My mom taught me Bengali for a year or so, when we first moved to Florida, in an attempt to wholly retain our Bengali heritage. She was successful in all, but making me and my siblings literate in the language; we spoke it, but cannot read or write in it. Being an avid language learner, I find it sad that I'm not literate in my native tongue, so I'm very excited to (as well as my mom) learn Bengali! It should be challenging, from the looks of it, but I'm confident that I can pick it up easily with a consistent plan seeing as I am already familiar with the language linguistically.
My learning plan involves using the interactive textbook from this website: http://depts.washington.edu/llc/olr/bengali/index.php. The textbook is Epar Opar Bangla and it is extensive, as well as neatly organized when it comes to the script. The textbook divides consonants, vowels, and special signs in different categories making it simpler for me to focus on specific groups of script to learn.
I also have a language partner who will be testing me on my learning progress and helping me piece my former knowledge, along with my new knowledge, together. I will rely on her and the Epar Opar Bangla textbook to learn how to read and write and once I can do that, I will pick up children's books from my mom to read. My goal is to really delve deep into the scripture of Bengali and focus on properly reading and writing it. I will test myself with small texts and then slowly work my way up to harder texts to see if the amount I learned is enough to cover most levels of intensity, if not all.
Once I have that completed, I will buy an intermediate Bengali dictionary in order to refine my vocabulary and attempt to use that in my daily vocab when speaking with my language partner or family members.
I'm fairly certain this method will work because it's sectioned off according to the way I learn the best; which is by doing rather than simply studying.
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