French teachers from all over Maharashtra attended a workshop at St.Xavier’s College, Mumbai last Saturday, on the occasion of the launch of the 3rd revised edition of the French textbook for Junior College, Le Nouvel En Échanges, written by Neelima Raddi and Anjali Paranjpye, first published in 1994 by Oxford University Press, India.
The workshop was organised by Anjali Lokur, teacher of French at St Xavier’s College and President (West Zone) of the Indian Association of Teachers of French (IATF), and Supriya Devgun, who is part of IATF and has been teaching the language for over 22 years to thousands of students. The objective of the event was to introduce the revised edition to teachers of French through an interactive workshop.
During the first session, the participants were asked to make a global analysis of the book in order to discover the changes and new elements contained in the new edition. The authors explained that the changes were made to comply with the new syllabus prepared by the HSC Board, Maharashtra, after taking into consideration feedback received from teachers and students who have been using this book for the past sixteen years.
Before the second session, the participants were given an exhaustive list of various types of activities for the class, based on the multi-dimensional cultural, intercultural and linguistic contents of the book. Each group was asked to select one activity and do a classroom simulation.
The workshop, which was sponsored by Oxford University Press and was hosted by St Xavier’s College, Mumbai, ended with a session on evaluation techniques. Anjali Lokur, Meenakshi Sengupta, Sumedha Zamre and Anjali Moolgaonkar presented the current pattern of the HSC Board examination.