The Emergence of Multilingual Education in India: Issues Related to
Media of Instruction in Border Areas of Telangana Schools
Abstract
My main goal is to focus on the importance of multilingual education
through translanguaging pedagogies in Telangana schools especially in
the areas of minority linguistic communities. India is remarkably
well-known for cultural and linguistic diversity. In such a context, it
is difficult to implement the right medium of instruction in which the
students’ home language is different from the school language. Though
there are many factors involved in delivering quality education,
language plays a significant role in teaching and learning across the
world. The majority of the schools encourage dominant language(s) in
teaching and learning in Indian states. As a result, students of
non-dominant language(s) are totally out of the classroom conversations
and they slowly come to know that their languages are less prestigious
and not used in schools. This leads them to show less interest in
learning. Non-dominant language(s) are pushed out of important domains
and such languages are impoverished with limited functions in India. In
this paper, I discuss the complexity which lies in providing the right
media of instruction to heterogeneous students in Indian classrooms and
also explores the students’ language(s) proficiency levels in two target
languages. Finally, I explain some ways to develop students’ linguistic
and cognitive skills in such a multilingual environment. Two schools
were, for this study, visited to understand the language(s) scenario in
the Telangana region. The data was collected from 15 students who were
in the IX class.Apart from this, we interacted with teachers to get
their opinions on various topics in relation to students’ language
skills as well as multilingual education. Extensive individual
interviews and long conversations were conducted from classroom teachers
in relation to students’ language skills in three languages. The data
was collected through a variety of sources in order to illuminate
multilingual education in Telangana schools. Oral and written samples
were collected from the participants in two languages L2 & L3. In the
process of data collection, each student performed spoken as well as
written tasks. Oral tasks consist of discussions, role-plays, and one
storytelling task based on the provided pictures. Written tasks consist
of reading, listening, and writing (vocabulary, grammar, and sentence
meaning). The result of the collected data reveals the proficiency
levels of students in L2 & L3. The empirical data, interviews, and
conversations revealed the significance of LI in schools at the right
time.