Innovative Ideas for Teaching English

With Barack Obama taking oath yesterday as America's 44th and first African-American president, the United States turned a page and closed a chapter. Obama's spectacular success story is packed with poignant, and powerful, symbolism. If he accepted the Democratic nomination last August on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's `I Have A Dream' speech, his inauguration follows the American holiday in memory of King. It is the culmination of an extraordinary story and a new beginning. Obama rode on a ticket for change. A country left bitter, fearful and divided by eight years of George W Bush's presidency, welcomed him with relief and expectation. The world, which had viewed America with growing alarm during these years, tuned in to Obama as well. He represented hope that America would manage its own house responsibly and favour consensus and cooperation while dealing with the world. But as enormous as his moment in history are the challenges Obama will face from ...

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama strode to the pinnacle of American power on Tuesday, taking the oath as the 44th US president and shattering racial barriers as the first black leader of the country. He took over a nation longing for change after President George W Bush's eight divisive years in the White House, an era that witnessed the Sept 11, 2001 terror attacks, the beginning of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and an economic collapse not seen since the 1930s Great Depression. Earlier, Obama used Monday's holiday in memory of civil rights giant Martin Luther King Jr. to exhort Americans to service and call on them to join him in taking responsibility for the country's future in a new age of accountability. Obama's ascendancy marks a milestone once unthinkable in a nation that has struggled with racial issues since its founding and where segregation was practiced in many Southern states decades ago. It took place outside the US Capitol, which slaves helped build. Obama took oa...

NEW DELHI: Indian chess players appeared to have the midas touch in circa 2008 as they bedazzled the world, digging gold almost everywhere on the pla net. The highlight of the year was of course Viswanathan Anand's brilliant defence of his World Championship title against Russia's Vladimir Kramnik in a 12-game match at Bonn, Germany. Anand thumped Kramnik by a huge 6.5-4.5 margin, making the World Championship a lop-sided affair when it was supposed to be "a battle of nerves". With this, the Indian ace became the first person to win the title in three different formats - knockout (2000), tournament (2007) and match-play (2008) - silencing his critics as he claimed place among the all time greats of the world. Anand's juniors also followed his footprints as 19-year-old Abhijeet Gupta and 17-year-old Dronavalli Harika were crowned the Under-20 girls' and boys' world champions respectively in Gaziantep, Turkey. India became the first country to boast o...

As planned, at exactly 8.06 p.m. IST on Friday the indigenously built Moon Impact Probe (MIP) detached itself from the spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 as it flew over the Malarpet mountain on the Moon. Twenty-five minutes later and revolving like a top to stabilise its descent, the instrument console about the size of a large television set with the tricolour painted on it hard-landed in a place called the Shackleton crater in the south polar region. With this India becomes only the fifth country in the world after the US, Russia, EU and Japan to have successfully sent an artefact to the Moon's surface. Yes, to an extent, the whole mission is also symbolic. For instance, it's a great shot in the arm for national pride to know that even China hasn't done something like this as yet. More importantly, though, it's a symbol of India's growing presence in space both in near-Earth remote sensing and communication satellite orbits to nearly 4,00,000 kilometres away in deep...

Kashmiri separatist hawk Syed Ali Shah Geelani is reportedly poll-axed. He had perhaps hoped the last phase of the Jammu & Kashmir assembly polls would reverse the trend of high voter turnouts during the seven-phase democratic exercise. As he admits, separatists badly misread the popular mood. With the last phase clocking a 55 per cent turnout, the overall turnout for seven phases is an inspiring 61.5 per cent, far healthier than the 43 per cent of 2002. Srinagar, the main playground of anti-poll campaigners, saw a 20 per cent turnout which, though modest, is reassuring compared to 2002's meagre 5.06 per cent. From the start, Kashmir's voters defied the winter chill, poll boycott calls and terror threats to cast their ballots. Separatists and Pakistan sympathisers should read the writing on the wall. True, sections in the Valley may not see electoral participation as diluting the cause of azadi. But, in this context, Geelani's comments are significant. He has reported...

2008 may not have been the best of times but it wasn't the worst either. And there are plenty of things to look forward to in 2009. Global oil and commodity prices reached skywards last year fuelling inflation and a hike in interest rates in India. This was followed by tremors from the US financial crisis and the India story took a body blow, as projections for Indian GDP growth went down sharply from 9 per cent to possibly 5.5 per cent. On top of that there was a spate of terror attacks, culminating in the Lashkar-e-Taiba unleashing mayhem in Mumbai on 26/11. But this inventory doesn't exhaust everything of significance that happened in 2008. The glass was also half full. Take the economy, for example, where oil prices plunged from record peaks of $147 in July to below $40 now. Inflation is coming down and that should enable interest rate cuts to restart India's consumption boom. Moreover, the current crisis has led to calls to redesign the global financial architecture ...