THEME BASED TEACHING AND ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS: INTEGRATING ELT WITH ECOLOGICAL ISSUES

Environmental issues like global warming, air pollution, biodiversity are inter­linked with fundamental human rights today. In some parts of the world, people’s basic rights are already being diminished because of food and water scarcities, home and job loss, and intensifying diseases, all of which affect the peace and security of individuals and their communities (Schuchard and Weston 2009). To illustrate in even more concrete terms, Oxfam International (www.oxfam.org) states that today’s insufficient rains and disappearing glaciers already affect millions of lives around the world. As water supplies decrease, success­ful food production declines, thus resulting in hunger. These are just a few issues that illustrate why global climate change represents one theme of potential interest to language learners. Local environmental issues too appeal to the second language learners to a great extent. The increasing pollution and related maladies too provide appropriate issues for activities in the second language class. With the number of challenges that our planet faces today, raising students’ environ­mental awareness and teaching them about grassroots movements for conservation of environment that they could engage in have emerged as a necessary component of education. Since language forms the vehicle of every human thought and expression, the language education naturally could not be left out.