Words Of Note

Writer and Language Coach KETAKI LATKAR is on an unusual path with her ‘The Wordsmiths Club’, which is an engaging approach towards bettering the language skills amongst school children. Citadel gets her talking on more of this out-of-the-ordinary venture.

- Sapna Sarfare

He who knows his way with words and thoughts can achieve the impossible. It is quite interesting to note that while we put so much emphasis on working towards success, not many focus on the language learning skills necessary for it, especially at a young age. A certain mastery over language is known to play an important role in effective communication.

This is where Pune-based writer and language coach Ketaki Latkar comes into the picture. Her ‘The Wordsmiths Club’, in her words, is ‘an engaging, interactive, fun and quirky approach towards enhancing the language skills of school-going children.’ She intends to make students better at exams and also get much better knowledge of the English language in every way.

THE BEGINNING

A brainchild project, Ketaki does two things in The Wordsmiths Club. “I conduct Creative Writing workshops in different schools, and curate programmes. So far, I have customized it for a bunch of colleges or the University’s Law Department. My entire focus has been working with schools and children from different age brackets. There are two courses functional right now. One is the club’s first course for eighth and ninth graders. and the other is the Junior Wordsmiths for classes fifth, sixth and seventh. These two courses are functional and running right now.”

A journalist by profession, it was while working that the idea started raising its head. “I was already teaching. I was already working with a couple of schools, but it was unstructured. So I wanted to structure it.”