This is the second half of a 2-part post about my experience with year 7 students in Selby. I worked in collaboration with nybep to deliver workshops on the following themes – Self-Awareness through Breath-Control and Learning New Languages (the fun way). I have yet to come up with a decent title for either workshop. If you have any suggestions please do leave a comment.
The idea for the language workshop came about after some reflection on my status as a linguistic mongrel. Growing up in India, which has around 26 official languages, it is next to impossible to remain a monoglot. As a child I lived in cities across the length and breadth of the country. Therefore, I was taught – Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Hindi and Sanskrit alongside English. Having spent eight years in Delhi I was exposed to Urdu and Punjabi. I picked up a bit of Japanese as I travelled there for work, and recently I have been tinkering with Dutch. I would like to emphasize that I am fluent only in English and Hindi, for the rest my skill-level varies from beginner/intermediate to just a few words.
