Abstract
“The striking thing about learning is that no one can plagiarize it from you” – BB King With the herald of liberalization and globalization, the demand for talented engineers is high in many indigenous Multi-National Corporations (MNCs). The CEOs of BPOs complain that fresh recruits from engineering colleges for not ‘industry ready’, because of their skills shortage. In today’s globalized market, engineering students’ success in on-campus recruitment is mainly based on their demonstration of indispensable English communication skills. De facto, it can candidly be captioned as the ‘survival skill’ in the competitive professional scenario. Thus, the ever-increasing significance of the universalized English language leads to integrating English into engineering as an effective way to gratify this huge demand for a technically skilled workforce to land good jobs through developing optimum efficiency of students in their Professional English communication skills. If teaching English was a cakewalk at schools; at the college level, the path was speckled with stumbling blocks galore. The main factors responsible for this disappointing scenario are that i) the English language always holds second place in line with the technical subjects in the technical institutes and ii) most of the students hailed from rural and underprivileged areas, which challenges mainly the language teacher. Students of technical courses come with one big dream in unison of becoming a full-fledged professional one day; of working at some coveted post in an MNC but, most of them find their dreams shattered at the very outset when they realize that they lack tremendously in effective communication skills. As motivation becomes low; learning will be slow, it is the responsibility of the English teacher to take the task of grooming such craved students to acquire an evolving, challenging, and rewarding experience employed through innovative and interactive strategies to help them empower in communicative proficiency by overcoming their hinders related to language. Hence this paper aims to highlight the possibilities of incorporating a pragmatic stratagem, Activity-Based Learning (ABL) in communicative English as it appeals highly in developing the critical mind of learners for their fittest endurance in real-life situations.
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