Tamil is a graded subject for her from this year, and nobody at home reads Tamil

linen_bottle_769116 Jun 2026

We're a Telugu family in Chennai. Till last year Tamil was a light period for my daughter, songs and simple words. This year it has a textbook, dictation and marks. I teach primary myself, so I know the usual advice. Read with her, label things at home, keep it fun. Hard to do when I can't read the label I'm sticking on the fridge. She speaks some Tamil from friends and the watchman, but reading is slow and she has already decided she's 'bad at it'. Anyone whose home language is different from the one their child has to learn at school? What helped that didn't involve a parent pretending to know the language?

2 comments

willow_lantern_107916 Jun 2026
marathi at home, telugu in his state board school here. what worked for us was me learning alongside him with a basic alphabet book, badly. he loves correcting me and that made him read more carefully than any tuition did. three years in, his telugu is far better than mine and he reminds me of it daily
- willow_quilt_475016 Jun 2026
  can confirm this works in chennai too, except here the student is me and the corrector is my daughter. our real teacher was the lady next door, who refused to speak anything but tamil to her. free, strict, very effective
hazel_kite_419017 Jun 2026
We're Bengali in Hyderabad and our son had Telugu at school till class 8. Two things helped. A college student came twice a week just for reading, nothing else, no homework help. And we stopped calling it his weak subject at home, because he'd started using that as a reason. He never loved it. He passed comfortably though.