Multilingual Education and India

MLE5 Partners  Copyright © 2018   SIL International Every two years the International MLE conference in Bangkok is a highlight for MLE practitioners and scholars. This year the 6th Multilingual Education Conference will be combined with the 13th Language and Development Conference (LDC) and address the important issues of language, human mobility, multilingual education and development. Proposals for individual presentations and panels must be received by 28 February 2019. Below are some of the details.

Copyright © 2018  SIL International Often the writings about MLE are quite theoretical. Recently I came across a great resource that addresses several of the key practical questions. The main one being an issue we have been wrestling with in India for years: How to deal with multiple languages in one classroom? Some key people have written practical responses based on their experience and research.

While browsing in LinkedIn I discovered that this site also contains some interesting articles on multilingual education. The articles tend to be short but can be still of interest. A few relevant ones I will mention below.

© United News of India In the previous blog post I reported on the MultiLila Research Project which is going on in India. On July 12 and 13 the consortium behind this research project conducted a meeting “The languages of education in multilingual India: exploring effects on reading and mathematics” at which important aspects of multilingualism and education were discussed. Under the heading " Starting English early not the best way to learn English well " (A quote from Dhir Jhingran) the United News of India reported on some of the issues discussed.

Illustration: University of Cambridge The project, “Multilingualism and Multiliteracy: Raising learning outcomes in challenging contexts in primary schools across India”, is investigating under which circumstances a high quality multilingual education can be delivered in India where many children currently fail to achieve basic literacy and numeracy levels.