Glibzter Opines are microblogs within GlibTalks, where members of the Glibzter Team share their thoughts and opinions on trending topics of relevance raging across EdTech, AI, English learning, Communication skills, Personality Development and Lifestyle.
ELTAI (English language Teachers’ association of India) - the largest and the oldest network of teachers of English in India with 60 active chapters, more than 5000 English Language Teachers and 150 renowned trainers as active members across the country launched the 'India Reads' movement in the year 2023, as a 3 year project with the objective of promoting the culture of reading among students in India's educational institutes from primary schools to universities.
The problems being addressed
The movement aims to address the growing problem of intellectual or cognitive decline associated with the lack of reading. This is largely attributable to increased screen time, wherein students consume a lot of information in audio visual formats. Even if they do read, the quality of content isn't quite qualitative and also the manner in which they read, not involving the active application of their faculties, but merely scanning for the information they want to pick.
With 300 million students on the education ladder, plus with their 600 million parents, ELTAI's India Reads initiative aims to transform the malaise of technology addiction to book reading, perhaps the only antidote available (Source: BilkulOnline.com)
It is an endeavor to promote reading as a recreational hobby for joy among students who find very limited time to engage in reading other than for academic purposes.
How the movement will be implemented
In a webinar organized last year, Dr. K Elango (Chief Executive Chair - the then National Secretary of ELTAI) outlined how the India Reads movement would be implemented at the institutional level through setting up of book clubs with books contributed by students; conducting group discussions about the books being read and also organizing meet-ups with authors, among other engagement worthy activities.
Teachers would play an active role in getting students introduced to nearly 25 reading strategies, besides facilitating discussions on the books being read. The objective is to cover the spectrum of Understand, Storage, Retrieval and Application.
Glibzter's Take
Reading is indeed the mother of all skills. Unlike consuming entertainment, which is a passive activity, reading demands focus, cognitive involvement, and discipline with the outcome of enhancing your knowledge of the subject being read, fluency in speech and writing through vocabulary building and sub-conscious grammatical learning, and opening your mind to new dimensions of creativity and thoughts.
We have penned a blog on the importance of reading:
Read - 5 ways how reading improves your Spoken English communication skills
Reading for pleasure or joy can only be achieved if there is no pressure on actualizing an outcome from the reading activity, while reading for knowledge enhancement requires readers to be inherently curious.
While the focus of the India Reads movement is largely on books, we at Glibzter believe that encouraging newspaper and magazine reading would also be beneficial from the viewpoint of heterogeneity of subjects covered and writing styles. Moreover, news is topical and also helps in conversations and critical thinking.
While personally, there is no greater pleasure than curling up with a book or newspaper in hand with umpteen cups of tea, focusing on physical books and newspapers alone may not work out for today's generation of learners who are digital natives. So, widening the scope to include e-books, e-magazines, online news articles and also reading subtitles of online videos can be considered.
Teachers can play a significant role in curating the content relevant to their students, be it in the form of news articles or videos. Students can then be engaged on the content curated after they have seen or read them, through questions, group discussions, debates etc.
Glibzter supports ELTAI's India Reads movement and believe that our product offering Glibzter Immersive can serve as a valuable digital aid for students to improve their communication skills in English through vocabulary building and application, as and when they stream videos with English subtitles or read online news articles.
