With motivation and best wishes of the President of Marwadi University, Sri Ketan Marwadi, the Department of Communication Skills has been celebrating English Day on MEFGI Campus for last three consecutive years now. On English Day various activities are planned and executed by the faculty members of Department of Communication Skills. To boost the English language usage on the campus, the Department organizes various events such as Spelling Bee, Extempore, Listening Comprehension and Movie Screening and Movie Review Presentation. Students zealously participate in these events and competitions. On 15th February, 2018 one such English Day was observed by the Department. Following is a brief overview of the events, competitions, and activities conducted on the English Day.
One-Word Substitution Competition
Word power in English is very crucial for students’ communicative skills. Keeping such objective in mind, the Department of Communication Skills, Marwadi University, has decided to organize “One-Word Substitution Competition”. The English Day celebrated on February 15, 2018, witnessed several other competitions namely, Role Play, Group Discussion etc. One-Word Substitution Competition was organized for the first year students with a view to giving the students opportunity to show their comprehension capacity. The event was coordinated by Mr. Bhautik Limbani. Participants were divided into three teams- A, B and C. The participants had to listen to the description of a word and find out that word. The words’ descriptions were read from Collins Cobuild Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary. All the participants performed zealously. 75 students from B.Sc. and BBA program participated in the event.
Essay Writing Competition
Keeping in mind that Communication Skills in English is very critical for students’ employability and professional success, Department of Communication Skills, MEFGI is celebrating English Day every month. In the month of February 2018, English day is celebrated on Feb. 15, 2018 Thursday. The event of Essay Writing was organized by Dr Arjun Dave for the Second semester B. E. students of Civil Engineering branch. The topic for writing Essay was, ‘Contemporary Education System’ where fifty (50) students have participated in the event and showcase their writing ability. On basis of the received – reviewed, Essays, post-event Session was organized to guide and motivate students to perform better in future. The comprehension and composition skills have been enhanced through the competition and training session. Formal writing, creative writing, analytical skills and language abilities are the key skills for a professional. This concept is introduced among learners in this event.
Application Writing Competition
MEFGI and Marwadi University strive to make students ready for the global career. Communication Skills plays a vital role in doing that. To boost up the language skills in students Department of Communication Skills had organized various competitions to celebrate English Day on 15th February, 2018. Application writing competition was one of them. The competition was coordinated by Dr. Arjun Dave wherein total 38 students have participated. This competition was organized for the Diploma Engineering students of Computer branch. The students have participated in the event as well as post-event session, where the ideal application forms and formats are discussed. It was an enriching experience for all.
Spell Bee Competition
The Spelling Bee competition was conducted for Bsc Physics and Bsc Maths students. 15 words from the short story- “Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury was dictated to the students. The students were also given the meaning of the words. The students participated actively in the event. After 5 minutes, the sheets were corrected. The students were trained about the essential aspects of sound and spelling in the context of pronunciation. The students were given three prizes. The session was followed by Q&A.
Extempore Competition
An Extempore Competition was organised on the English Day, 15th February 2018, which was open to all students. It served as a platform for them showcased their abilities to express themselves in their own language whilst speaking on a topic given to them on the spot. Dr. Vijaylakshmi, from Department of Communication Skills, was invited to judge this competition. In this competition, as stated earlier, the participants spoke on a topic given to them five minutes before their speech.
The idea is to gauge their ability to think on their feet and still make a speech which is complete and coherent. The speech for obvious reasons, this being an English Day event, was to be given in English. They were instructed that the time limit was five minutes during which they will orally present their views. No written material was permitted for this event. The participants were judged on the basis of their language skills, content organization, mastery of the subject, and overall presentation skills. The topics drawn by the participants through a random selection include: “My Career Choices, So Far,” “Misogyny in India”, “My Dream Job”, “My Favorite Movie”, “Will I ever Settle Abroad?” and others.
The participant put forward their best efforts which were highly appreciated by our esteemed judge and the audience. In an interesting turn of events, there were four winners! Ms. Aditi Singh (BSc Chemistry) (Sem. -2) took home the first prize for her detailed and enthusiastic speech on “My Favorite Movie”. Mr. Priyank Rupareliya, of BCA (Sem. -2), was the first runner-up for his take on “My Career Choices, So Far”. With a pleasantly surprising tie, Mr. Anmol Goswami, of BBA Hons (Sem. -2) and Mr. Chirag Jotava, of Civil Engineering (Sem. – 4) shared the third prize for equally enthusiastic words on “My Dream Job” and “Will I ever settle Abroad?” The winners and the participants were truly appreciative of each other and requested that we conduct more of such events in the near future.
