It's story time for the young ones

By Lakshmi Balakrishnan

NEW DELHI, OCT.14.

Their eyes gazing in wonder and chin resting in tiny little hands, they heard the story, amused and excited at times when their pretty `miss' quizzed them or asked them to perform a little act. Generation-X may talk only in terms of the internet and prefer to swing to the beats of Latino music, but listening to a story, it seems, is still an `in' thing.

Celebrating ``Open Day'' for children today was the British Council, which organised an array of programmes like painting competitions, treasure hunt, screening of children's films and various courses of English. Walking in school dress and at times casuals were teenagers serious about studies. A story telling session was also organised for the youngsters. The event was organised to showcase the various opportunities and schemes that the British Council and Library offers for children.

Open Day was also an attempt to popularise the new Weekend English class that the English Language Teaching Centre of the British Council is planning to start for children from October 23. The event had counsellors providing expert guidance to parents and youngsters on how to go about achieving higher education in UK.

Children were provided free access to the learnenglish website of the British Coucil. Of course, many of the young ones preferred to play games instead of making their English perfect. ``We did surf the English website for sometime. But now we will go and play my favourite game Ensemble studio,'' said Terence Yep, a student of St Columbus, who had come to attend the event with his brother Daniel, a student of St.Michael's.

Colourful posters that were both educative and attractive, explained everything from plain grammer to the history and varieties of slang words. What, however, seemed to bother parents was the fact that despite being an important subject at school, children did not seem to feel every comfortable in spoken English.

``She took part in the painting competition and enjoyed the story telling part. The British Coucil people seem to assume that if Indian children go to English medium schools, they will speak good English. But without proper help, it will be difficult,'' said Vineeta, a teacher who had come to the fair with her five year old daughter.

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