LANGUAGE IN INDIA

THE IMPACT OF BILINGUALITY ON
PRE-UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN ENGLISH ACHIEVEMENT IN MYSORE, INDIA

Mojtoba Maghsudi, Ph.D. Candidate

1. INTRODUCTION

Bilingualism in education refers to learning of more than one language, as well as, learning through a non-native language. In either case, bilingualism, is not a black and white, or, all or nothing, phenomenon, but, a more or less a phenomenon, in which the students become bilinguals to some degree. There are also situations, as in India, where students come to school as bilinguals. All these situations pose different problems for the educational planners to tackle with. In India, the individual as well as the societal bilingualism is widespread. In this study the term bilingualism is used in the wider sense to include multilingualism.

The terms bilingualism and multilingualism have been used interchangeably in the literature to refer to the knowledge or use of more than one language by an individual or a community. Bilingualism has been treated both as a societal and individual phenomenon in the literature (Romanine 1995). It is not possible to make a neat separation between bilingualism as a societal and individual phenomenon (Adler 1977).

According to Laubeová (2000), the term bilingualism has many different meanings.

On individual level it refers to consecutive or simultaneous learning/acquisition of a second language and involves issues of language competence, performance, ability, proficiency, and achievement.

On a societal level it refers to a complex phenomena of minority and migrants. While it is not possible to separate effects of individual and societal bilingualism, the latter concerns with concepts such as diglossia and domain that are helpful in understanding the different ways in which linguistic resources are organised in multilingual communities, including phenomena such as borrowing, interference, transfer, and code-switching (cited in Wolff, D., 2003).

Diglossia refers to the coexistence of two forms of the same language in a speech community. Often, one form is the literary or prestige dialect, and the other is a common dialect spoken by most of the population. Sociolinguists may also use the term diglossia to denote bilingualism, the speaking of two or more languages by the members of the same community, as, for example, in New York City, where many members of the Hispanic community speak both Spanish and English, switching from one to the other according to the social situation or the needs of the moment.

A large number of additional studies point in the direction of cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism, although caution must be exercised in making strong claims for bilingual advantages because of the difficulties of controlling background variables in some of the studies. What is clear, however, is that the development of home language literacy skills by students entails no negative consequences for their overall academic or cognitive growth, and, in some situations, there may be significant educational benefits for students in additional to the obvious personal benefits of bilingualism.

The emergence of a bilingual population can be expected in any areas in which different language groups reside and interact. When two language groups come into contact, the speakers of either language may learn partially or fully the other language. The result is bilingualism and the individuals or groups involved become bilinguals.

Bilingualism is a perplexing reality in any human being who possesses it. Demographically, bi/multilingualism has been defined as the presence and use of two or more languages in a modern nation or state (Asher & Simpson, 1994).

According to Reich (1986) 47.3% of the world's population speaks more than one language. It is well known that India is one of the largest bi/multilingual countries. The Indian Constitution lists over 18 languages for official/administrative purpose, while more than 1652 mother tongues were reported spoken in India according to the Census of India 1961. Many of these languages and dialects may or may not have scripts but are in active use. The nature of bilingualism is not also the same across the country.

BILINGUAL EDUCATION IN MULTILINGUAL INDIA

Bilingual education in multilingual India is of two types. In the first type, in accordance with the universal principle of education, the mother tongue is used as medium of instruction and other languages are taught as subjects. In the second type, a second language is used as medium of instruction. The effect of these two types of media of instruction on a host of variables has been extensively investigated by scholars and, in terms of the findings, the study by Srivastava (1998) stands out as a significant one. In view of these findings, many scholars advocate mother tongue as the medium of instruction and at the same time the importance of English is also not ignored. But languages have to be used if they have to grow and be functionally efficient.

PRESENT STUDY

In the present study, the relationship between bilinguality of second language learners of pre-university stage and their English knowledge achievement in the language as a medium of instruction is investigated.

Therefore, the following null hypotheses are formulated:

2- Null Hypotheses:

1-The linguality of the subjects has no impact on their performance in general English proficiency and grammatical judgment test.

2-Gender of subjects has no impact on their performance in proficiency and grammatical judgment test.

The significance of the present study is that the need for such studies is obvious in the present Indian context where educationists and linguists are trying hard to evolve a language policy and a scheme for its implementation in school.

There is a large number of bilingual students whose contribution to the promotion of the country is of great importance. Considering this, the researcher endeavors to conduct a research and is hopeful to find useful results, which would shed some light on the issue of bilingualism and help modify the present curriculum.

The present research investigates the effect of home languages such as: Kannada, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Marathi and some others used in Mysore on the learning of English as a medium of instruction. It is hoped the results will be of interest to researchers in the field.

3. METHOD

3.1. Participants

Initially, a total of 100 students in the age range of 16 to 18 at five pre-university colleges (using English as a medium of instruction) of Mysore were asked to participate in this project. These P.U.C. students of St. Philomena's, J.S.S., Chinamava, Mahajana and Vivekanada colleges were selected randomly. Through a background questionnaire, demographic information about the participants was elicited.

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