Vol. 3, Issue 7, Part K (2017)

Teaching means helping someone know and understand something they don’t know and understand. Experiential education complements traditional models of education as a method of teaching and learning that supports the individualised knowledge that occurs outside the classroom walls, allowing students to stretch in unique and creative directions. Because the learning takes place outside of the classroom, it is beyond the comfort and predictability of the student’s typical learning environment, in a place that is truly foreign. The classroom in India is characterised by repetition and memorisation of the literary-grammatical content of prescribed textbooks, but experiential language classroom stresses ‘learning by doing’ style. It targets acquisition of communication skills through critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making. Experiential approach accelerates learning. English can be learnt not by learning about it but by doing tasks and projects that promote English communication skills and critical thinking skills. It is personal and effective and it has a positive force on cognitive, affective, and physical domains of learners. It ensures involvement and participation of learners since it treats language as a social activity. This study aims to compare experiential learning method and traditional learning method to explore which method inculcates and improves the communication skills in students and an attempt to assess the applicability of experiential approach in English of class eight students in Govt. Middle School Mahmand, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, India. The study was conducted using an experimental research design. The sample size comprised of 60 students of class eight. The data were collected using a pre-test and post-test. For the pre-test, communication skills techniques were imparted to both the groups using the traditional teaching method. For the post-test, the controlled group was taught using the same traditional teaching method while the experimental group was taught using the experiential learning method. Mean scores 27.80 & 30.36 with a significant value of.002 of post-test showed that the two groups under study had different identities in scores. This proved that experiential learning method improves students’ communication skills better than traditional communication skills.