Abstract

Author:
Shadab Khan, Tharsni M

Doi: 10.26480/wllcs.01.2024.01.12

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited

Significant research work has depicted the fore deals that using multilingualism as a classroom resource entails. Its educational usage represents a more efficient and effective teaching and learning method that can be incorporated by restricting pedagogy to a single language. UNESCO (1953, 2008, 2016) has regularly promoted L1-based education for early schooling, and it has also been endorsed by the recent Global Education Monitoring Report (2016). However, normalisation of multilingual practices in the ESL/EFL classroom, even after a plethora of arguments favoring their augmentation, is yet to become a realisation in many contexts. The L1 of the learners is either not given importance to, or in contexts where the linguistic repertoire of the learners is acknowledged, it is generally found that neither the learners themselves are aware of the potential advantages and ways of learning an L2 through their L1(s), nor are the teachers adequately trained to help them do so. This paper looks into pertinent research works dedicated to this field and highlights key issues pertaining to using multilingualism as a classroom resource. In an attempt to assess the pertinence of multilingual practices in the classroom context, a questionnaire each was administered to students and teachers from different parts of the country (India). Several questions on multilingualism and its inclusion in the classroom context were posed to the participants. The results show that the majority of them do view multilingualism as an asset and make use of relevant practices in the teaching/learning process. What is then required is that this be translated into ‘metalinguistic awareness’ (Cook, 1995) and effective strategies be suggested to enhance this multilingual inclusion.