Multilingual Education and India

Reading is hard work, particularly in a language you hardly know!  (Photo Credit: Business Standard) This month there were plenty of articles in the newspaper talking about language and education because of the publication of the Draft National Education Policy (NEP) which stated: “Three-language formula will need to be implemented in its spirit throughout the country, promoting multilingual communicative abilities for a multilingual country.” Of course, there was the controversy around the promotion of Hindi, but there were also plenty of references to the value of multilingual education.

Copyright  SIL-LEAD.org  Many of you might have met Dr. Susan Malone at one of her lectures during visits to India. As she has been training and mentoring teachers, supervisors, trainers and planners all across the globe she generated lots of articles, training modules and other resources that now have been made available for all of us.

The Multilingual Reality: Living with Languages Prof Ajit Mohanty recently published a book on multilingual realities and Dr Dhir Jingran was interviewed for a video on multilingual teaching. Both worth taking note of.

Studies suggest that multilingualism has its benefits. (Getty Images) Rather than dichotomizing the teaching of English against in any local language, professor Neeta Inamdar argues that research shows that a simultaneous approach of multiple languages works better.

MLE5 Partners  Copyright © 2018   SIL International Every two years the International MLE conference in Bangkok is a highlight for MLE practitioners and scholars. This year the 6th Multilingual Education Conference will be combined with the 13th Language and Development Conference (LDC) and address the important issues of language, human mobility, multilingual education and development. Proposals for individual presentations and panels must be received by 28 February 2019. Below are some of the details.

Copyright © 2018  SIL International Often the writings about MLE are quite theoretical. Recently I came across a great resource that addresses several of the key practical questions. The main one being an issue we have been wrestling with in India for years: How to deal with multiple languages in one classroom? Some key people have written practical responses based on their experience and research.

While browsing in LinkedIn I discovered that this site also contains some interesting articles on multilingual education. The articles tend to be short but can be still of interest. A few relevant ones I will mention below.