A Work Book For ''Tamil Self Taught'' (Written Tamil- Grammatical Drills and Exercises)

The Tamil department of Calcutta University has been bringing out publications regularly, in the fields of Language teaching, Comparative Studies and Translation of Literatures.

The language teaching aids prepared by the teachers keep in view the areas of difficulty faced by the non-Tamil students and also try to provide them a scope for further exploration in the language, making up for the limitations of the class room.

One of the basic requirments in a second language course is a. Work Book with well designed drills and exercises for practice and assessment.

Dr. P. Bhanumathi has done ample justice to this long felt need by bringing out a work book. This is based on the written Tamil Reader --- 'Tamil self Taught' (Dasgupta Publications, College Street Market, Calcutta) by Dr. (Mrs.) Ranganayaki Mahapatra.

This Reader cum Grammar can be said to cover almost all the aspects of the written Tamil Language necessary for the students' use and so the Tamil certificate and Diploma courses use its graded text for their class room purposes.

Dr. P. Bhanumathi has methodically designed drills and exercises for each lesson in this book begining from the script. The drills are easy to work out, because of the model given for every drill, easy for even self assessment because they are strictly based on the text book. The arragement of the exercises is aimed at guiding the student from the simple to the more complex aspect of the topic, so that the teacher can exactly identify and concentrate on his area of difficulty.

It is a painstaking study and preparation based on years of her experience in teaching Tamil to non Tamils. I congratulate and thank Dr. Bhanumathi for making this available for the students, with such care and meticulousness. This Work Book certainly enhances the pedagogical value of the Reader also. She has also plans to prepare a workbook for the Spoken Tamil Reader.

Calcutta University offers certificate and Diploma courses in Tamil. The teachers of the Tamil Department are handling these courses for the past twenty years. They have all along felt the necessity for bringing out graded language learning materials to help the nonTamil students. With this wiew the following books have been published so far.

1) Tamil - Script and sound --- 1994 2) A Pedagogical Dictionary of (written) Tamils verbs --- 1995. 3) A Multi Lingual Reader (Spoken Tamil-English-Bengali-Hindi) --- 1998 4) 'Tamil Self-Taught '(Written Tamil) -- 1998. A Trilingual Dictionary (Tamil-English-Bengli) is under preparation.

A work book for each of the Readers mentioned earlier (spoken & written) come next in the series.

As the 'Tamil self - Taught' Reader covers the language teaching part of the certificate and Diploma courses, the students' first requirement is a book of drills and exercises for the lessons taught from this Reader.

So a Work Book for this Tamil Reader "Tamil Self-Taught" is published this year.

Every lesson in this Work Book is based on a lesson in 'Tamil Self-Taught' treating a particular grammatical category. So a student is expected to learn the grammatical category well before doing the drills and exercises. In every lesson sufficient varieties of drills and exercises are given to make the learner thorough in the grammatical category. The drills and exercises are arranged in such a way as to test his grasp of the subject matter from a mechanical application to a creative competence and finally independent use of the item taught.

I am greateful to our Vice-Chancellor, pro vice chancellor (Finance) and pro vice chancellor (Academic) for their constant support and financial assistance in bringing out this publication.

I express my cordial thanks to my teacher Prof. (Mrs.) Ranganayaki Mahapatra for giving valuable suggestions from time to time for making this book more useful to the learners.

I am thankful to 'Chitrakaru' 161/2/1 Rash Behari Avenue, Calcutta - 29 for publishing the book for our Department.

**Contents and Sample Pages**