UNESCO feels that all moves to promote the dissemination of mother tongues will serve not only to encourage linguistic diversity and multilingual education but also to develop fuller awareness of linguistic and cultural traditions throughout the world and to inspire solidarity based on understanding, tolerance and dialogue.
Taking inspiration from this, SiliconAndhra encourages children to appreciate the languages and culture of India and to become ambassadors of Indian culture to the American mainstream society as they grow up in today’s global village. As you all know that Telugu language is at the very heart of SiliconAndhra’s objectives. It is the most powerful instrument of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage and culture. All of us who migrated from Andhra Pradesh dream that a formal school would be started to teach Telugu language, our mother tongue, to our children. Now that dream comes true in the form of SiliconAndhra ManaBadi.
It is a common adage that parents are the first teachers to their children. Despite the desire of migrated Telugu parents to teach Telugu to their young, yet one notices that the parents don’t have the proper tools and methodology to teach Telugu to their children who happen to go to local schools in America where the medium of instruction is English and either Spanish or French is taught as a second language. SiliconAndhra ManaBadi would like to fill that void with formal teaching of Telugu.
The formal teaching implies a class room interaction between the teacher and a student, with a definite course outline and material for a given level. The teaching ends with an exam conducted to assess the student's performance.
SiliconAndhra team prepared Telugu language learning material in an unprecedented way with the support and guidance from highly reputed Telugu linguists, professors, teachers and institutes like Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore and Telugu University, Hyderabad. Several proven and advanced learning tools would be used in teaching Telugu in the ' ManaBadi ' in an interactive and interesting way to all kids. 'ManaBadi' will be offering classes in a neighborhood close to where you live.
SiliconAndhra ManaBadi would be using the language drills and exercises developed after 35 years of research by CIIL linguists and academicians. SiliconAndhra would be using a 'Language Lab' to help the children with proper Telugu pronunciation to overcome their accent. We believe that this kind of extensive effort based on proper methodology would immensely help children learn Telugu with interest and excitement.
ManaBadi course consists of five levels (duration of one year each) : 1. BalaBadi (for kids aged 4 to 6 yrs), 2. Pravesam (6+ yrs), 3. Prakasam, 4. Pramodam, and 5. Prabhasam. The children who have prior knowledge of Telugu will be tested to qualify for direct entry into Prakasam level at the beginning of the school year. At no point there will be direct entries into either Pramodam or Prabhasam levels.
At the successful completion of each year course, Potti Sriramulu Telugu Viswavidyalayam would be awarding a Certificate to all the students. SiliconAndhra is also working Department of Education to get a foreign language credit for each student that complete the four years course.
SiliconAndhra started ‘ManaBadi’ classes in Northern California in April 2007 with 175 students in 8 cities. At present SiliconAndhra ManaBadi classes are available in 24 cities across 14 states with 900+ students. Over 75 teachers are trained to teach these classes.
Students and teachers have been provided with high quality teaching materials, work books, customized class notes, personalized binders, school bags and everything else that is required. The materials created a lot of excitement among the kids of all ages. Several kids who had never spoken Telugu at home started making sincere efforts to speak Telugu at home.
SiliconAndhra has formed Curriculum Development Team headed by experienced teachers who has prior training in child psychology and teaching methodologies in best schools in USA. SiliconAndhra also developed teacher training programs, teaching kits and an Admin team to effectively support teachers, students and parents.
SiliconAndhra ManaBadi is hailed by students and parents alike as this is the best ever Telugu learning initiative that really made an excellent impact in a very short span of time.
This is the first of its kind program with structured lesson plans, total professional approach and proven teaching methodology of teaching Telugu as second language in a foreign country. SiliconAndhra would like put all this experience and the resources of its committed volunteers to full use and expand ManaBadi across all the states in USA. SiliconAndhra would like to start a ManaBadi class wherever ten students and a volunteer teacher are available. Already, we have received interest to start classes in several cities across USA.
We would like to work with all the interested people hand in hand to spread Telugudanam all around. Let us work together to make the Telugu language learning experience is an exciting one for everyone involved.
Please contact for more information:
Sankar Tumuluru: 650-430-5958 - sankar@siliconandhra.org
Raju Chamarthi: 408-685-7258 – raju@siliconandhra.org |
