ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines how social attitudes towards a language and its speakers influence English language learners in post-colonial South Asia with a special focus on the learners’ most sought-after language skill, speaking. It begins a special type of anxiety that is caused by the language attitudes present in society, labelled Language Attitude Anxiety. The book explains the importance of intervention to build confidence. It discusses the theoretical perspectives of the experimental curriculum design along the lines of the theme of confidence building. The book describes the Cooperative Language Learning techniques that are incorporated into the teaching methodology of the course. It also presents the course evaluation stages that are available in the discourse namely pre-evaluation, in-course evaluation and post-evaluation and discusses the significance of developing language attitudes as an independent academic discourse.
