Understanding Multilingualism as a Resource in the Classroom

Attitude of teachers towards multilingualism is not always natural. It is not always evaluated in
terms of its advantages. So, attitude towards multilingualism is either positive or negative. Some
view multilingualism as a barrier as its acquisition is considered a burden / problem and for some,
it is an asset. In dominant monolingual countries, two languages are considered as nuisance, three
languages as uneconomic, and many languages as absurd.
There are others who look at bilingualism as “resource” for linguistic, social and cognitive
development. According to the specialists in the field, it must be cultivated as a resource for
enriching the human mind, development of languages, societies and cultures.
Studies have shown that multilingualism, if used properly, is a resource. It is a boon. Speaking
more than one language does not cause any tension to children. There is transfer of learning from
one language to another. There are social benefits also. A sound base in the languages spoken at
home can increase the confidence and self-esteem of children. It deepens relation with the
members of the family. It causes broad relationship with the community. It also increases prospects
for jobs in the future. In the school context, it helps to fight racism by increasing awareness of
diversity. It can promote communication between speakers of diverse languages.

Multilingualism is a special advantage in the classroom context. It allows for social justice. It helps
to attain the goals of equity and equality. The findings of research studies related to
Multilingualism have been summarised below:

 Research states that children who speak more than one language have more meta linguistic
awareness; they are better at problem solving, demonstrate greater creativity, and perform
better in school and express more tolerant attitude towards others compared with
monolingual.
 They have access to knowledge of other cultures. Multilingualism makes communication
between different linguistic and cultural groups easy.
 It contributes for high cognitive development of a child. It leads to a broader world view.
 Capacity of switching codes provides an individual with a remarkable capacity and skill to
adjust to different conditions they are exposed to. It makes their attitude flexible, which
leads to an awareness of the presence of diversity in and around their environment, and not
only that, it also promotes skills to deal with such situations.
 Multilingual speakers will have more defined distribution of functions and uses for the
languages they know.
 Bilingual children perform better, especially in tasks that call for selective attention that
includes inhibition, monitoring, and switching of focus of attention.
 One of the benefits that bilingual students have is related to Meta linguistic awareness. This
refers to the ability to be aware of the language system to focus on the form and function
of words and monitor the process of comprehension.
 Studies also have revealed that bilingual children up to the age of six generally tend to
outperform monolingual children on isolated tasks of Meta linguistic awareness related to
reading.
 Studies have demonstrated that children who were in schools, and also those who were not,
had advantage over their monolingual peers with respect to their cognitive and intellectual
skills. They also performed better on meta-linguistic and meta-cognitive task. Children,
who were schooled, outperformed their monolingual counterparts in educational
achievement.
 Given the fact that bilingual children have two or more languages in their repertoire, they
have the advantage of cross-linguistic transfer. Most studies on cross-linguistic transfer
state that literacy skills gained in one language can transfer to another language. Several
studies on cross-language transfer have particularly indicated that phonological awareness
skills transfer from one language to the other, especially from the first to the second.