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[MLE] Celebrations and Articles on Intl Mother Language Day

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International Mother Language Day celebrations. Source: AP Last week, on the International Mother Language Day, I happened to be in Bangkok and was able to participate in a celebration that the Bangladesh Embassy together with UNESCO had organised. There was good representation from India and certainly not the only place where the topic of language was discussed.

[MLE] Research report on the Use of English in Classrooms

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In India low-cost private English medium schools are growing in popularity and in Ghana an early exit, transitional bilingual education model is promoted. The British Council, together with other institutions, did research at the classroom level in these countries on what this means for the learning of the children. The findings are worth considering with as key question: How to avoid damage to learning when teaching is through English?

[MLE] Book on Multilingual India and the women in the Kumaun in particular

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Grassroot level research is rare. Dr Cynthia Groff lived for months with girls in a hostel in the Kumaun area of Uttarakhand (North India) and researched how the local language is used in different settings. Her PhD research has now resulted in a book: The Ecology of Language in Multilingual India: Voices of Women and Educators in the Himalayan Foothills .

[MLE] Is multilingual education encouraging violence or peace?

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Expert panel in debate.  Photo by Natalie Lovenburg While visiting government officials I have often come across the assumption that multilingual education would foster separation movements and therefore violence. Recently a panel called " Linguistic tolerance as a tool for resiliency in multilingual societies against violence and radicalization " addressed this issue. As this is also relevant for India I post the reference here.

[MLE] Textbooks in 5 tribal languages released

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Last month textbooks in 5 tribal languages and 2 regional languages were released by the government of Jharkhand.   Last month textbooks in 5 tribal languages and 2 regional languages were released by the government of Jharkhand. They have been distributed to around 1,000 schools in 8 districts for initiating the Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Educati

[MLE] Positive Research Results East Timor

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We are often asked for research evidence with regards to the impact of MLE. Even though the below write up is not on a project in India, it seems to have enough similarity to make it relevant to take note of. The Endline survey of the pilot is showing that MLE children do better in particularly reading. In the article Building bridges through multilingual schooling: a mother-tongue pilot in East Timor is showing the way , Kerry Taylor-leech writes with enthusiasm about the classes she observed. “The children love it and I too am enjoying myself immensely.”. About the evaluation report she states: the survey compared children’s performance in EMBLI schools, government schools and Portuguese-immersion schools. Not surprisingly, the results show the benefits of learning in a language a child understands best. EMBLI children showed marked gains compared to the other children, especially in reading

[MLE] Mother Language day - Updates and Resources

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International Mother Language Day 2017 (Image source- en.unesco.org) In the week of the  International Mother Language Day  there are usually extra postings related to language and education. Particularly because this year the theme is: “Towards Sustainable Futures through Multilingual Education”. It is also a good excuse to list a few (new) resources. The postings in the  India Express  and  India Today  are quite general in nature with some quotations from Unesco and background on the history of the day.  WebIndia  reports that activist used the day to demand linguistic parity for the regional languages. Chanpreet Kaur published an interview with Dr Mukti Sanyal on  How the focus on English could be seriously damaging India's future  with an interesting link to self-esteem: “We are losing our mother languages. And with it, we are losing self esteem, different ways of seeing the world, and encouraging the mugging up of the concepts”.  Scroll.in  used the opportunity to dig i