Dept of English, Kashmir University in collaboration with Cambridge University Press conducted a two day workshop with college teachers and Research Scholars on English Language Teaching.The workshop was focused on the practical application of Grammar which the participants found very interesting and useful. Inaugurating the workshop , the Vice Chancellor of KU said that these workshops should be organised more often to refresh and empower the teachers of English to teach in a better way and asked the Cambridge Press Regional manager M Ronald to sponsor these workshops more often to enrich the teachers with skills of communication as it has become very important in modern globalized world.In her welcome address, Head dept of English, Prof Hameedah Nayeem said that the choice of the teaching of Grammar has been made for some basic reasons. First, grammar is the doorway to human soul. It is the secret muse of all expression, the portrait painter of life’s emotions. Grammar is taught to help students gain flexibility in their use of language. It is a meaningful part of their education. Its instruction gives students Meta language, language about language.
Having these students can learn a great deal more about how to communicate clearly and correctly than they can without it. With just a handful of sentence patterns, with expandable and shrinkable noun phrases and verb phrases, we can accomplish the most extraordinary of human capabilities- communication ‘.Properly structured grammar instruction is highly brain compatible because the brain is a pattern seeing –device and grammar is a patterned system’ points out John Crow.‘Grammatical correctness is like apparel’, says Mark Twain.Before writers / speakers are judged for the content of their work / speech; they are judged for their grammar. ’As naked people have little or no influence on society. So teachers / students without the knowledge of grammar can have no influence on society. In recognition of this fact, teachers and large number of scholars who attended the workshop were very grateful and appreciated the choice of theme and requested the dept to organise such workshop more often and impress upon the college principals to allow all the teachers of English in their colleges to participate in these workshops.However, the HOD said that she send invitations to all the colleges of the valley but received lukewarm response from most of them .If education minister takes a call on this and makes it mandatory for principals to allow the teachers to participate in these workshops, we could empower both teaching and student community with better language skills in an on -going process. (KNS)