These students from a village in Aurangabad can speak Japanese
Students of a government school in Aurangabad has been learning the Japanese language as part of a course introduced last year.
A school in the Aurangabad district, Maharashtra is taking efforts to sustain language learning.
The students of a Zilla Parishad school in Gadiwat, 25 kilometres from Aurangabad are learning the Japanese language through a social media platform and are speaking it as well.
District Education Officer (DEO) Suraj Prasad Jaiswal told ANI the main aim of the initiative is to provide job-oriented education to students.
"Under this initiative, a person can take online classes of the language. Many teachers of the school have also learnt Japanese. The main aim is to provide job-oriented education to students. A lot of Japanese tourists visit Ajanta and Ellora caves in the district. If the students can speak Japanese, they can become guides," Jaiswal said.
The school launched this programme last year under which classes 4-8 were asked to choose a foreign language they would like to learn the most. Owing to their interests in robotics and technology, there was an almost unanimous vote for Japanese.
Sueeksha, a student of Class 8 said, "We enjoy learning the Japanese language. We have completed level 1. We can now talk in Japanese. I want to go to Japan and learn robotics."
Amrita Rajesh, another student of Class 6 said, “Japan is a technology-driven country. I want to go there and learn about technology so that I can do the same in India.”
Representational image (Image: Free Press Journal)
In August, Prashant Pardeshi, a professor from the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, who has been residing in Japan for the past 25 years, came to know about this initiative, and decided to help the children learn the language.
Talking about Prashant’s efforts, Zilla Parishad Education Extension Officer, Ramesh Thakur told PTI, “Pardeshi took details of the project from me over the phone and sent six sets of books on Marathi and Japanese languages. We have received the books that include a Japanese-Marathi dictionary, translated story books and books on grammar and other texts.”
Do you have an interesting story to share? Please write to us at [email protected]. To stay updated with more positive news, please connect with us on Facebook and Twitter.
Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan
