher training to
teacher education and from teacher education to teacher development. As a
result, quality improvement through professional development has become the
need in English Language Teaching. The voices of discontent, about the quality
of teaching in the English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom in India, have
been louder and more shrill during the past two decades which have seen the
emergence, thanks to the IT revolution, of a perplexing variety of careers,
often referred to as ‘innovative age bracket profession’, which demands not
only computer proficiency and analytical skills but also a high degree of
proficiency in the English language and soft skills in general and customer
orientation in particular.
Paradoxically, almost all the teachers of English working in
Technological Universities in India often sense a kind of slight apathy, if not
total indifference, on the part of students to attend a course on language
communication when they feel that they can converse fluently in English. It is
the teacher of English at the tertiary level who is called upon to develop
these delivery-related skills in the undergraduate learner. While it would be unreasonable to expect
teachers to work a magic, given all the constraints within which they operate,
the fact remains that, by and large, their classroom practice continues to be
rather traditional without their developing sensitivity to the newer demands.
It is quite noticeable that if there is a subject of really
universal interest and utility, it is the art of writing and speaking one's own
language effectively. It is the basis of culture, as we all know; but it is
infinitely more than that: it is the basis of ethos. The first textbook on
rhetoric which still remains to us was written by Aristotle. He defines
rhetoric as the art of writing effectively, viewing it primarily as the art of
persuasion in public speaking, but making it include all the devices for
convincing or moving the mind of the hearer or reader.
Against this backdrop, when we consider the book entitled The Art
of Speaking - The Skill of Skills and the Gift of Gifts - A Comprehensive Study,
we realise that Prof. Katta Rajamouly has attempted to write this book
with a faithful and accepted fact that the teacher education in progressive
educational systems has moved from the knowledge-transmission view to the
knowledge-construction view, which holds that teacher-learners build their own
understandings of language teaching through their experience by integrating
theory, research, and opinion with empirical and reflective study of their own
classroom practices. Known as a renowned teacher, Prof Rajamouly seeks to
examine the thought processes that the language teachers use in planning and
carrying out their lessons. He seems to reflect that qualitative and
ethnographic studies with their focus on what teachers do in their classrooms
show them engaging in complex thinking and interpretation as they teach their
students.
In the world of globalization era, English has increasingly become
the medium in every domain of communication, both in local and global contexts.
As a result, the demand for speakers using English effectively is necessary in
every country. Teaching and learning English, except for the native language,
is thus crucial for communicative purposes to meet the demands of global
economics and to cope with the growing local, national and international
demands for English skills.
To successfully assess how language learners enhance their
performance and achieve language learning goals, the four macro skills of
listening, speaking, reading and writing are usually the most frequently
assessed and focused areas. However, speaking, as a productive skill, seems
intuitively the most important of all the four language skills because it can
distinctly show the correctness and language errors that a language learner
makes.
The
book, written by Prof Rajamouly, starts right off with such precise
object-oriented concepts and ideas. His book, The
Art of Speaking, is an essential resource for anyone faced with any kind of
speaking situation. It contains hints, anecdotal examples, and the
accumulated wisdom of decades of speaking experience. Because Prof Rajamouly is
a great speaker and because he can help anyone communicate more effectively, he
brings that expertise forward in a way that both teaches and entertains.
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