[Reader-list] Reasons to read to your child in your mother tongue

[Chintan]

Here's an interesting post from Rupa Raman's blog. I discovered this via the
Pratham Books blog.

http://babylovesbooks.com/2010/02/01/reasons-to-read-to-your-child-in-your-mother-tongue/

Have you ever read to your child in a language you don’t usually read in?

It’s a parenting experience like none other. And you shouldn’t miss a chance
to try it if you can.

Although my daughter is fluent in our mother tongue( Tamil), we haven’t
really read many books written in Tamil with her. We’re teaching her to
identify some of the alphabets and make the effort to ensure that she speaks
in Tamil at home( and believe me, it’s tough, once kids start going to
daycare or preschool on a regular basis and are exposed to more and more of
English everyday). However, we haven’t been able to lay our hands on too
many good children’s books written in Tamil. I’ve come across a few that
weren’t very well produced. And the ones that I’m looking for don’t seem to
be available anywhere.

However, a few days ago, I came across Pratham Books, a non-profit trust in
India that offers beautiful picture books for kids in Indian languages. The
best part is that some of these books are available online on Scribd, so I
didn’t have to wait. I just started reading it to my daughter right away.

And boy, was it a delight to watch her!

Tamil is one of those languages that doesn’t sound exactly the same when you
speak as when you write it. No matter how casual or conversational you try
to make the writing sound, written Tamil always seems to come across as a
little formal and ‘purer’ than spoken Tamil. As a result, when I read to my
daughter from the book, the range of expressions that crossed her face went
from interested to puzzled to delighted to confused to one of comprehension
and wonderment. How I wish I could have captured it on video! Had I plotted
her reaction on a graph, the spikes would probably have made a porcupine
retreat in defeat.

What’s beautiful though – is how she loved the novelty of the experience.
She may not have understood all the words at first, but that perked her
interest. She could figure out the plot from the visuals, and so tried to
relate the story with the images. She was intrigued by the fact that we were
reading in Tamil – a language she knew well – and yet, there was something
about it that she didn’t fully understand.

We read it a couple of times and I explained to her what some of the words
meant. Then she asked me to read it again and seemed to enjoy the experience
even better.

In all, reading Nilaavum Thoppiyum (The Moon and the Cap) and its Hindi
version, Chaand ka Tohfa ( The Moon’s Gift) was a delightful, eye opening
experience for both of us.

It reminded me to put more effort into exposing my daughter to Indian
language books so she could begin to appreciate the richness and diversity
in these languages and also to encourage her to continue to learn and use
our mother tongue. As for M, she seemed to be pretty fascinated by the fact
that we were reading from different scripts and pronouncing strange new
words. It was almost like a game – like I was reading some secret code or
posing a riddle – and she couldn’t wait to figure out what I was saying.

In their book, To Learn with Love, authors William and Constance Starr
describe Dr. Suzuki’s ‘mother tongue approach’ to teaching students music.
His method was based on the simple observation that babies everywhere learn
their mother tongue, almost effortlessly. He observed that since babies are
constantly exposed to their mother tongue, they pick it up by merely being
in the environment they’re in and by repeating what they hear several
hundred or thousand times. He borrows this idea and applies it to teaching
music. The Suzuki method involves exposing children to music from a young
age, playing recordings and encouraging repetitions. And sure enough, kids
who are trained in this way for years, do go on to achieve fine musical
abilities in due course with exposure, training and consistent practice.

In today’s globalized world, where we are all about leveling the playing
field and creating a universal language and breaking barriers, it’s not easy
to hold on to one’s mother tongue. let alone ensure that our kids do. It’s
more convenient and seems more practical to allow a language to fade away
than make the effort to weave it into our complex world. “Language should
unite, not divide.” “Language is just a means of communication, why make
such a fuss?” are some of the arguments we hear in favor of allowing
languages to disappear. But, children born in bilingual and multilingual
families or those whose parents know more than one language are at a natural
advantage over others who don’t share their background. Various studies show
the correlation between being bilingual and acquiring proficiency in other
fields. Learning foreign languages also seems to be the fashionable thing to
do. So, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to throw this natural
advantage away, merely because it takes a little more effort to reinforce
one’s mother tongue on a regular basis?

Maybe it’s time we borrowed Suzuki’s mother tongue approach and began
applying it to teaching kids their mother tongue. And if your mother tongue
is an Indian language, then children’s books like those from Pratham Books
are a great place to start.