Why are the high school Tamil classes so terrible?

The Tamil language, chiefly spoken in Tamil Nadu, India, belongs to the Dravidian language family. An official language of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry’s Union Territory (Pondicherry). A significant number of speakers can also be found in Malaysia, Mauritius, Fiji and South Africa. Tamil is also one of the official languages in Sri Lanka and Singapore. It was declared as a classical language of India in 2004, after fulfilling the three criteria: ancient origin of the language; independent tradition and significant ancient literature. More than 66 million Tamil speakers were recorded in the beginning of the 21st century.

The onus of a class being bad or good depends on its participants and in every class, we always have two participants, one the teacher who drives the class and second the student who is supposed to learn in the class. There could be two significant reasons why High School Tamil language classes can be terrible.

The first and foremost reason for a class being a disaster is a bad teacher! Now you may want to ask me, why I jumped over only to the teacher and did not find fault with the student; because it is also quite possible that the student is at fault irrespective of its measure. Agreed but in my response, I wish to quote a well-known fact; that every disaster in the ship is directly linked to the Captain and not to the occupants, to begin with. Even if the occupants are responsible for a wreck, the Captain would be held liable for lack of security and charged on so many other accounts of negligence.  

In a class, the teacher is the captain and thus we begin analysing the class from the Captain or the Teacher’s incompetence level first!

• Sometimes there are genuinely bad teachers who are not weeded out of the system because of their seniority or because they have been in the system for a really long time and now hold important positions or head important departments. Most probably the case would have been that they were good Tamil teachers when they started anew; however, over a period of time they probably got too comfortable, overconfident and casual about their teaching and hence their teaching quality dropped.

• Then there are those teachers who put in minimum effort, finish a class earlier than the scheduled time, discourage students to ask questions, judge the quality of questions students raise; calling it stupid a question or belittling the student by calling them names such as dumb, passing sarcastic, humiliating remarks etc. 

• Apart from all the above, it is also seen that the High School teachers do not pay adequate time and attention to teaching fundamentals of the language such as grammar, vocabulary or their practice. It could possibly be because they are bothered about completing their course in the timelines given by the school. Thus they end up explaining a lot in a short duration during the class. As a result, a student will not lack a good grasp of the topic that was just ran past him but wiuld be as blank as when he started his learning. Search teachers also end up giving too much homework without explanations. This is especially true with teachers who tend to cancel most of the classes repeatedly and then tend to run through the course in a single day. 

• Sometimes the teachers employed at High School do not have the requisite, relevant or appropriate qualifications. The school may have possibly hired a native Tamil speaker who is good at speaking the language. However, it takes quite a lot more to be a teacher than just being a native speaker. They may not have any formal education in teaching students or could also be computer illiterate; as a result, while they can assign homework on the ERP as trained by the school, but they are unable to supplement learning references to students. This is another reason why the quality of education suffers in High Schools.

• Another important reason for the failure of these classes is the number of students enrolled in this class; if the number of students is higher in a class, it makes the student to teacher ratio impractical to teach; then a teacher would not be able to concentrate on each student as a result of which the teaching would be more on a generic level and no student would really be learning anything out of the language class. 

• A teacher remains a teacher, in or out of the class and since a language is not like any other subject, its teaching or practice does not end with the class. Language learners are required to speak a lot especially with someone who knows the language well through and through. And who could be better than their own teacher on the campus!

• Teachers with a fixed mindset or those who strictly advocate a traditional approach to learning would definitely make a classroom a horrible place to be in! And so, there would be no takeaways or learning out of the class! A teacher should be geared up and open to implementing new methods of teaching. He or she should be knowledgeable about his own subject. He or she must also be aware about developments in teaching methodologies and be able to suggest online sites for students to practice, take assessments, take tests, or read articles with higher difficulty levels, and listen to audio resources, etc., to assess and enhance their learning.  

• Sometimes to suit their convenience, or to cover up on lost time or to cut short time, teachers jumped chapters as a result of which children are unable to make sense of the flow of learning. Sometimes teacher’s resolve to teach by dictating extensive notes on and on. This effort is so counterproductive because it pushes the students away from effective language learning, instead of encouraging them to learn.  In response either the students do not write notes at all or skip writing lots of notes in between. However, in either situation, after having written these humongous notes students never go back to read through the notes ever again. 

• Another common reason why these classes are horrible is because of the unstandardized monolingual books which are used to teach the language. To top that if a student does not have an appropriate dictionary available in his native language to Tamil or English to Tamil they would never understand anything from the book that is prescribed to them. Students also suffer in the High School classes due to the slow pace of teaching or if the entire class is only a quiz room all the time!

Now let’s have a look at how students make these classes worse for their own selves.

• Whether or not there is an issue with the teacher, a student who does not invest time and effort to learn the language will definitely never be able to learn the language. In fact, all the above reasons with respect to the teachers, only add up making the mess larger, when a student does not consciously contribute to his own learning.
• Sometimes High School students pick up language classes only to get credits and they are not really interested in studying the language.   

In my opinion, I feel here is what can be done to correct the quality of these classes 

• A teacher could actually set student expectations at the start of the semester in terms of what would be covered and what is expected out of a student. 
• A major contribution towards successful language learning by a teacher is when she actually knows what he or she is teaching and he or she is able to reinforce this concept in the students through effective teaching and practice. 
• It is also an equal duty of the institution to be able to check the quality of education being imparted to the students. The institution should be able to rectify issues related to the teacher to ensure that the language classes are not branded to be horrible!
• These classes should be restructured to include the latest content, latest methodology,  latest resources, supplemental reading, writing, speaking, and listening resources.  
• The institution on its own self should be open to understanding that every student is unique and so is their learning methodology. 
• So while a teaching institution reduces the student to teacher ratio, it should at the same time also incorporate multiple different learning methodologies to enable their teaching to benefits all kinds of learners alike; irrespective of whether a learner is a visual learner, auditory learner, or is a learner who can learn with both audiovisual methodologies or can learn through self-study methodology. 
• So while a student stands to gain a lot more from these classes if the curriculum is made slightly friendlier, the institution may stand to gain a better name that may change the perception about High School Tamil classes.

The earliest writings of the Tamil language have been identified from the ancient inscriptions and writings found on potsherds discovered during excavations, dating back to the 5th century BCE. The analysis of grammatical and lexical changes show three different periods. Old Tamil (~450 BCE) to Tamil during the transition or the middle period  (700CE–1600CE) and finally, the Modern Age Tamil (from 1600CE onwards). Brahmi script is the basis of the development of the Tamil writing system. While the letter shape changed dramatically over time and eventually stabilised when printing was introduced in the 16th century, the inclusion of the Grantha letters in Tamil script to be able to write the unassimilated Sanskrit letters alongside, forms the finest contribution to writing alphabets in the Tamil language. This was one final achievement after several letters with irregular forms were standardised in modern times. Alternatively Tamil also uses a ’round script’ commonly known as Vatteluttu. To know more about Tamil and learn join Multibhashi.