Sri Devi Mani started offering Mandarin lessons online, after the kindergarten she ran closed during the Covid-19 pandemic. - PHOTO: COURTESY OF MS SRI DEVI MANI
KUALA LUMPUR (The Straits Times): Former bank officer Sri Devi Mani, 41, grew up in Selangor speaking her mother tongue Tamil, and now uses the language to create lessons for her Mandarin tuition classes.
Going by the online moniker Ms Shirley, she uses Tamil words to teach Mandarin, and showcases her fluency on TikTok and Instagram by effortlessly switching between the two languages.
Sri Devi, who is often seen wearing colourful saris in her online videos, said someone from Singapore who saw her social media posts nudged her into offering Mandarin lessons online, after the kindergarten she ran closed during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Reluctant at first, she gave the idea some thought, and slowly came around to it.
She then took her unique brand of language lessons online, posting snippets of herself teaching Tamil words in Mandarin, and vice versa, on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
She said: “I was just teaching Mandarin for free on TikTok. Someone from Singapore who followed my account asked me to start an online class.
“And when I thought about how I had no work in Malaysia, I decided to start giving online classes to teach Mandarin and earn some money.”
Her Instagram and TikTok accounts now have more than 70,000 followers each, while her TikTok videos have amassed millions of views.
Before she opened her own kindergarten, Sri Devi, who has a diploma in early childhood education, started teaching Mandarin in a Malaysian pre-school in 2015, having studied the language for most of her life.
Sri Devi also runs a language centre for children and adult learners in Selangor. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MS SRI DEVI MANI
She said: “I communicate with my family in Tamil and that fluency helps me conduct my Mandarin classes in Tamil, catering to the Tamil-speaking community.”
Her Tamil-speaking parents – her father is a businessman, her mum is a housewife – enrolled her in a Chinese-medium school in Malaysia when she was a child, which meant all her lessons were taught in Mandarin. Ms Sri Devi declined to share further details of her immediate family and personal life.
When she was about 17, she sat the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia exams – the Malaysian equivalent of the GCE O levels – and passed Chinese with flying colours.
She then pursued the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK) course, attaining a Level Six certification, which indicates an advanced level of fluency. HSK is China’s only official test of Chinese language proficiency for non-native speakers.
Her online classes are aimed at Tamil speakers who are keen to learn Mandarin, and help them gain confidence in trying for jobs that require Mandarin-speaking employees, said Ms Sri Devi, who is also fluent in Malay and English.
She still runs a bricks-and-mortar language centre for children and adult learners in Selangor, where she lives. About 150 students, aged between three and 60, from places like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, India and China, are enrolled in her online and in-person lessons.
Mechanical maintenance officer Shanmugam Vigneshwaran, 45, first saw Sri Devi’s posts on her TikTok account, easy_mandarin_tiktok, in 2022, and signed up his two children for online classes at once.
Vigneshwaran, a Singapore permanent resident, decided to make his daughter Lakshanna, 12, and son Ragghavan, 10, learn Mandarin because he felt it would help them find jobs in the future.
Sri Devi Mani has about 150 students aged between three and 60 from places like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, India and China. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MS SRI DEVI MANI
However, they hardly spoke the language, even during their Mandarin tuition lessons in a Singapore centre, which they were previously enrolled in. Now, he finds that his children speak Mandarin with more confidence.
Speaking to The Straits Times, Lakshanna said she found it easier to learn Mandarin from Sri Devi than from her previous tutor because “she explains everything in Tamil first and makes it easy for me to understand better in a language that I am familiar with”.
Students in Sri Devi’s class also practise by speaking to each other in Mandarin in simulated conversations during lessons. Tuition classes for the two siblings in the past focused more on reading and writing, said Vigneshwaran.
The children attend two one-hour sessions a week for private online lessons with Ms Sri Devi, which cost about S$200 in total a month. Mandarin lessons with a private tutor in Singapore for eight one-hour sessions a month can cost about S$400 or more.
Singapore civil servant C. Ponnarasi, 53, signed up for Sri Devi’s online classes for adults over six months ago because she was interested in picking up the language for work, and to converse with her friends and colleagues in Mandarin.
She said: “Mandarin expressions are quite similar to Tamil. I find it is more difficult to understand Mandarin through English translations.
“Now, when I speak Mandarin to a salesperson, for instance, they are surprised by my fluency and connect with me better.” - THE STRAITS TIMES/ANN
