Office of Tibet, Washington-DC organizes a virtual panel discussion on ‘Effective Tibetan Language Teaching’ in North American Weekend Tibetan Schools
Washington DC: The Office of Tibet, Washington DC organized a live panel discussion on the “Promotion of Effective Tibetan Language Teaching” in Weekend Tibetan schools in North America on August 1st, 2020. This is an effort to highlight the importance of Tibetan language teaching and learning. The event was live-streamed through Tibet TV’s Facebook page.
The speakers include Dr. Pema Yangchen la, the Kalon of the Central Tibetan Administration’s Department of Education, Gen Mingchung, the TCV school Tibetan resource mentor, and Tenzin Norbu Nangsal la, the editor of North American Tibet Association Tibetan textbooks.
Representative Ngodup Tsering served as a moderator and began the event with a welcome note. Representative Tsering spoke about the aims and objectives of organizing this important event by stressing the importance of learning the Tibetan language. He also briefed the viewers on the weekend Tibetan schools in North America and the current challenges and efforts made by OOT-DC in previous years. The Office of Tibet-DC initiated two workshops in 2018 for more than 80 Tibetan teachers in Minnesota and New York, and in collaboration with DoE, organized the “International Summit of Tibetan Language Teachers” in New York of 2019. Representative Tsering mentioned that the OOT-DC’s plans for more workshops this year could not take off due to the pandemic. He then introduced the three speakers and the topics of their talks.
The Education Kalon, Dr. Pema Yangchen, spoke at length about the importance of the Tibetan language and the responsibility of parents—she emphasized that Tibetan parents should be speaking Tibetan to their children at home. Referring to the Thank you Dalai Lama Year event by the CTA, she remarked that pledging to speak Tibetan could be one way to celebrate the gratitude of His Holiness. Gen Mingchung talked about the learner’s proficiency in four core skills of the language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. He also emphasized more on the importance of speaking Tibetan, for that will ultimately encourage children to show more interest in learning the language. Tenzin Norbu Nangsal explained effective teaching methodologies for teaching as a second language. He also explained how to effectively administer online teaching practices.
The event was followed by a Q&A session where many questions asked by the North America Tibetan association presidents, weekend school principals, and teachers from Toronto, Minnesota, and New York were answered.
-Filed by Office of Tibet, Washington DC
Watch the full event video below:
