Weekend classes, a tutor, or an app? Teaching Hindi or Marathi abroad

Once you decide your child should speak Hindi or Marathi, the next question is what to actually sign up for. Saturday classes at the community centre? An online tutor? One of the apps? All three?

Each of these does something different, and each gets oversold. Here is what they are genuinely good for — including ours.

The short answer

No class, tutor or app produces a speaker on its own. Language comes from hours of use, and almost all of those hours have to happen at home. Everything else — classes, tutors, apps, trips — works by supporting that, which is why the families who succeed are usually not the ones who bought the most.

Do the arithmetic first

This is the part nobody says out loud.

A weekend class is typically an hour or two a week. A child in school abroad hears and uses English for perhaps forty or fifty hours in the same week.

Two hours against fifty is not a fair fight. Those two hours can still matter a great deal — but only if they are feeding something happening the rest of the week. On their own, they mostly produce a child who can recite a rhyme and not hold a conversation.

So the real question is not "which option?" It is "what happens at home on the other six days?"

What each option is actually good at

Weekend community classes

Good at: other children. The single most valuable thing a class provides is the experience of a child seeing people their own age using the language — which quietly destroys the idea that it is only a parent thing.

Won't do: make a speaker, at one or two hours a week. Many classes also push reading and writing early, which can put a child off before they can speak comfortably.

Worth it if: there is a class nearby with children your child's age, and you treat it as a social anchor rather than the teaching.

Online tutors

Good at: structure, and one-to-one speaking practice with an adult who is not you. Useful for older children (six-plus) who need someone to answer to, and for parents who are not fluent themselves.

Won't do: work with a child who is not yet willing to speak. A tutor cannot create motivation, and thirty minutes of a reluctant four-year-old on a video call is an expensive way to teach them that the language is a chore.

Worth it if: your child already speaks a little and you want to push it on — or if you cannot provide fluent input at home.

Apps

Good at: pronunciation, letters, numbers and vocabulary, in short daily doses. An app says each letter and number the same correct way every time, which matters if you are not fully fluent yourself, or if your own Marathi has drifted after fifteen years abroad.

Won't do: produce conversation. No app, ours included, teaches a child to talk to their grandmother. Be suspicious of anything that implies otherwise.

Worth it if: you want daily contact with the language on the days nothing else happens, and a way to get the script right later.

Trips to India

Good at: everything, briefly. A few weeks with cousins who do not speak English does more than a year of classes, because the language becomes necessary rather than virtuous.

Won't do: last, without follow-up. Gains fade within months unless something continues at home.

Home practice

Good at: all of it. This is the engine. Everything else is a support.

Won't do: happen by itself. It needs a rule you actually keep — one place or one time, held consistently.

A realistic stack by age

Ages 2–4. Home only. Talk, sing, name things, video-call family. Add an app for five minutes a day if you want daily letters and numbers in the language. No classes, no tutors, no script.

Ages 4–6. Home, plus a weekend class if one exists with children the same age. Start the script gently if speaking is comfortable — the Varnamala or Barakhadi taught by sound, not as a list to recite.

Ages 6–8. Same, plus a tutor if you want structure or you are not fluent enough to push it further. This is also the age where reading starts to pay off, because a child who can read can get input without you.

How to tell whether it is working

Forget how many letters they can name. Ask these instead:

• Can your child ask for something they want in the language, unprompted?
• Can they hold five minutes of conversation with a grandparent?
• Do they ever choose it — a song, a cartoon, a joke?
• Are they using it with anyone other than you?

A child who can recite the whole Varnamala and cannot ask for water is further behind than one who can ask for water and knows no letters.

Three common mistakes

1. Starting with the script. Reading before speaking is the most common way families lose a child's interest. Speaking first, always.
2. Outsourcing it entirely. Paying for a class and doing nothing at home is the single biggest predictor that it will not work.
3. Stopping when they resist. Resistance around five or six is normal, especially once school friends dominate. Soften the rule, do not drop it.

The families whose children end up speaking are rarely the ones who found the perfect class. They are the ones who kept the language in the house, every day, for years — and used classes, apps and trips to make that easier.

For what the daily layer actually covers, see how the three languages are taught side by side.