Penn Language Center and South Asia Regional Studies
University of Pennsylvania Course: SARS 232-680
Meeting time: 5PM to 7PM, Towne Building 317
Instructor: Dr. Vasu Renganathan
Books and Software required for the course:
1) HyperCard Software for learning Tamil
2) WALTT (Tamil learning Web site)
3) Articles from Tamil news papers, weeklies, novels, and others (provided in the class)
4) A Reference Grammar of Spoken Tamil by Harold F. Schiffman
5) A Basic Tamil Reader and Grammar by Lindholm and Paramasivam
6) Tamil Madhu by Kausalya Hart.
Weekly Syllabus for Intermediate Tamil
(For the months of September, October and November)

First day of class September 9th: Introduction.  Discussion about readings, quizzes and other tests.
 

Week of September 14 to 16:

Reading News paper articles. a) Reading chosen by instructor, b) Reading chosen by students

Practice conversations - discussion of news items in the news paper.

Practice writing: Giving a brief narrative of what is read from the news paper.

Week of September 21 to 23

Reading from Tamil Reader

Practice conversations - discussion of the stories chosen for reading.

Writing practice involving the topics in the stories and use of words and phrases including idiomatic expressions.

Week of September 28 and 30

Discussion on the topics to be used in the Quiz. (working on model quiz)

Homework: writing practice

Quiz on the reading materials on newspaper and short stories.

Week of October 5 and 7

Reading material from novels. a) reading chosen by the instructor and b) reading chosen by the students.

Discussion on the topics in the readings.

Writing practice involving specific sentence patterns, use of words and phrases etc.

Week of October 12 and 14

Use of the form "aavatu" in Tamil. Different use of this form in various speech context. Making students use this form in all possibilities as discussed in the class room. Writing exercise involving the use of "aavatu". Going over some of the readings and identify the forms involving "aavatu" - reinforcing what was done in previous weeks.

Week of October 19 and 21

Use of the form "um" and "enRu" in Tamil. Focusing on different usages, speech contexts, idiomatic expressions involving these forms etc. Making students generate sentences with this form. Homework: Writing a letter or an essay consisting of the various use of "um" and "enRu" in Tamil.

Week of October 26th and 28th

Use of the reading (Radio play - aaRu maNikkuL - Scene 1) on the WEB and do online exercises. Discussion of scene 1 in the class and letting them do scene 2 as part of their home work.

Quiz on the use of "aavatu", "um" and "enRu"; along with the reading materials used from the WEB.

Homework: writing practice

 Week of November 2 to 4

Reinforcing the reading articles and use of various idiomatic expressions, sentence patterns. - Summerizing and preparing the students for Midterm.

Mid term covering the news paper article, short story, novel and the use of grammatical forms "aavatu", "um" and "enRu".

Homework: Writing exercise.

Week of November 9 and 11

Working on "Radio Plays"; "aaRu maNikkuL" - Scene 3 doing one online exercise in class and scene 4 as part of homework.

Radio plays: "enRum muppatu" - scene 1 (in class work)

Online WEB based Homework exercise on scene 2 - "enRum muppatu".

Week of November 16 and 18

Radio plays: "enRum muppatu" - scene 3 (in class work)

Online WEB based Homework exercise on scene 4 - "enRum muppatu".

Discussion of the two radio plays. Preparation for Quiz.

Week of November 23 and 25

Quiz: Radio plays - "aaRu MaNikkuL" and "enRum muppatu" (Home work: writing practice)

Reading the novel "Yuka sandhi" - Discussion of literary variety of the language. (Web based homework exercise.)