Multilingualism In India: A Boom To Cognitive Development In Early Childhood Education

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Introduction

There are many countries in the world which has large number of population communicating in different languages, and coping with the problems of dialects and written languages used in educational curriculums and official contexts. India is one such country which has been subsisting with now for centuries. With the various invasions India now has a large number people who speak in different languages. India is a multilingual country and there are a lot of different 1st languages and 2nd languages used by the students in schools. The main places are taken either by English or Hindi, but there are many more different languages that make their space in the contextual diversity of the country. English has made its successful position due to two main reasons, one, the colonialism that India had to go through and two, being the fact that English has now become the global language of common communication. But, in India the time takes us back to the National Policy of Education 1968 that had termed the 3-language formula to be made mandatory at every level. Although there were many setbacks to this implementation and the main reason being the term of “Making Hindi mandatory in the entire country” was seen as the only reason to have made this recommendation. There are many stories that has been covered by several newspapers in the country to see the stand of different countries on this, but there has been few who gave this an holistic approach and tried to reason ‘Why there must be 3 or more languages learnt?’, that means why is it necessary to have made such a recommendation. Now in this review paper it will be seen that in a country like India where there is the minimum requirement of getting people to just read and write in any official language, why is it a good idea for a child to know more languages. Through this paper it will be reviewed what other educationist think about the introduction and implementation of multilingualism in India. Whether this decision is something that is for the social or political benefits of the country or it can be actually taken to the unit level of individual psychological developments. Through this paper the term multilingualism will be seen at various levels and then termed with the educational setting.

Multilingualism

Language is the most intriguing aspect of human behavior. The function of language is not limited to being the bare minimum means of oral communication, the extent of language moves to clarify the reality of the social world’s construction. Language is a highly organized, systematic means of representing experience, and as such, it assists us to organize all other ways of representing.

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Multilingualism is the simple action of using, and promoting any kinds of usage of multiple languages, this could be either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers. In this world the number of multilingual speakers is way more than the monolingual people. In linguistics, any first language acquisition has a close relation to the learning of the native language. (Arunachalam, 2011) This is the language a child listens from the mother and is also mostly the language that the family uses in conversation. So when one person or a community tends to use more than 2 languages for their day-to-day conversation the term used here is multilingualism.

Multilingualism is found and seen in many different forms, it is seen from the point of view of two different aspects, one being individual and the other in community. Like, the first form is at the individual level of multilingualism, or where a person’s ability to communicate in different languages in different settings is kept in focus. The other form focuses on how languages function in society as a whole, such as playing a specific role in the community. Some countries have more than one official language like for example India, while other languages are used in social contexts. Some nations value language learning and often require students to learn two or more languages.

Language learning happens in two ways. People aren’t born multilingual. Children begin acquiring one or more languages as they go about living their lives. As they grow, one language may become the dominant language. This type of language learning is not really optional but a result of an individual’s circumstances. Another way individuals acquire language is by deciding to learn it on their own. An example of this is when someone takes a foreign language in high school or college.

Whenever studies are based on the language acquisition there is a very important position that is provided to the bilingualism and multilingualism of a child. There have been researchers who have addressed the issues that affect the acquisition of certain languages in the child and that also factorizes on the development of phonetic, lexical, morphosyntactic, pragmatic and discourses in the acquisition of a new language. And of all these the competence in multilingualism id measured by testing their cognitive capabilities and with the increasing order of the Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive development. In multilingualism this also acts as a measure for strong transitions in life, and how social mingling is easy for the children who pick up languages faster.

Lingualism in India

A very huge and different form of ordinary languages is found in India and that is a big reason why India is termed as a sociolinguistic giant. Any researcher whenever in his/her research uses India it is defined a country of huge social, cultural and lingual hotchpotch. The main nervous system of India being a powerful giant is the multilingual power the country experiences. The magnitude of the multilingualism in India has many a times made researchers worry about the ways communication takes place and the maintenance of social cohesion is yet another cloudy description. In case of India multilingualism is a phase which it was born with and globalization is a part it is participating now.

In India the need for multilingual children and later on citizens is under a huge range. The motivation to learn several languages advantages the learning as a whole, once a child is ready to acquire new languages the incentives for more language learning also increases and this acts as boon for enjoying diverse cinemas, newspapers, magazines and travelling around the country. Multilingualism in India is also a very big reason for discrimination and this is what brings in the languages of castes and classes. It is heart rending to see that a Bengali that is spoken in the towns and cities and way too different from the village Bengali and finally creates the problem of multilingualism in classrooms. The necessity of the inclusion begins with the multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural character of this beautiful country. Many researches around the country has revealed that there are effects of multilingualism on the school environment, curriculum and the pedagogic conditions.

When multilingualism is seen in a classroom, the individual concerns matter a lot in India. When looked at from the point of view of the student and the teacher the different languages used matter the development of the student a lot. Research have mentioned a lot of times that the coexistence of multiple languages has created restrictions on the choice of language use inside a classroom, and the use of only one language inside the classroom is not just uneconomic but completely absurd under the conditions of Indian situation. In India a multilingual individual and a multilingual classroom are very different, these are supposed to not coexist in similar situation. A multilingual classroom in India is a hesitant nature and setting. In case of a teacher s/he faces an insurmountable challenge inside the classroom. The formal language acquisition is more important in the Indian context of educational multilingualism and in India the issues of multilingualism is more kind of an affect and not effect. In case of India, language is seen as the main door to understanding the mutual reinforcement of the relationship between the factors like use of language, the elite formation and the growth of education vertically, the provision of equal opportunities and the greater social and economic barrier. The mechanism of multilingualism helping the development of the individual child is way far for the concern of now India because a very big factor of discrimination in this country becomes language. But there are researches which show us that in India also the effect that multilingualism puts in the cognitive development of a child is positive.

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