Seal of Biliteracy is awarded to the students who have shown proficiency in their home/heritage language in addition to mastering the English language. The Seal is awarded to the students with a gold seal in their high school diploma at the time of high school graduation. Students receive the seal from their home state.

TALENT students are awarded the Seal of Biliteracy by their county for the Tamil and English languages. Each county has slightly different criteria in determining the award. Some schools offer language credits, but most of the schools award the seal. The Seal of Biliteracy is similar to students taking AP (Advanced Placement) exams for the other foreign languages such as Spanish, French, German etc. The students could be taking these languages in addition to Tamil and achieve ‘Tri Literacy’!

Follow this link to see the approved organizations to provide learning and testing opportunities to achieve the Seal. Although there are organizations offering Tamil oral and writing tests, TALENT have been following TVA (Tamil Nadu Virtual Academy) syllabus and testing for writing and ACTFL OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) exam for oral testing.

For student to request for Seal of Biliteracy, they must have completed the following,

–       English 10 at their High school

–       TVA HG 10 Written and Online exam

–       OPI (Oral Proficiency Interview) with Intermediate High proficiency

And they can only apply for the Seal of Biliteracy in their beginning of their 12th grade and the Seal will be placed in their high school diploma.

In TALENT, a student starts Tamil learning at the age of four with இளந்தளிர் and continues her/his learning to take TVA Intermediate (BM00) in their Seventh grade, TVA Advanced (BA 00) in their Ninth grade, and HG 10 in their Tenth grade. They can take the OPI within weeks after the HG10 exam if they are confident of their spoken Tamil or they can practice for a few months and take the OPI. TALENT has just added the LEVEL 11 exclusively for OPI classes on Friday in the Tamil School.

TALENT highly encourages all students to continue their Tamil language learning and obtain the Seal. This not only adds value to their college application process but also the students are recognized individually at their school awards ceremony. As the research has proven, bilingualism helps students in critical thinking and they are able to articulate well in both languages. Learning our home language helps stronger heritage learning and brings these recognitions as well.