Parts of Speech – Class Test
A Class Test was also organized for Part of Speech on the English Day, 15th February, 2018, specially designed for the students of BSc Chemistry (Sem.-4) students. This test was designed so as to gauge their grammatical proficiency and possible requirements for the extra class for the students. They were asked to identify the parts of speech of speech of the underlined words from fifteen sentences given to them on a worksheet. They were given fifteen minutes to solve the worksheet. After these concepts were briefly explained, some students performed admirably and the others, it appears, certainly require a few extra sessions so as to polish their grammatical skills. Moreover, all the students requested that a few such sessions should certainly be conducted for the same.
Grammar Test
As a part of the English Day Celebrations, Grammar Test was conducted for the SA1 batch of BSc Microbiology students in MA608. 32 students participated actively in the event. The students were given worksheets with 15 sentences. A part of the sentence was underlined and the students were asked to identify the particular part of speech. The students were given 20 minutes to solve the exercise. The worksheets were evaluated by Mr. Jaykumar Buddhdev. The students were given an explanation regarding the parts of speech by Dr. J. Vijayalakshmi. The students were given three prizes. The first prize was won by Aishwarya, the second- by Hiral and the third by Reshmi. The session was followed by Q&A.
Role Play Activities – 1
“Imagination is more important than knowledge” – Albert Einstein
The Activity of Role Play at one of the best universities in Gujarat motivates students to practice in speaking in a conversational situation, build confidence and fluency, assess progress, and put learning into action. 25 students from Civil Engineering and Environment Engineering participated in the activity of role play competition. Students were divided into pairs. They were given different roles to play on the stage. They were given a situation where they talked about weekend, sport, movies, college, favourite games, food etc. They participated well. They listened very carefully what they were supposed to do. Teachers demonstrated each role to play well. Short videos were also shown for the demonstration of role play. Students were given seven minutes to discuss in a pair to think how they would play the role. Initially, they had hesitation but after few minutes they got the confidence to play it well.
Role Play Activities – 2
The activity of Role Play enhances the kinesthetic abilities of the students. As a part of English Day Celebration, on 15th February 2018, the Roleplay activity was given to the students of 4th Semester, B. Sc. Chemistry. 10 students zealously participated in the Role Playing activity as a part of their Continuous Semester Evaluation. The students were given a list of workplace situations. The students were divided into three groups. Each group selected a situation and prepared a script for their Role Play. Each group performed Role Play while the other two groups were told to observe the performing group and give their feedback in general and language corrections in particular. The feedback sessions turned out to be quite interesting and interactive. The students discovered that there are fundamental grammar structures that they were not clear with. As a result, these students requested the subject faculty to conduct some workshops to bridge the gap they discovered. These activities were hosted by Subject Coordinator Mihir Dave.
Paraphrase Writing Activity
As a part of student’s overall development, Marwadi University has taken up the initiative to celebrate English Day, which provides students an opportunity to contribute by participating in various events and enhance various communicative skills in English. English Day was celebrated on Thursday – 15th February 2018. The students of BSc (Chemistry) SC 3 semester 2 participated in the activity of paraphrasing a short film. The students viewed the Disney Pixar animated short film called ‘Partly Cloudy’ (2009). They interpreted the movies in their own ways. 26 students participated in the activity. They gave words to the animation movie and were able to give various interpretations to the short film. The activity was given to the students so that students are able to interpret and give words to the animated movie.
Classroom Teaching by Students
Keeping in mind that Communication Skills in English is very critical for students’ employability and professional success, Department of Communication Skills, Marwadi University has decided to celebrate English Day every month. The English Day celebrated on February 15, 2018 witnessed several activities/events/competitions like Word Treasure Hunt, Extempore Speaking, One Word Substitution, Classroom Teaching by Students, etc.
This time students of Mechanical Engineering (Class EA 2 – Sem. 2) and Computer Engineering (Class EC 1 – Sem. 2) were given the opportunity to carry out classroom teaching. The selected students were given the topic to teach in the classroom and they were instructed to design activities based on the topic given to them. Students came up with interesting activities like Group Presentation and Group Discussion in English. The selected students designed the activities carefully under the guidance of their teacher and executed them in the classroom very effectively. The other students of these classes participated zealously in these activities and enjoyed learning the language in an innovative way. More than 80 students participated in these activities made the process of language learning fun-tastic! The activities facilitated by Mr. Jigar Abhani, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication Skills ended with students giving their feedback on this endeavour.
