G. Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Enriches Hindi Programming

In August 2012, Charu Agarwal arrived at Yale from Banasthali University in Tonk District, Rajasthan, where she is enrolled as a second year PhD student of English Language and Literature.  Charu was one of eight students from India chosen by the Fulbright Foundation from a pool of over one hundred applicants.  The Fulbright Foreign Langauge Teaching Assistant program affords selected students the opportunity to spend one year in the US at an accredited post-seocndary institution, teaching language courses, refining English language proficiency, and honing their teaching skills and pursuing non-degree studies.

Charu reflects that she initially anticipated that, as a native Hindi speaker, providing language instruction and support to students learning Hindi in the US would be a straightforward matter.  It did not take long for her to appreciate that language fluency does not in itself make language easy to teach.  She realized that her students were full of questions about Hindi that, as a native speaker, she took for granted and never had a need to think about.  Asked by students “why is the verb placed here in the sentence”, she observes that as a Hindi speaker her automatic response might be “because that’s the way it is”– but notes this is not sufficient for a Hindi teacher who must help students to grasp the underlying logic of the language they are learning.  In her role as teaching assistant to Yale’s two Hindi instructors, Seema Khurana and Swapna Sharma, Charu remarks that every day she learns something new through her teaching and that by teaching Hindi she has developed a deeper understanding of her own native language.

As with other FLTAs, Charu received orientation and training to prepare her for her role as FLTA at Yale.  This involved a one-day pre-departure orientation organized by Fulbright in India, and a four-day teaching workshop at Columbia University. In these workshops, she learned methodologies to bring to her classes such as preparing lesson plans and activities to enrich instruction.  These approaches, Charu notes, are different from India and adopting them has allowed her to improve her teaching.

At Yale Charu enriches the Hindi program by running conversation classes that support classes offered by SeemaKhurana and Swapna Sharma.  These classes focus on revising and applying the vocabulary and concepts that students learn in class.  As a student herself, Charu is also taking a class through the Center for Language Study on Academic Writing and Principles of Language Teaching and Learning. 

Charu reflects that when she returns to India to continue her research on drama in modern India – her dissertation research focused on the plays of contemporary Indian playwright Mahesh Dattani – she will bring with her, and adapt for the Indian context, teaching methods that will enhance her own efficacy as a teacher.