Students of St Xavier?s School attend one of the classes. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Jan. 10: A new laboratory, minus the eerie skeletons and reptiles in solutions, is coming up in St Xavier?s School. The proposed lab is to acquaint the students with the practical nuances in English.

The ambitions move by the school authorities envisages recorded English dialects, to be heard over earphones, for the benefit of the students.

The principal of St Xavier?s School, James Lakra, said he got the idea of an ?English Language Lab? from the institution?s counterparts in New Delhi, where the students have been provided with such facilities to learn phonetics and improve their pronunciation.

He further added that the primary purpose behind the lab was to inculcate better pronunciation.

?Many students in our school cannot pronounce properly and they are poor in construction of sentences too. The lab would provide the students with all the required facilities to improve their command over English,? informed the principal.

Sessions at the laboratory would be a part of the school curriculum with 40-minute per session like the other classes students normally attend, Lakra added.

?The purpose of an English-medium school would not be fulfilled until and unless the students learn to speak and write English correctly and properly,? the principal opined.

Schoolteacher Alka Singh echoed the principal?s view on the need to have a proper command of English in contemporary times.

?In today?s world students should be fluent in speaking and writing the language,? she said and added that this would be the only school in the city to start a lab for English.

The lab?s in-charge, Ranjit Kullu, said: ?The students would be able to learn the various aspects of English by using the lab?s facilities. It would be a centre imparting language training through audio and visual mediums. There would be two-way communication between the teachers and students.?

Banking on the availability of electronic implements such as CDs, cassettes and monitors to clarify the intonations and modulations of speech, Kullu explained: ?The students would be asked to speak in English and it would be recorded. Then, teachers will play it and point out the mistakes to students.?

Students are also looking forward to the lab. ?It will help us a lot for interviews, especially call centre jobs,? said a student.