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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