Loyola Vocational Training Centre (LVTC) took the initiative to impart spoken English course for the marginalized students in tea garden region of North Bengal since its inception year 1994. LVTC was one of the institutions run by the Jesuits, a registered society by name “The Darjeeling Jesuits of North Bengal.” Later, in the year 2013 with the establishment of Human Life Development & Research Centre (HLDRC) spoken English educational program was brought under the umbrella of HLDRC. Till now HLDRC since its establishment year 2013 has provided its support to 431 youth. It is well known to everyone that the students from the tea garden areas are only capable of enrolling themselves in Hindi medium as their mode of instruction to avail education, for which English language has always been hindrance for them.
HLDRC has taken the privilege to draw the attention of the marginalized students from the tea garden areas and has started providing a scope as summer course for three months to learn basic English language as to build self-confident that remains unwavering. For enhancing the educational skill of the students HLDRC commenced its first batch of spoken English for 100 hours since 2013 at a subsidized fee. In the beginning spoken English course took place throughout the year. Later, it became a summer course of three months for classes X and XII appeared students. The students are provided with a spoken English book from where they can grab knowledge on basic Grammar with various examples, structuring of sentences, effective reading practice, conversations, phonetics, pronunciation, business applications and many more.
The given table represents no. of students who availed spoken English course under HLDRC:
Year of course accessed | No. of students availed |
2013 | 59 |
2014 | 50 |
2015 | 43 |
2016 | 93 |
2017 | 50 |
2018 | 21 |
2019 | 40 |
2020 | 41 |
2021 | COVID-19 |
2022 | 34 |
Total | 431 |
HLDRC has taken the initiative for spoken English course which is providing excellent avenue to develop the marginalized student’s speaking skill, potential, enhancing academic performance and guide them for modern workplaces so that they can come up with flying colours.