Department Initiative

Creative Impressions Club

Department of Communication Skills

Marwadi University - Rajkot

The first activity of Creative Impressions was conducted on 29/8/18 from 10.00 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. at MB603. 14 students participated in the event. The session was conducted by Dr. J. Vijayalakshmi and Ms. Pratixa Parmar.

The session was planned to cater to the needs of the reading, writing, speaking skills of the student along with the aspect of creativity. The students participated actively in the event. The students were very enthusiastic to present their own compositions. They recited poems, short-stories, quotes based on the theme of life and philosophy. The creativity was unique in the sense that the students had innovative methods of recitation with complete grip over the tone and language. In the second section, the students were given various poems and articles based on the theme of education, independence and technology. They were given 15-20 minutes to read and to interpret the meaning. This was followed by presentation by the students. The session ended with Q&A and feedback.

Department Initiative

Certificate Courses

The Department of Communication Skills

Marwadi University - Rajkot

Exciting news for the students of Marwadi University!!

Now, the students can also do certificate courses to improve their English Language Skills. The good thing is that there is a range of courses to address the specific needs of the students. They  can choose a course based on their needs. If somebody wants improve speaking skills in English, there is an exclusive course on it. If someone wants to prepare oneself for interview, there is a special certificate course for that. If some student wants to improve writing skills, there is a special course on that too. And there are many more such courses to cater to the specific requirements of the students. The students can pick and choose a course based on their requirements and strengthen their English. So, identify your requirement and enroll for the courses from the Marwadi University online portal.

Teaching Practice

Teaching Vocabulary through ICT: Quizlet

Dr Vipul Solanki

School of Languages, Marwadi University – Rajkot

As we know, building vocabulary is very crucial for learning any language. It is the familiarity with the words that help to read and comprehend a piece of text. Hence, teaching or familiarizing the learners with the words of the text which they are supposed to learn is necessary as well as helpful for them to understand the text well. Such an effort was made for the graduate students (BBA, BCom) who are learning English through an article Paytm: The Wonder Wallet, which is a part of the course Reading and Writing for Business, published in the business magazine Forbes – India.

Before starting reading of the article in the class, a group of words, which can possibly be difficult for the students to understand, was identified. Then, using an online tool Quizlet a lesson was prepared. Quizlet is a tool through which different methods of teaching and evaluating a topic can be created. Once the details of the lesson are feed on the portal, it will automatically generate a learning lesson, or various evaluation tools as shown below.

It generates the lesson under various categories like Flashcards, Learn, Write, Spell, Test, Match, Gravity, Live for learning and evaluation the topics.

The learners will be able to learn the words in terms of its meaning, pronunciation, and spelling. They will also be able to see how much they have learnt and retained by the evaluation tools and interesting games. To teach the aforementioned article, it was thought to be deemed fit to teach the words of the article first. To engage the students in the learning process and to make them retain the words, the ICT tool Quizlet was used which proved to be very helpful.

I am sure using Quizlet in your class too will be very interesting so give it a try and share your teaching stories here. It will also be fun to read about your experiences of such other innovative teaching practices. So keep blogging it here.

Book Released

A Postmodernist Critique of the Select Works of Amitav Ghosh

By

Dr J Vijayalakshmi

Assistant Professor

Department of Communication Skills

Marwadi University

The book entitled A Postmodernist Critique of the Select Works of Amitav Ghosh by Dr J Vijayalakshmi, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Skills, Marwadi University was released by the renowned writer Ms. Bharathi Pradhan at Ahemdabad International Literature Festival on 24^th December,2017. After unveiling the book, Ms. Pradhan congratulated the author for her hard work. Dr. Vijayalakshmi was given a session of 15 minutes to present her view points about her book. She spoke about the totalitarian concepts, consumerism, alienation and the technique of eternal ‘space’ and ‘time’. The postmodern values of totalitarianism are a struggle against the idealist concepts which are silenced by the society.  Man of today’s era lives in solitude due to the virtual boundaries of time and space. The truth and the real knowledge are decoded but it never comes to limelight as the rhetoric falls short of revealing the ‘Truth’ as ‘Truth’. Hence, it is the individual who struggles continuously to fix the truth:

 He struggles believing that,

 in every end, there’s a new beginning;

 in every failure, there’s a new lesson inscribed;

 in every disappointment, there’s a new confidential stance;

in every untruth, there’s a truth waiting to be explored;

Which tunes the ‘one’ to the ‘other’--the final truth.

 Yet, the rhetoric with its ‘gaps’ and ‘silences’ prevents

the declaration of truth.

But, the individual embarks on a mission, to legitimize the ‘Truth’–the beyond

with a hope that, the world will experience the truth,

 and the truth of inevitability

 and the truth of the ‘Other’,

 which, indeed defines the postmodern canon.

The programme ended with the Question and Answer session.

Book Published

“Unravelling the ‘Gay Plague’: A Study of William M. Hoffman’s As Is, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me, and Paul Rudnick’s Jeffrey”

By

Mr Jaykumar Buddhadev

Department of Communication Skills

The book looks into the various counter-discourses born out of the urban gay community since 1981 (to 1996) as a corollary to the mainstream discourse engendered by HIV/AIDS that added to the existing anti-gay rhetoric in the USA.

Movie Screening

Department of Communication Skills

As a part of English Day Celebration, a movie screening of ‘The Hundred-Foot Journey’ was organized by the Department of Communication Skills on 10^th February, 2018. More than 50 students participated in the screening. Many faculty members from Department of Communication Skills also participated in the screening including Dr. Deepak Mashru, Dr. Vijayalakshmi, Mr. BhautikLumbani, Ms. Ateesha Srivastava and Ms. PratixaParmar.

The objectives of movies screening include but not limited to the following:

•      To improve English

•      To enhance vocabulary with context

•      To learn ‘how’ (not just ‘what’) natives speak

•      To learn to read and review a movie

•      To understand human emotions & reactions

The student attended the screening based on the pre-registration. Before the screening of the movie, a brief background of the movie was given to the students along with the trailer of the movie. The screening was followed by the discussion and feedback.

The screening was third of its kind in the series as a part of CS – Elective i.e. English though Movies. This elective is offered to the 2^nd semester students of Marwadi University. It has been decided to have a movie screening every Saturday – 9:30am onwards.

The screening was coordinated by Mr. Jay Buddhadev and Mr. Mihir Dave of Department of Communication Skills.