Proportion of students in JCs and polytechnics
An estimate of 70 % of a cohort of Tamil Students go to polytechnics( YJC, 2016).
• Students who go to polytechnics are not able to sustain their connection with the language anymore.
• To solve this issue, one suggestion |
would be to cater to the Polytechnic |
students by having Tamil as a |
module-based |
subject |
in |
polytechnics |
|
|
• If you make it module based, people will be more eager to learn, considering that the learning of the language is fused with their topic of interest
• Examples include the‘ Framing Bollywood’ module offered by the South Asian Studies Department in NUS which has exposed students to various backgrounds to Indian culture by tapping on their interest in Indian cinema
• Are we then able to come up with a similar module centred on Tamil cinema in polytechnics and tertiary institutions to promote the learning of Tamil language?
• We also need avenues to actively engage poly and ITE students and activities must be tailored according to what they want rather than what the organizers think they require. Activities need to be more practical and relatable to most students.
• Research on the attitudes of Tamils towards their language( Kadakara, 2011) has yet to be conducted. A lack of such research can potentially translate into a mismatch in terms of how Tamil organizations plan their activities and how students desire to engage with Tamil. This results in a loss of interest amongst students to participate in Tamil activities.
Current avenues: There is an increase in competitions that are organized during TLF that reach out to a wider variety of target participants
• Sorsilambam is a national Tamil debate competition that is organised biennially. For the first time in 2017, Sorsilambam was opened to polytechnic students. In the past, it was only open to junior colleges and centralised institutes. The debate competition aims to improve tertiary students’ proficiency in Tamil, both spoken and written. It also enables them to develop their organisational, research, debating and articulation skills in Tamil.
• Kalam 2018 by NUS Tamil Language Society was organised for the first time this year as an attempt to develop Tamil learning in a fun and creative way among youth and represented a marked shift from a focus on literary Tamil to spoken Tamil. Kalam 2018 had a drama competition that required students to act out scenes from popular Hollywood movies differently with the Tamil language as a medium and a pitching competition that required students to advertise everyday objects in a radioadvertisement format.
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