Publications

Telugu Teaching in Texas, USA
 

Satyam Mandapati


About the author:

Satyam Mandapati is currently residing in the metro area of Austin, Texas in USA with his wife Vimala, son Anand and daughter Anupama. Satyam did his B. Sc. in Hindu College Guntur; B.E. in Govt. Engineering College, Kakinada and M.E. in Andhra University, Waltair. After working as a senior manager in the Indian Space Research Organization in Trivandrum, Kerala, for ten years Satyam moved to USA in 1982 and is currently working as Director of Marketing and Business Development in a Hi-Tech company in Austin.

Satyam Mandapati published more than 250 short stories, novels and dramas in all the leading Telugu magazines such as Andhra Prabha, Andhra Patrika, Yuva, Jyoti, Swati, Rachana, Andhra Bhoomi, Andhra Jyoti, Vipula, Chatura, Suprabhatam. Priya Datta etc. in India and TANA Patrika, ATA Bharati, America Telugu Kadhanikalu in USA. Some of his stories were translated into other languages like Tamil, Hindi and English. He is currently writing a popular weekly feature by name “NRI Kaburlu” being published for about an year in Andhra Bhoomi, a Telugu weekly magazine.

Satyam published seven books in Telugu so far. His book "America Betaaludi Kathalu", depicting the life of Indian immigrants in USA, is in second edition and still selling hot both in and outside India. His other books are "Chettu Krinda Chinukulu", "Telugu Vaadu Pykostunnadu - Tokkeyandi", “Governamentality Kathalu”, “Made in America”, “NRI Kathalu” and “Cheekatilo chandamama”. Satyam also wrote songs for two CDs, some of them are sung by SP Sailaja and Balasubramanyam.

Satyam received various awards for his literary contributions from Chaitanya Bharati, TANA, ATA, Telugu Cultural Association of Austin, Vanguri Foundation of America and Friendship Foundation of India etc. Satyam is conducting monthly Telugu Sahitya Sadassulu in Austin, TX since 1992 and is the force behind the statewide Texas Telugu Sahitya Sadassulu conducted twice a year for the last six years.

Satyam taught Telugu for three years in Trivandrum, Kerala and two years in Houston, Texas. He has been teaching Telugu in Austin since 1993 to the second generation Telugu children as well as adults.

Is there a necessity to teach Telugu to the people residing in non-Telugu speaking places?

There was an interesting discussion on this topic during the first America Telugu Sahitya Sadassu in Atlanta held by Vanguri Foundation of America during 1998. The subject of discussion was whether teaching Telugu was necessary to the second generation Telugu children residing in USA. While a majority of the speakers strongly emphasized the need for teaching Telugu, some of the Telugu elite were totally adamant about this. Their contention was Telugu was dying even in our own Andhra Pradesh and so there was no necessity to impose it on our kids in USA.I did not agree with that. In my opinion, any language does not “die” in such a short span. It is natural that languages are influenced by other languages closer to the region and they may barrow a few words from other languages, but it would go on for ever.  A great example to support this is English itself. A majority of the words in English are adopted from various languages including Tamil, Sanskrit and Telugu and English is living stronger than ever before. Languages are dynamic and they are part of culture. Just like any particular culture is influenced by other cultures around, languages do the same too.

And also my argument was, has been and is that it is NOT our decision to say whether it is necessary or not for our children to learn their mother tongue. The decision is and should always be theirs. I have no problem if they don’t want to learn Telugu. At least, we should provide them information to take that decision and an opportunity to learn if they so decide.

I taught Telugu to about 15 children in Trivandrum in the most beautiful state of Kerala during my stay there in the early seventies. One of the students, now married and came to USA to work in a high tech company, visited us a couple of years ago in Austin, TX. She was speaking very good Telugu without any Malayalam or English accent. I asked her how she was able to do that, being brought up in a place where not many people speak Telugu. She smiled and replied “Uncle you are the one that taught Telugu, you remember?” To my surprise it was our Telugu school in seventies that laid the foundation for her interest in Telugu. She even said that she can read and write Telugu now. These are the incidents that answer the Telugu elite, whether we need to teach Telugu to our children or not.

My experience and learning curve in teaching Telugu:

After we started the Telugu school in Austin in 1993, I resorted to teaching the subject from the text books I brought from India, covering grade 1 to grade 10. Very soon I realized that the second generation children were not interested in the regular stories on Bali Chakravarti etc. And so they even stopped coming to the classes. Then I changed the gears and started thinking seriously as what would satisfy them.
I came up with a class format and the required syllabus to teach them in the best possible way. Since then the number started increasing and currently we have about 30 students enrolled in the class. Our students are mostly in the age group of 6 years to 16 years. It is interesting to see that we have a few non-Telugu speaking adults too in our class.

Goals:

1. Prepare the students to speak in conversational Telugu.
2. Improve their Telugu vocabulary.
3. Develop sufficient working knowledge in Telugu.
4. Provide knowledge to identify the Telugu alphabet.
5. Educate them in interesting subjects on India and Andhra Pradesh.

Mission Statement: “Have fun while learning”

Division of classes:

Classes are divided into only two, basic and advanced. It has nothing to do with age, but their exposure to Telugu.

Structure or format of the classes:

First hour in the class is dedicated to learning Telugu words, numbers etc., and forming sentences. There are quite a few conversational exercises. Learning medium is English. We do humorous English-Telugu skits for improving the vocabulary.

