Govt. Tamil teacher eases language learning for students
Did you know that when you pronounce 'nandri', your tongue has to sit in between the teeth for 'n' sound? 'It's all in the pronunciation. Children are not taught the right way to pronounce when writing,' said M. Kanagalakshmi, a Tamil teacher in Chennai Girls Higher Secondary School, Shenoy Nagar. She has been teaching Tamil in the simplest form to enhance students' reading ability based on 23 years of research.
For her research, the UK-based Croydon Tamil Sangam has decided to honour the teacher in the UK Parliament. She has also been invited to participate in the ceremony to unveil the statue of Thiruvalluvar at Oxford university.
When students completing elementary reach her class in Class 6, she says, they really do struggle to read. 'They have trouble identifying the letters. This scenario wasn't so terrible before Covid, but recently, many students suffer. So I inevitably take about 10-15 days teaching the basics. From there it has been smooth sailing to cover the rest of the syllabus,' she said.
The teaching method is based on her research, which teaches the students of the many names of the curves in the Tamil letter. Once the names are learnt, it's only a matter of repeating and practicing to understand the writing. 'Once they are familiar with this practice, the reading becomes simple. Students then pick up books from all genres to enjoy reading and further write independently,' she said.
Based on her research titled 'Problems and Solutions in Tamil Reading Ability', she has taught many students the Tamil language in under 45 days.
A native of Thoothukudi, Kanagalakshmi adds that the child learns four new words when learning to write the letter A. They learn 'slanting' 'line', 'in between' and 'sleeping' when writing the letter 'A'.
'But this is not the case when learning the Tamil letters. They could've learnt it if it was incorporated in teacher training,' she added. The words such as padukkaikeetru (sleeping line), saivukeetru (slanting line), irattaikombu among others which could be used to trace and write letters.
Driven by the need to make learning Tamil easier with proper methods, the 52-year-old started making books, workbooks with videos on every Tamil letter and their pronunciation. Entirely self-funded, she came out with QR codes in the books so that first generation learners can access the videos to learn. Tamil and Math have three books each.
'It's not difficult to learn Tamil. However, research on teaching methods for the elementary level is missing which makes children lose the opportunity to learn at a crucial age,' she added.
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