South Asia Studies Council hosts the Fifth Annual South Asian Language Pedagogy Workshop

On April 11-12, the South Asia Studies Council hosted the fifth annual South Asian Language Pedagogy Workshop. This year’s theme was “Teaching the Beginner: Pedagogical Approaches to South Asian Language Instruction at the Introductory Level”.

The workshop brought together accomplished teachers and scholars with expertise in a wide range of South Asian languages. Hailing from seven North American research universities, the ten participants explored and shared successful models of South Asian language instruction and research within the American academy. These scholars and instructors presented and discussed their work and ideas pertaining to languages of South Asia, in particular Hindi, Tibetan, Sanskrit and Tamil. By drawing together a diverse array of specialists in South Asia, the workshop provided an opportunity for participants to broaden their perspectives on the place and possibilities of South Asian languages within Western academe. Participants also sought to discern new avenues for the pursuit of both teaching and research.

The specific goal of this year’s workshop was to examine and discuss the various issues involved in teaching South Asian languages at the first-year level. Issues include, among others, student retention, meeting the needs of both heritage and non- heritage learners, textbook selection, and determining the correct relative emphasis to place on reading, writing, speaking, and oral comprehension. The underlying intent of the workshop was to facilitate a sustained and frank discussion about something that is very important to teachers, but is largely discussed only in passing, namely, approaches to teaching introductory South Asian languages.

Towards this end, Dr. David Brick, Lecturer of Sanskrit and the organizer of this year’s workshop, encouraged workshop participants to engage exactly how they go about teaching first-year students the South Asian language(s) in which they specialize. In this way, participants were able to gain rare and valuable insights from each other’s teaching strategies and experiences. The workshop’s panels were organized according to language.

This years participants were:

David Buchta, Brown University. SANSKRIT
Richard DeLacy, Harvard University. HINDI
Paul Hackett, Columbia University. TIBETAN
Gregory Hillis, University of California-Santa Barbara. TIBETAN
Seema Khurana, Yale University. HINDI
Guy Leavitt, Columbia University. SANSKRIT
Gyanam Mahajan, University of California-Los Angeles. HINDI
Bharathy Sankara Rajulu, University of California-Berkeley. TAMIL
Blake Wentworth, University of California-Berkeley. TAMIL
Swapna Sharma, Yale University. HINDI