Next half an hour is dedicated to various projects learning about the culture, arts, geography, history etc. about India in general and Andhra Pradesh in particular. There are special invitees to talk about specific interesting topics. Some of our students come forward to talk about some subjects of their interest and present them after good preparation. Actually I like the students to come up with topics of their interest and I see a kind of fulfillment and satisfaction when they do it in their own humble way. We also show some videos and movies covering interesting topics such as the Taj Mahal, Mahatma Gandhi, jungles and interesting places in India etc. on some special occasions.

The last half an hour is generally spent in learning to write Telugu alphabets. I normally would like to see the level of interest from students in this area and expand the scope. This is one area which many of my students resented. So we came up with different fun games to learn to identify Telugu alphabets. It is interesting to note that our students came up with all innovative ideas to make it the most fun time of the class. We form four or five teams and compete one against the other. Our students loved it so much and enjoyed as if they were playing a Basket Ball game.

Medium of language:

Our medium of teaching is English. In some other places, I have seen the teachers making Telugu speaking mandatory in the class, which challenged the ego of the children and turned them off totally. So I decided to speak only in English while teaching Telugu initially. Slowly we all became friends and they accepted me. Once they did that we started mixing Telugu and English and after a while, we came to a point where they answer me only in Telugu. Though I faced some criticism on this method of teaching from the parents initially, we all agreed later that it worked well.

Support from parents:

We allowed parents to be present and observe during the classes, but they were not allowed to speak anything during the teaching. They used to give tips and suggestions after the class, which were considered to improve the teaching methods and discipline in the class. Thanks to the parents, I took a lot of help from them to improvise the teaching techniques.

Another help from the parents is that they take over from where we left in the class and help the students in their effort to learn Telugu. In most cases, this worked wonderful.

Three Rules in teaching Telugu:

1. Any amount of teaching in the classes only motivate the children and provide them some skills, but the key to their success is their parents/spouses/friends should help by conversing in Telugu, whenever possible. That is the best way to improve their vocabulary and skills in forming the sentences right.
2. Play some good Telugu music and show some good Telugu movies. Make sure to answer any questions in a friendly way, so that they understand.
3. Even if they speak wrong, don’t point out their mistakes. Tell them how you will form those sentences or use those words, in a positive way. If you make fun of them or challenge them, I am sure they will be disappointed and go into their shell.

Syllabus developed-

I developed my own syllabus and improved it over the years, based purely on the input and response from my students and their parents. And it is like this.

1. Why do we have to learn Telugu?

I always ask my new students why they want to learn Telugu. Most of the times I get very honest answers and some of them amaze me too. The following are some of the answers given by them which I would like to share with you.
a. I want to learn Telugu because I want to speak to my grand mother in India.
b. When I go to my cousins in India, I want to be one of them.
c. I want to learn Telugu because I want to learn Telugu.
d. I am Telugu. So I want to learn my language.
e. My wife or husband is Telugu, so I want to learn Telugu.
f. My parents are Telugu, but I never got a chance to learn it. Now I want to.

2. Languages in general:

We learn about world languages in general and Indian languages in particular. We also talk about Dravidian and Aryan languages.

3. History of Telugu:

Explain the origin, brief history, focus on regional jargon and the richness. Compare with Italian and explain why Telugu is called Italian of the East.

4. Differences between Telugu and English:

This is where the students need more clarification. As I teach Telugu in English, it has become essential to know these differences in order to proceed further. For example why there are only a few letters in English and so many in Telugu. That is because Telugu is a phonetic language and English is not. Why Telugu names appear to be longer to Americans. When we write Rama in Telugu, it will have only two letters one representing the sound RA and the other MA. But in English you have to create the sound RA with two letters and MA with two letters, which makes it four letters. That is twice the letters we use in Telugu. These subtle differences should be clearly understood by the students.

Also there are different forms of Telugu words for a single English word. For example, HE in English is only one word for any male person. In Telugu there are six forms of usage for HE- vaadu, veedu, atanu, itanu, aayana, eeyana. Once we clarify the differences, it would be clear to the students. It is the same with SHE, HER, HIM etc.

5. Vocabulary:

We learnt several hundreds of words covering nouns, pronouns, verbs etc. Vocabulary is extended to relatives, vegetables, fruits, food items, household things, colours etc. etc. We covered whatever stuff we come across in our daily life in a broad manner.

6. Sentence Formation:

Again, we learnt the formation of sentences in Telugu, comparing with the formation of sentences in English. That is very necessary and helpful because our students here think only in English.

7. Conversational Tips with English as basis:

How gender effects the formation of the sentence in Telugu, while it doesn’t in English. And explain similar differences.

8. Exercises:

These are done regularly with two individuals making a conversation in Telugu on a given topic. Sometimes team games would be fun too.

9. Identification of Alphabets (Play and Learn Alphabets)

As I said earlier, this is what we enjoy playing games and having a lot of fun.

10. Project work – Come up with all innovative and fun ways to do these

How did we do and how are we doing:

We started with less than ten students and currently we have around thirty students. Our Telugu Cultural Association in Austin, Texas is conducting cultural programs every year for Ugadi. We recognize the successful students with a certificate, handing it over to them by inviting them onto the stage. We even call it a graduating ceremony.

Can we play a positive role in giving the opportunity to learn Telugu to our children?

Sure, we can and we should.

And again the decision to learn Telugu or not is entirely theirs, not ours. We only provide the information and opportunity to learn.

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