By Pooja Chhabra
Who knew Covid-19 will hit us in our face?
We will be spending years under lockdown, studying online and working from home. Yet, we successfully overcame all the problems and found a solution sooner or later.
What if we were prepared in advance?
The situation wouldn’t turn worse and we were back on tracks in no time.
21st Century skills are our readiness towards effective communication, critical thinking, logical reasoning, collaborating, adopting a global mindset, engaging with information and technology.
It’s not just limited to learning a new set of skills. It’s about forming a habit to adapt these skills to our routine. We must have come across many situations where we criticise a particular state. But, when asked for a better solution we fall short of words. That’s when we realise it’s easier to criticise than to find a solution, to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. This is critical thinking for you.
We need 3Ls to be effective and efficient.
Learning Skills:
The first L includes learning critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and communication.
While communication is the precondition to excel in further learnings, being it verbal, non-verbal, listening, or even written. Our thinking, reasons, creativity needs to be communicated to others. A lost connection in terms of communication can impact our additional efforts too.
Literacy Skills:
A person who could write their name and put a signature is considered literate in our country. Are we still interested in living with this attitude?
Literacy is not limited to knowing and understanding a language. Its dimensions are broad.
Media literacy, Information literacy, and Technology literacy. These essentials are necessary to evaluate and create content to further communicate through the help of media, information, and technology.
Life Skills
Lastly, the third L intimates towards aiming global. Be flexible to adapt, the world is changing so we have to be on our toes to accept the change. Bring your inside leader to take responsibility for the change. Take initiatives and discover your way. You have to learn accountability for your actions and fulfilling your commitments. Finally, interact and understand the importance of society and diversity.
How does Language help in these skills?
A limitation is no explanation in this swift world. Hence, limiting ourselves to grammatical rules, translation, and exposure to only listening or reading skills cannot be the solution. Hence, language teaching methods need to be altered. An application-based approach to be adopted for holistic Development.
