We need an advisor, or a mentor

The Tamil schools in the diaspora are doing a wonderful job taking our language to the next generation. I salute those volunteers who care so much about educating our next generation to learn Tamil and give so much of their time and effort to this noble cause.

There is something all these schools need. 

Teaching is an art and science. Teaching is about transferring knowledge and skill from one brain to other brains without any media. This is a simplistic definition of teaching. Teaching is not easy. Language teaching is more challenging than teaching academic subjects like Math. Language teaching requires understanding of how languages work, how people acquire first and second languages, what works well for what type of learners. This profession needs lots of education, training, and experience to train others in another language.

Most community schools are run by volunteers who are passionate about the language, care about the next generation, knows Tamil, etc. However, most are not professional language teachers. We all learn on the way. Due to time limitation many do not get opportunity to learn language teaching. We all teach using the way we believe will work. There is a diverse difference among teachers on what the "right" way to teach Tamil is. For example one teacher might say we should teach lots of grammar rules and another teacher might say we should minimal grammar. But, which way should we really go? The answer is "it depends".

When making lesson plan for a grade for a year, how much of the language teaching principles were considered? How many of us know the existence of several language teaching approaches? Which way should we go? Grammar-translation or communication language teaching? Do we take these into consideration? What technique shall we use in the class? Which technique yields better result for that set of students?

So, it is obvious there is lot to learn about language teaching. But, we do not have that much time to master this important skill. What do we do?

If you talk to two language experts, you will hear totally two different suggestions on the approaches and techniques. If the experts cannot agree on the common approach, how are we supposed to pick one over the other?

So, there is a clearly a fundamental problem we all need to address. How do we do this?

One suggestion would be to have a adviser or a mentor who has successfully implemented a language teaching approach that yielded the expected result to your learner type. Without someone hand holding us through the entire language teaching process, we will be throwing in the dark. The process includes deciding an approach, developing lesson plan, selecting classroom techniques, training the teachers, and preparing the learners with the right attitude.

This will help us to avoid re inventing the wheel, save time, and make great progress towards out big goal.

A homework for you:
Why do Singapore Tamil schools do not give dictations? Why do many experts say language drills such as worksheets do not help learners acquire a language? Why do some experts say worksheets have negative impact on language learners?

Thanks

Logu