JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

‘The Comm Studies’ boss’ book makes

passing exam easier for students

by

Samaki Felician
259 days ago
20241020
Vanessa Ramoutar

Vanessa Ramoutar

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Vanes­sa Ra­moutar-Singh, a teacher with 20 years of ex­pe­ri­ence, has had the priv­i­lege of ed­u­cat­ing nu­mer­ous Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners and schol­ar­ship win­ners.

She has re­cent­ly added an­oth­er ac­co­lade to her re­sume with the pub­li­ca­tion of a book for CAPE stu­dents. The new au­thor has writ­ten a text­book called CAPE Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies Mul­ti­ple-Choice Book­let, which con­tains ten prac­tice tests, ten an­swer sheets, an ex­pla­na­tion for each ques­tion, and many more. Ra­moutar-Singh said she was the first teacher in the Caribbean to re­lease a text­book of this kind.

“It’s the first text in the Caribbean writ­ten by a Trinida­di­an teacher for stu­dents across the Caribbean to help them ace this ex­am be­cause there was noth­ing like this be­fore, and now we have the new top­ics and new changes that were made to the syl­labus. It is a learn­ing re­source, and it is for teach­ers and stu­dents,” she said.

Ra­moutar-Singh was in­spired to write the book when she no­ticed the chal­lenges stu­dents face when do­ing Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies. What mo­ti­vat­ed her to pub­lish this book was the re­al­i­sa­tion of her ex­per­tise and pro­fes­sion­al growth in the sub­ject, which she used as her guide­line when cre­at­ing it.

She fur­ther ex­plained, “I have been teach­ing CAPE Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies from the in­cep­tion, and I am aware of stu­dents’ chal­lenges over the years. There has nev­er been a book like this be­fore, es­pe­cial­ly with the new syl­labus and with my past Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners. I am high­ly rep­utable, so that is why I was able to use my knowl­edge and ex­per­tise to put it in­to cre­at­ing this book.”

Since the book is now ac­ces­si­ble to the gen­er­al pub­lic, the St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School (SAGHS) teacher’s main goal is to im­prove the stu­dents’ readi­ness and make sure they can com­plete the pa­per me­thod­i­cal­ly and thor­ough­ly to get a good ex­am grade. It may seem that writ­ing this book was ‘smooth sail­ing’, but Ra­moutar-Singh ex­plained that it was no easy task.

“This book was in progress for quite some time, and when I was ready to print, CXC held a work­shop at the end of Au­gust, a week and a half be­fore school re­opened, say­ing that they are hav­ing a re­vised syl­labus. I de­cid­ed to pause and wait to see what those changes were, and when I at­tend­ed the work­shop, sig­nif­i­cant changes were made to the syl­labus, so sig­nif­i­cant that I had to go and re­vis­it the book af­ter I had cre­at­ed it,” she said.

This chal­lenge put strain on her men­tal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and phys­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er, she did not let that de­ter her as she went over every­thing, tak­ing out the old ques­tions, adding in the new top­ics, chang­ing the an­swers, and writ­ing over the ex­pla­na­tions, which re­sult­ed in her com­ing out with the book at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2024.

La­belled by her stu­dents, ‘The Comm Stud­ies Boss’, Ra­moutar-Singh came from hum­ble be­gin­nings grow­ing up in the Ch­agua­nas area. She spoke proud­ly about her par­ents, who in­stilled in her the val­ue of hav­ing an ed­u­ca­tion, which made her in­to the strong, in­de­pen­dent woman she is to­day. Ra­moutar-Singh shares her knowl­edge with young girls, where she teach­es to em­pow­er them and teach them the im­por­tance of hav­ing a sound ed­u­ca­tion.

Ex­plain­ing the main rea­son she de­cid­ed to be­come an ed­u­ca­tor, Ra­moutar-Singh said, “It’s be­cause of my love for kids from a very young age. I ac­tu­al­ly start­ed out teach­ing at the Form Six lev­el. I had my own lessons; I start­ed do­ing my own pri­vate tu­ition, and even­tu­al­ly, I start­ed work­ing at pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions be­fore I got in­to SAGHS.”

The re­spect­ed and ded­i­cat­ed ed­u­ca­tor added, “I have been work­ing at pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions in Trinidad, do­ing a range of things such as CAPE Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies, Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tion Coun­cil (CXC) Eng­lish A, and I once did SEA Eng­lish A and SEA Cre­ative Writ­ing. This made me look at the process of chil­dren from young to much old­er, and work­ing with them helped me as an ed­u­ca­tor; that is why I want­ed to be­come a teacher.”

‘The Comm Stud­ies Boss’ stat­ed she does not ex­act­ly have a favourite mo­ment of be­ing a teacher but said that she en­joys spend­ing time with the chil­dren, hear­ing about their sto­ries on what is go­ing on in their lives, and see­ing them suc­ceed.

Some of her past stu­dents in­clude Pres­i­dent’s Medal win­ners Ryk­er Har­richa­ran and Nish­ka Ma­haraj in 2023, Saira Mo­hammed in 2022, Ni­kee­sha Nan­coo in 2021, Am­rit Gal­baran in 2020, and Saan­jali Ma­haraj in 2017.

She al­so taught stu­dents who were placed in the top ten re­gion­al mer­it lists in the Caribbean.

To get more in­fo on Ra­moutar-Singh, you can fol­low her on In­sta­gram @vra­moutars­ingh_comm_stud­ies and Face­book “Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Stud­ies with V Ra­moutar-Singh.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored