My love for reading started out when I was very young and was further encouraged by my parents who shared a love for reading too! When I was little, I would pick out my favourite bedtime story to read every night, tucking the book under one arm and dragging my dad or my mum’s hand with my other arm to the reading corner. At first I always wanted to read only the English books – Aesop Fables, Peter and Jane series, anything Enid Blyton. I truly enjoyed escaping to another world in these stories fascinated by usage of sound words, descriptive words etc that make way for vivid imaginations.
But as a Tamil teacher, my mum started to get worried that I was not enjoying the Tamil language as much. She felt I needed to be well versed in my mother tongue too. To help me to enjoy reading in Tamil as much as I did in English, she would compile newspaper clippings, share storybooks filled with illustrations and colour, bring us to watch Tamil movies and stick up reading charts. This all helped to make sure my growing love for reading was balanced between my languages.
Also, by making reading fun and supporting my love for reading in both languages, I realize my parents have helped me to practise my bilingual language skills from a young age. Even to this day, I’m well-versed in both English and Tamil, and still enjoy reading stories in all my languages! What is the most fun thing you do in each of your languages?
This post was written by our Research Associate, Eshwaaree, who’s the only Tamil speaker in our team! She graduated with Master of Education in Developmental Psychology last year and is currently working on our language mixes project.