Literacy Practices of Tamil Youth in Singapore

Abstract

This study analyses the literacy skills of Singapore youth in Tamil and their experiences with literacy. Despite Tamil
being one of the four official languages in Singapore, the community is documented to be experiencing language shift
(Gopinathan, Lakshmi, & Saravanan, 2019). It is therefore important to understand the factors that influence the
acquisition of literacy practices at various stages of one’s life. To do so the study adopts Barton’s (2007) ecological
framework of analysing reading and writing skills through three stages: home (emergent), school and youth and if
youth literacy practices were influenced by emergent and school literacy practices. Interviews were conducted with
ten Tamil youth between 21-30 years of age from varied backgrounds to understand their language learning
experiences at the three different stages. This study reveals that the literacy practices of youth are influenced by home
support, religious practices and parents’ attitude towards the language more than school practices. The finding of
this study can inform researchers in the field of language maintenance and shift studies to use Barton’s framework of
literacies as an additional methodology.