LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 23:8 August 2023
ISSN 1930-2940

Editors:
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         T. Deivasigamani, Ph.D.
         Pammi Pavan Kumar, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.

Managing Editor & Publisher: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

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A Historical Overview of Multilingual Education: Global and
Indian Perspectives

Radhika

For a long period of time, languages have been treated through a monolingual lens and have been taught based on certain assumptions that are traced to the ‘Great Reform’ in the 19th century (Cook, 2011). Major ideas from the period include ideas that consider the skill of speaking as basic in comparison to writing, an aversion to explicit discussion of grammar, and views language to be practised as whole rather than as discrete parts. The impact of these assumptions on classroom teaching ebbed and flowed throughout history. However, the assumption of discouraging the use of L1 in the classroom and keeping languages separate has not been widely disputed in the language teaching field. The models on bilingual and multilingual education functioned with this assumption and viewed bilingual education simply as an additive or subtractive process, ignoring the other dimensions of bilinguality.

1.1 First Turn: Monolingualism to Linear Bilingualism

With the ethnic revival of the 1960s, developing bilingual proficiency of children in the classroom came to the forefront and the first turn from monolingualism to linear bilingualism emerged. During this time, Lambert and his associates developed the early immersion bilingual education programme in Canada outlining the positive cognitive advantages of bilingualism. The programme began to fulfill the requirement of English-speaking minority community in St. Lambert. Similarly, in USA, different bilingual education programmes were established keeping in mind the needs of language minorities in the country. This period saw the development of two different programs. Firstly, the maintenance bilingual education programme where the home language of the learners was used along with the common language English, and secondly, the transitional bilingual education program where the home language was used only to help the learner transition from the home language to English. Born out of the collective need of the minority community to educate their children in their own language, these programmes viewed bilingualism as static and assumed a linear relationship between the two languages – additive or subtractive.

From a sociocultural point of view, different languages have different status and valorisation in the community. Depending on the status of the two languages during the acquisition process, the individual develops different forms of bilinguality. When both the languages enjoy an equal status, the languages develop on an equal basis adding to the linguistic and cognitive development of the learner. However, if the second language is valued more in the community, the cognitive development in the first language might suffer and could get deteriorated (Blanc & Hamers, 2000). The former process is termed as additive bilinguality and the later as subtractive bilinguality. Subtractive bilinguality can most often be seen in minority communities whose language is not given space in the society and is not included in the academic setup.

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Radhika
Research Scholar, The English and Foreign Languages University
Lucknow Campus
Ph. No. – 94666-43951
Email: radhikas196@gmail.com
Address: EFLU Hostel, BSNL Training Centre, LDA Colony, Aashiyana
Lucknow – 226012, UP.
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