3I - An Approach to teach Tamil

"You acquire language when you understand the message in a low anxiety environment"  - Dr. Steven Krashen.

Acquiring a new language is not easy. Acquiring a foreign language is hard. It is much harder when the learners’ motivation is low. The learner’s motivation level in most community schools is not as high as we would like. This is because the learners do not feel a need to learn another language since they can communicate with everyone in the local language. We cannot blame the learners for this below average motivation level.

In an ideal learning environment, the learners want to learn something and then they acquire the knowledge from the teacher. Whereas, in community schools the educators and the teachers really want the learners to learn the language, but the learners are not that keen.

We cannot really teach a language; we can only create conditions under which it will develop in the mind in its own way. -- Von Humboldt

Teaching a language to a learner who is not that motivated puts pressure on the learner. This results in low rate of transfer of the language content to the learner and results in the learner losing interest to learn the language.

What can we do to take the language to the learners so they will acquire the language effectively and also will want come back for more.

Several language acquisition approaches are out there. This article discusses one of the them. This approach is result of my experience in teaching a language in a similar environment.

The Approach

We need to employ an approach that will:

• increase the motivation of the learners
• improve the result to match with the effort

To improve the motivation we have to make the class interesting and fun for the learners. To improve the language learning rate, we have to expose the learners and their mind to the way the brain acquires, builds, and develops a language in a natural way. This is possible when we:

• create the right language acquisition environment
• involve the learners in the acquisition process and
• enhance their involvement making the class interactive.

I would like to call this approach 3I - Interesting, Involving, and Interactive.

Interesting to the learners:

• Age appropriate content
• Learners chosen content
• games, current events
• daily use language
• Fun
• Stories

Topics (time in minutes)

• Talk about what they like talking (3)
• Sing along a song (2)
• Tell a story (5)
• Discuss a story (5)
• Role play a story (5)
• Pretend (as shopper, doctor, etc) game. (5)
• Game (10)
• Watch a movie (7)
• Debate (10)
• Discussion (10)

These activities done in the target language on a regular basis will help the learners acquire lot more language than teaching the same from books and syllabus.

Involving the learners:

• in choosing the content for the class
• learners should initiate and own the discussion
• learners feel they are in the driver’s seat with the teacher’s supervision

Interactive with the learners:

Every 3 minutes, engage the learners in some activity.

• ask a question

• ask them to do something

Involve the learner

Dr Kumar in his book Beyond Methods suggests about involving the learners in the learning process. In the chapter Maximizing learning opportunity he suggests involving the learner in deciding the lesson, discussion topic of the day, testing, grading etc.

Conclusion

Employing 3I approach, we can improve the learning experience of the learners and thus take the language to them in an effective way, I believe.

Inquiry Based Learning

I come to a class. The teacher delivers the lesson. I may find it difficult to understand, associate, or make any sense of the delivered information. Take another scenario where I know something, I have a question, and ask someone who knows the answer. What happens when I hear the answer? I am able to understand better, connect easily, and potentially save in my long term memory.

This is the basic concept behind Inquiry based learning.

This is a good technique and better motivates the learners. A technique that teaches students to learn how to learn.

First introduced by John Dewey in 1900 or so.

Many teachers use this successfully.

How shall we use this to teach Tamil.

One example I heard from Singapore is that they ask the students to go explore about a topic and come discuss and ask questions. This looks like a combination of flipped classroom and inquiry based learning. No wonder Singapore is way ahead in education.

For Tamil class, instead of the teacher teaching the same content to all the students, we ask the students to explore a topic of their interest and ask them to share with others. This borrows idea from differentiated learning. Students do listen to other students more than the teacher. When a student discusses a topic, other students will be motivated to open their mouth and join the discussion. This also leads to creating more learning opportunities as Dr. Kumar suggests.