Avlish Avlish, the English spoken in Auroville English, or an eroded variant of it, is the link language of Auroville. Mother's description of Auroville as a Tower of Babel in reverse seems more than fitting for an emerging township whose thousand-odd residents perhaps count a couple of dozen mother tongues among them. The need for English courses for adults has perhaps grown in the nineties as many people have started coming to Auroville with little to no English, from counties and continents that had previously been barely represented such as Spain, Argentina, the ex-U.S.S.R., Tamil Nadu itself and, most recently, South Korea. Classes therefore can also be a meeting point where old-timers and newcomers mix and get to know each other a bit better while they learn or improve their English. Tiger-traps Classes range from beginner to upper intermediate, with mixed levels and abilities.
Students join for different reasons.
Some have spoken Auroville's variant of English for years but would like to improve their grammar, others want to develop their vocabulary and more nuance in their use of English, some usually new arrivals, are simply starting from scratch, and others with a proficient understanding and reading knowledge want to practice their spoken English. The French who are well represented in Auroville frequently share a number of problems in this regard. A common stumbling block with French students comes in some cases from a desire to understand a language perfectly before using it, or alternately a desire to speak it flawlessly or not at all. And of course the tiger-traps of the perfidious English pronunciation of those thousands of perfectly good French words in the English language don't help matters much. Group activities and classroom dynamics however can be a great help in clearing some of these psychological hurdles and Auroville then provides ample opportunities for practice.