Mysuru: A five-day training-cum-workshop on Testing & Evaluation and Item Writing for the Hindi Research Scholars of the country began at National Testing Service-India (NTS-I) of Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), here on Monday.

Pankaj Dwivedi, Officer In-charge of NTS-I, in his inaugural address, introduced the academic activities of CIIL and of its various projects/schemes and emphasised on the importance of testing and evaluation process in the area of language education. He added that there is dire need for language teachers and educationists to work together when it comes to designing language learning curriculum, language teaching materials, assessment programmes, professional or academic tests, examination, etc. Only then, a balance between teaching, learning and assessment may be struck, he added.

Continuing, he said, unless language teaching materials are customised subject to the need of the learners, desirable learning proficiency may not be obtained, he felt.

Dr. Sanjay Prasad Srivastava, Junior Resource Person-Academic, welcomed. Prof. R.P. Saxena, former Professor of Linguistics, Nagpur University, Maharashtra; Prof. KVVL Narasimha Rao and Prof. N. Nadaraja Pillai, both formerly of CIIL; Prof. C.G. Venkatesh Murthy, RIE, Mysuru; and NTS-I faculty Dr. Sanjay Prasad Srivastava, Dr. Narayana Reddy, Ancy Thomas, K.S. Raghavan,  Hayath Afza and K. Lepakshi were also present. External experts together with NTS-I team will train the participants.

Thirty-five Research Scholars, who are engaged in teaching/research of Hindi, from various Universities and Colleges of India are participating in this training workshop conducted under the supervision of Prof. P.R. Dharmesh Fernandez and Pankaj Dwivedi, Officer-in-charge, NTS-I. Prof. D. G. Rao, Director, CIIL, Mysuru, is the overall patron of the workshop.