TAMIL - Tamil As Mother tongue In Language schools

Teach Tamil As Mother tongue In Language schools. 

Billions of people acquire a language using method X and they all succeed. Millions of people attempt to learn a language using method Y and a good percentage of them do not succeed. The Method X is being used for thousands of years. But, the method Y is being used only for the last 100+ years. Clearly Method X must be effective for teaching a language.  

Why are we not using method X to teach another language? What is that method?
 
I have some questions for all the language teachers and educators in the Community schools.

How did you acquire your first language? What was the syllabus? Who taught you the grammar or language rules? What test and how often did you take the test? How were you introduced new words? In what language were you explained the meaning of new words?

Please take some time and write down your answers to all these questions.

Now, let us fast forward. What are you doing to teach Tamil today? How different is the method or approach you are using from the way you acquired your first language? If they are very similar, congratulations. If lot different, what is the reason it is different? Why can't we use the same approach? Why can't we help our students also acquire Tamil the way we acquired Tamil? What stops us?

BTW, how do we acquire a language? How do we acquire the first language? Are you aware we acquire the second, third, fourth ... languages also the same way? Please refer to Stephen Krashen's Language acquisition theory. We all acquire the language the same way. That is how we acquired Tamil. Shouldn't the approach we use be the same too?

There is a belief that the first language interferes with second language acquisition. Krashen disagrees with this.

The community schools run by immigrants teach their heritage language such as Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Mandarin, etc in community schools. Hats off to those who give their invaluable time and resources for this great cause. These schools may follow several methods and approaches in taking their mother tongue to their next generations. I would strongly urge all these schools to look at language acquisition theories, especially the Natural Approach by Terrel and Krashen and plan their lesson plan and class room activities to teach our mother tongue as mother tongue.

As the first generation immigrant group, many schools seems to teach the language the way we learned our language in school and the way we learned the second language which by default is English in the same school. There are pros and cons to the system used back at home. These approaches worked for learning the first language, but, it did not do a good job in acquiring the second language.

The following chart captures some of the key points in teaching a language. The following table list strategies and approaches that may be explored to improve the effectiveness of the program and help our students acquire the language in a better way.

	If you are here currently...	You may want to go here
		Here is an option if you would like to take Tamil Teaching to next level.
Goal	Literacy Skill: if your class activities are focused on the literacy skill such as letters, reading, and writing, etc	Language Skill: you may want to change the focus to Language skill such listening and speaking in the early stages and gradually move towards literacy skill.
Plan	Learning Activities are focused on helping the students to learn the language.	Acquisition Consider changing the activities to help the kids to acquire the language.
	Academic	Use for communication
	Language based teaching	Activity based teaching
Execution	Use of English in the class	Tamil only
	Language rules	Focus on communication
	Language centered	Learning centered
	Conscious learning	Subconscious acquisition
System	?	Natural Approach
	?	The first language way.
	Testing and grading	Evaluation and feedback system
Principle	Teaching Tamil as a foreign language	Teach mother tongue as mother tongue. Kids and adults acquire language differently.

I will be writing on each of the above shortly.

Just to highlight some key points:

• If your goal currently is Literacy skill, that is Reading, Writing, Grammar rules,
  consider changing to Language skill which is Listening, Speaking.
• Introduce literacy skill after the kids acquire some basic language skill. No need to introduce letters until they can speak at least few simple sentences.
• If your activities now are on helping them to learn,
  consider changing them to help then acquire Tamil.
• If your goal, lesson plan, activities all are similar to the way we learned English in school,
  consider changing them to match with the way we learned Tamil right from home.

The advances in Language teaching suggests that it is possible to teach a foreign language like a first language. So, why to teach our mother tongue as a foreign language? It should be possible to teach the mother tongue as mother tongue. Let us do so.


A FRAMEWORK WE CAN CONSIDER:

Our goal in teaching Tamil:

• Language competency
• Long term retention

Two main language skills:

• Language skill consisting of listening and speaking.
• Literacy skill consisting of reading and writing

When we acquired our mother tongue, we developed listening skill first, built enough comprehension of the language and only then we started talking. We were not forced to talk until we were ready. After building enough language comprehension, the speech emerged and we started talking.

After having good amount of experience in listening and speaking for at least 3 years, we moved to develop reading and writing skill in schools. That is the natural order we acquired our language. We cannot win against the nature and hence this can only be the best order to give our language to our children.

Approaches to give listening skill to beginning learners:
 
Comprehension is our main goal when we start language acquisition class. There are main ways we can help the kids build listening skill in the Tamil is to use actions. Refer to Dr. James Asher's Learning Another Language Through Actions. Do not expect or encourage speaking first 6 months or more. Wait until the speech emerges.


Conclusion

From my several years of teaching experience, attending language teaching trainings, and  reading several books on language acquisition, I have not yet come across a better approach to take Tamil to our next generation than what I discussed in this framework. There may be and will be better approaches in future. But, this approach comes very close to the natural way we acquired our mother tongue.

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