A Report: International Conference on Language Education in Multilingual Contexts (EFLU Hyderabad)
It was good to attend the conference on “Language Education in Multilingual Contexts” at the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad. Such a large amount of abstracts that were sent in that they had to set a limit on the number of attendees and presenters. This shows that multilingual education is presently a hot topic. Good! “Translanguaging” was the buzzword of the conference. Prof Ajit Mohanty commented that it seems like a ghost: Everybody talks about it but nobody has seen it. Fortunately, Dr Sangsok Son used a helpful metaphor that made the concept more concrete: the mixing of languages in the classroom is like spinning a top. Overall it was good that after several years there was an India-based language conference again!(see overview)
The English and Foreign Languages University of Hyderabad (EFLU) Department of Materials Development, Testing, and Evaluation organised a two-day, International Conference on Language Education in Multilingual Contexts on 26th and 27th July 2024. The EFLU's unique position and journey since 1958 as an institute for language education had called for papers on multilingualism in education (with 12 focus areas under the broader categories of policy, practice, and pedagogy related to language education).
The two-day conference began with an inaugural talk by multilingual education expert, Prof. Ajit Monhanty who has written many books and articles on MLE and many more accolades. He spoke on the topic, Multilingual Socialization and Language Education in Multilingual Societies. The Keynote speech was delivered by Prof.Kevin Tai from Hong Kong University(HKU), who is in editorial positions of many reputed journals related to language education and specialises in research and translanguaging. He spoke on the topic, Combining Multimodal Conversation Analysis with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis: Researching Translanguaging in Classroom Discourse. The plenary speaker on day 2 was Dr. Nimrat Kaur from Azim Premji Foundation, who spoke on the topic of policy titled, Multilingual Classrooms: From Policy to Practice.
A lively panel discussion was held on the second day of the conference. The panellists included the esteemed Prof. Mohanty mentioned earlier, Dr. Sangsok Son (from SIL Intl), and Prof. Giridhar Rao of Azim Premji University. Prof. Mohanty spoke on Multilingualism, MT(mother tongue), Language Education, and ELT(English language training). Dr. Sangsok presented the topic of Translanguaging and the spinning top analogy along with practical examples from multilingual classrooms. Dr. Giridhar Rao spoke on English and Multilingual Education in India: Policy to Practice. This was followed by a lively question-answer round from an engaging audience.
The conference included around one hundred paper presentations and some poster presentations over the two days organised within the EFLU campus. The presenters were given fifteen minutes to present their paper and five minutes were allotted to questions from the audience. Presentations on policies, technology, and practical field examples on multilingualism in language education made the conference an enriching experience.
Unfortunately, government representatives were absent, which is a missed opportunity. Maybe it is time for a larger nationwide conference that includes policymakers, practitioners, and academics.
We had the opportunity to participate in this conference, me as a participant and Upasana as a presenter. It was an engaging and enriching experience to be a part of it and to meet colleagues promoting and studying the topic of MLE in India.
Regards,
Karsten, in collaboration with Upasana
(Upasana presented a paper on “An analysis of policy development on multilingual education in India”)
Resources:
Photo by Karsten van Riezen (SIL Intl)