Master’s Proficiency in English

Master's Proficiency in English

The “Master’s Proficiency in English” course, ie, a writer’s workshop, is for students, who wish to excel, ie, write well in English.

At the end of the course, besides learning how to write well, students may wish to prepare or complete a body of writing:

• Auto-biography, memoir, biography
• Series of articles / features
• Collection of miscellaneous writings
• Blog, diary or journal.

 No qualifications required, except basic writing skills, knowledge of English and an intense desire to write.

No age bar.

This is NOT (NOT) a “creative” writing workshop. Too much is made of “creative” writing nowadays, in my opinion. If U are looking for a creative writing workshop, this is NOT (NOT) the course for U.

Duration and timing:

Starting July 2016.

Forty (40) weeks per year, ie, forty (40) Sundays per year.

Two (2) hours every Sunday: 10am to 12noon or 11am to 1pm.

Four sessions of ten (10) weeks each, with a four-week break between two sessions,

ie, 10 + 4 + 10 +4 + 10 + 4 + 10.

Batch-size:

The batch-size has been deliberately kept to not less than twelve (12) and not more than twenty (20) students, so that I can give personal attention to each student.

Venue:

Akshar Nandan school, Off Senapati Bapat Road

(Take the lane in between Marriot hotel and Pantaloons mall).

Fee:

Rs.12,000 (rupees ten thousand only) per year + one-time class admin charges. The fee maybe paid one-time of Rs.10,000/- or in four instalments of Rs.3,000/-, before each 10-week session.

 Content and methodology:

The course consists of two parts:

1. Generic: common for the entire batch.
2. Tailor-made: for each student.

 The generic part will include learning to write sentences, paragraphs; reports, features, essays and other short forms; also how to prepare and follow one’s own a style guide.

The genres to be covered will include non-fiction and fiction, with a preference for non-fiction writing. The relationship of English with Indian languages will also be discussed.

This is NOT (NOT) a “creative” writing workshop. Too much is made of “creative” writing nowadays, in my opinion. If U are looking for a creative writing workshop, this is NOT (NOT) the course for U.

Preference will be given to values like:

• sincerity & honesty;
• listening to one’s conscience or inner voice;
• accuracy;
• effective communication and impact;
• respect for the reader; readability;
• a sense of history;

 No lectures. Since I have been a trainer for the last 45 years, the methodology will be interactive and participatory.

*****

 The basic texts are:

• Elements of Style by Strunk & White.
• On Writing Well by William Zinnser.

 We will share and discuss various writers and their writing. Selections from the following sampling of works and authors (and others, suggested by students) may be studied (not in order), depending on the interest of students:

 The Old Man and the Sea – Hemingway

Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden – Steinbeck

David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities – Dickens

The Story of my Experiments with Truth – Gandhi

Lessons of History – Will & Ariel Durant

*****

R.K. Narayan,

William Hazlitt, G.B. Shaw, G.K. Chesterton,

D.H. Lawrence, Somerset Maugham. Graham Greene,

Virginia Woolf,

Marcel Proust, Victor Hugo, Maupassant, Emile Zola,

Lev Tolstoy, Chekhov, Dostoevsky,

e e cummings, Emily Dickinson, Shelley, Keats

About the teacher:

 Joseph M. Pinto is a human being, by birth; a journalist and editor, by profession; a trainer and teacher, by choice.

He has worked in journalism since 1973; since 1983, full-time editing on the desk. He has taught editing and print journalism at the Dept of Communication & Journalism, Savitribai Phule Pune University (since 1987); at Symbiosis (since 1990); and various institutions in Pune.

During 1973-83, he has variously:

• Worked on drought relief programs, in villages;
• Taught adult literacy classes, in villages and slums;
• Worked in trade unions, with CITU;
• Taken science to the working people, with Lok Vidnyan Sanghatana, as a full-timer;
• Conducted teacher and principal training programs, as well as trustee empowerment programs, with Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana. 
• Contact Details
•  Email: sangatizuzay@gmail.com
  Land-line: 020-2563-4392 between 9 & 11 pm
  Mobile: 94037-66122.