Once you are nearing an intermediate level in your Tibetan listening skills, and are able to understand basic sentences without getting caught up in their grammar, you may want to begin studying primary and secondary school lessons in the Tibetan language. There are many such lessons available in playlists on YouTube, which I have organized and presented below.
The best sources on YouTube for school lessons are the CTA’s Department of Education, Sambhota Schools Society, and various TCV groups. The playlists for each topic are not clearly ordered on the Department of Education’s YouTube channel, so I have ordered them by topic and grade level on this page. They are ordered clearly on the Department of Education’s online lessons webpage, however, so you can consider this webpage to be essentially an English translation of that one.
Note: I have also indexed the CTA’s graded textbooks, which could be studied in conjunction with these video lessons.
Tibetan children typically learn to write in the དབུ་མེད་ u-me script first, so you will encounter this script frequently in these lessons. Also, the grade of a lesson does not necessarily correlate to how difficult it is to understand the teacher. Some teachers have a clearer and slower speech style than others, so you may want to try videos from different channels and for different grades until you find a teacher that you can understand decently well. However, you should focus on understanding the main vocabulary introduced in each lesson, not on understanding everything the teacher says.
Topics:
Social studies
- Grade 6:
- Sherig: Social Science 2024 (Note: I could not find any other videos for other grades of social science.)
Math
The Sambhota Schools and Sherig playlists for math lessons are mostly identical. However, the playlists from Sambhota Schools tend to be more complete. I have posted links for both channels in case one set of videos ever gets taken down.
- Grade 1:
- Grade 2:
- Grade 3:
- Grade 4:
- Grade 5:
- Grade 6:
- Sherig: Class VI Maths
- Note: Sambhota Schools does not have any math classes for grades 6 and up.
- Grade 7:
- Grade 8:
- Grades 9-12:
- Note: Sherig’s maths videos are entirely in English from grade 9 up, so I have not included them here.
Science
- Grade 1:
- Note: Sherig does not seem to have lessons for grade 1 science.
- Grade 2:
- Note: Sherig does not seem to have lessons for grade 2 science.
- Grade 3:
- Grade 4:
- Grade 5:
- Grade 6:
- Sherig: Class VI Science (from this level up, Sherig’s science lessons start being partially in English)
- Grade 7:
- Grade 8:
- Grades 9-12:
- Note: Sherig’s science videos are entirely in English from grade 9 up, so I have not included them here.
Tibetan language
- Intro to Tibetan
- Sambhota Tibetan Language Learning – I (18 videos)
- Sambhota Tibetan Language Tutorial (34 videos)
- Sambhota Tibetan Language Learning – II (10 videos)
- Ghompa1 (STSS) (33 videos)
- Ghompa2 (STSS) (18 videos)
- Note: The organization of these videos is a bit chaotic — they are spread across 3 separate channels, and the playlists are partially but not exactly duplicated. Also, I find the presenter difficult to understand because he speaks very quickly. I do not recommend these videos to people who are new to Tibetan.
- Grade 1:
- Note: Sherig does not have lessons explicitly labeled for Class 01 Tibetan.
- Grade 2:
- Grade 3:
- Grade 4:
- Grade 5:
- Grade 6:
- Grade 7:
- Grade 8:
- Grade 9:
- Grade 10:
- Grade 11:
- Grade 12:
Miscellaneous
This section has miscellaneous playlists that may be of interest. Not all of these are lessons.
- The Tibetan emperors
- Practice of Tibetan tradition & culture
- Children’s content and entertainment:
- Secular Ethics talks:
- Handwriting practice
- Course on Meditation for Teachers
- Meditation for students
- General lessons:
- Traditional Grammar:
- Sambhota: Lekshe Jonwang
- Sherig: Lekshe Jonwang (note: this is an incomplete duplicate of the immediately preceding playlist from Sambhota Tibetan Schools Society.)
- Sambhota: Takjuk