We're in Vashi. My son's school started marks for Marathi this year in class 3. He can follow when someone speaks slowly, but reading and writing are new. My partner and I manage conversation and not much more. Worksheets come home twice a week. What helped your kids at this stage without hiring a tutor straight away?
Different language, same problem here with Hindi. What helped my daughter was reading the textbook lesson aloud together before the teacher did it in class. She knew the story already, so the class made sense.
As a teacher I'd second the reading-ahead part. One more: ask the language teacher which words they expect children to know by heart this term. It's usually a much shorter list than the textbook suggests.
Forgot to add: children's shows in the language helped her ear more than worksheets did. Ten minutes a day was enough.
Cartoons did the job for my son's Hindi as well. He still knows a few odd words that could only have come from a cartoon, nothing useful for an exam, but his listening improved a lot.
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