Workshops on English for Social Media
The Department of Communication Skills has been helping the learners of Marwadi Education Foundation to improve their proficiency in English language and enhance their communication skills. “English Day” is one such initiative which motivates and leads them to be more professional and mature with reference to the language and its usage. The students are so mingled with social media as they fail to socialize in person with their friends, relatives, and well-wishers. A series of workshops were organized on the topic “English for Social Media” to guide and motivate the students in learning English using Social Media tools. The workshops were conducted by Dr. Deepak Mashru in two batches wherein total 101 students participated.
Word Treasure Hunt
English Day was celebrated on 15/02/2018. Students of Diploma engineering and students of Mechanical engineering participated from 01:15 to 03:25 at MA505. The event was Word treasure hunt where 29 students participated actively. By participating in such fun activity students developed team work skills as well as they developed competitive spirit. All the students participated actively and tried their best to complete the treasure hunt. Two students from Diploma mechanical engineering got the first prize, Anirudh Sakariya and Dhruv Solanki.
Second prize was given to Priyanshu Kumar and Smitesh Vishrolia. At the end of the event, students learned a few new words. The purpose of English day celebration is to spread an awareness of English language.
Learning English through Games
Department of Communication skills, MEFGI, celebrated English Day on 15th February 2018, Thursday. Among many other activities, Ms. Ateesha Shrivastava conducted an activity viz. Learning English through Games. Students from Environmental Engineering (EG1) and Mechanical Engineering (EA2) Sem-2 participated in the event.
Number of games was conducted in order to involve the students actively. The comparing of the session was done by Somya Katta and Prayag Bhagtaria. The games that were conducted during the session were:
Pictionary: Students are divided into groups. One student from each group will be given a word. The student with the word is supposed to draw the picture that relates to the word and the students from his/her group have to guess the word. This kind of activity will involve the students actively and a brainstorming session could take place with fun.
Categorical: In this game, students are divided into groups. Different words from different category, such as book, method, process, are given to them. The word to guess is represented by a row of dashes with few alphabets as hints. The students will be given hints and the group who guesses all the words first correctly, wins the games.
Find it out: In this game the idioms or phrases should be bifurcated in two different pages and students have to find their pair and once they find their partner they have to tell the meaning of that idiom or phrases. The session went quite well and the students really enjoyed the whole event.
Movie Screening -1
With the vision of improving English language proficiency of the students Marwadi University organizes English Day every month. Such an event creates an atmosphere of English communication in the institute. As a part of it, it has been decided that everybody would communicate in English for the day. Apart from the resolution, various events like Role Play, Elocution, Spell Bee, Movie Review Presentation and Extempore are also organized.
This English Day was celebrated on 15th February, 2018. As a part of the English Day celebration, an activity of Movie Screening was organized for the students of MBA at MC501 by Dr. Vipul Solanki. The movie Pursuit of Happiness was screened. The movie narrates a struggle story and ultimate success of an American businessman Chris Gardner. The movie was screened with the purpose of providing motivation to the students as well as their English language improvement.
Movie Screening – 2
Movie screening for BSc Maths and BSc Physics was done on 15/2/18 at MB606 from 2.15 p.m. to 4.25 p.m. This was the fourth movie screening done by the Department of Communication Skills. The students were given a brief introduction to Learning English through Movies. Ms Anjana Prajapati and Dr J. Vijayalakshmi spoke about the importance of Vocabulary in everyday life. The students were asked to narrate the story in the next class.
Oral Paraphrasing Competition
15 February 2018, was celebrated as English Day at MEFGI. Keeping aligned to provide holistic education to its students, MEFGI creates an opportunity for the students where they can develop English language efficiency as it is a determining factor in a student’s employability. The celebration of English Day is one such platform created by the Department of Communication Skills where students participate in various activities organized the department. These activities are designed to encourage students for speaking as well as learning the English Language especially for the students who need extra push to bring them to step out from their comfort zone and to get them learning and using the language thereafter. The faculties of communication department organize various classroom activities where the students to celebrate the spirit.
As a part of this effort ‘Oral Paraphrasing Competition’ was organized in named SA1 (B.sc- microbiology, MU Sem-2) where total 16 students participated and orally paraphrased the videos shown to them. Students were shown videos and they were asked to paraphrase their understanding of video. Ms Ateesha Shrivastav was invited to judge the competition. While declaring the winners she discussed about way to make one’s paraphrasing better. Ms. Radha Kundaliya and Ms. Kajal Acharya won the competition by securing first and second prices respectively. Winners of the competition were given the prices as a token of motivation. Students participated enthusiastically and enjoyed the activity and further shown their interest in participating such activities more.
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