English Learning Becomes Top Priority, USA-Based Language Coach Trains Pune Police Officers

Pune, 3rd June 2021: “Whether it is to better understand complainants speaking English, or to draft a report for the higher authorities, English is necessary. The problem is that we don’t have too many English-speaking people around. So, practising the language is a problem. Also, most of us have studied in Marathi medium schools, and a lot of police officers hail from rural pockets. How do we acquaint ourselves with English?” shared Senior Police Inspector Shankar Khatke, who has more than 25 years of experience as a police officer, who now seems to have got the answer for his pressing concern of learning English.

To the rescue of Khatke and 40 others like him, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 3) Pournima Gaikwad of Pune city police has joined hands with Ketaki Latkar-Mahajan, who is an English language coach, and a journalist with more than a decade’s experience.

Ketaki is the founder and the chief language facilitator of her education startup—The Wordsmiths Club (TWC). Under the aegis of TWC, she conducts English enhancement courses for individuals, groups, as also corporate firms. What sets her courses apart is that they’re curated or designed by her according to the learning requirements and the English language aptitude of the learners.

Speaking about how she thought of working with the police, Ketaki explained, how early last month, on some work-related call with Gaikwad, she learnt about the English language concerns of the cops. Right after, she and Gaikwad joined forces, and Ketaki agreed to design and teach a curated English course to a batch of 40 police officers.

“The program flagged off 2 weeks back, and it is heartening to see how dedicated, and excited all the participating officers are. Right now, the lessons are pretty simple. We are looking at very fundamental language learning tasks, such as introductions, remarks, salutations, and narration of experiences, and so on,” Ketaki informed.

Two weeks into the learning program and the participating police officers have already warmed up to the idea. Sounding rather stoked about the stint, DCP Gaikwad shared, “Being able to speak and write in English has become imperative in every profession, and ours is no exception. I am glad we could launch this program. Such a learning intervention was long overdue. But finding the correct mentor was necessary, and right now, it looks like everything has fallen in place perfectly.”

One of the most remarkable features of this learning program is that Ketaki is presently domiciled in Boston in the USA. Originally, a Punekar, she is the former editor of one of Pune’s oldest lifestyle magazines and has also worked with a couple of the city’s leading newspapers and magazines. At present, she works as a freelance journalist, and most of her time is dedicated to English teaching and communication skills training, which she does virtually.

Throwing light on how she accomplishes managing the time zones and teaching the police, she revealed, “It is not that big a problem. We have organised the entire activity meticulously. There are two groups, each of 20 cops. We meet once a week for two hours at 8 pm IST. For me, my mornings and some hours at night are dedicated to my work, and I am very happy doing that.”

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