Bhubaneswar, Dec. 10: Parents are coming forward to learn English these days in order to help their children at school.

With an increase in the number of queries from interested parents, institutes conducting spoken English courses have started offering specially designed modules for the parents.

For Prerna Patnaik, whose 5-year-old child is in Class II of a private school in the city, deciding to join a spoken English course was the best decision she thinks she has ever taken. 'I was a poor student during my school days. My English skill is poor. Before joining the spoken English course, I was very hesitant to go to my son's school and talk to his teachers, who would always respond in English, making me feel out of place,' said Prerna.

The idea of opening a separate programme of this kind took shape after the students' parents had started contacting us. We realised that there was a market for such a programme,' said Paresh Mohanty of Talent Sigma, a communication and personality development firm.

'Parents, whose children are studying at English medium schools,are required to interact with the teachers. But, most of them often feel extremely baffled to converse in English,' said Mohanty, who now has about 15 parents enrolled for the programme. Parents, who are not very good at spoken English, are usually reluctant to face these teachers, who brief them in English.

'In my son's school, there are parents, who are very good in communicating in English. It gives us a complex. Learning to speak fluently in English will boost our confidence and make us feel better,' said Pushpa Jena, a parent.

Experts in the field said parents faced a dual problem - mainly correct sentence formation and confidence of conversing in English. 'The module for parents is specially designed to help them learn communicative English and interact with schoolteachers,' said Mohanty.

The module included correct sentence formation, phonetics, conversation classes and stage presentation. Most parents enrolling for such courses speak English with a touch of vernacular accent. That is why the stress is on the correct pronunciation of words. Audio CDs are used extensively for the purpose and participants are told to pronounce words without any mother tongue influence.

Parents are also given prepared scripts and have role-plays. Once they learn to speak effectively, their confidence level gets a boost.

They are also asked to come up to the stage, first in a group and then individually and speak from a platform. This helps them reduce their stage phobia.

The courses usually are of three-month duration, and special stress is given on role-plays and teamwork.