Language Matters | Multilingualism at school is a cornerstone for inclusive, sustainable education for all
- Integrating the diverse language practices of students in the classroom affords a more empowering and equitable learning space
- Multilingual practices occur in diverse educational contexts worldwide, to positive effect
Language matters in education. More precisely, languages matter – not just officially recognised ones, but crucially, the multilingual repertoires and home language practices of students.
One dimension that has been attracting attention for decades is code-switching, or code mixing, the routine switching between or mixing of different language varieties. This pattern of flexible multilingualism is found in many communities in everyday social interactions with family members or friends from different backgrounds, at wet markets, kopitiams and cha chaan tengs, or on social media and in hip hop.
Closely related to, and a development of, this is translanguaging, a concept that emerged in the early 2000s in the field of bilingual education. (The phenomenon has different labels in different subfields and studies, including code-switching.) Its name highlights the view that language is a process of speakers negotiating and producing meaningful output, rather than a fixed set of abstract rules of pronunciation and grammar. The trans- prefix underscores both the fluidity of practices that transcend socially constructed categories of language (going beyond switching between traditionally distinct codes), and the transformative orientation that centres and values multilingual competence.
Code-switching/mixing or translanguaging, however, has for a long time been deemed inappropriate in educational contexts, where it is viewed as a deficit mode of interaction, with students considered incapable of mastering “proper” “academic” language for needing to fill gaps with words or phrases from another variety. This (ill-informed) view tends to be bolstered by language policies informed by pervasive monolingual ideologies.
In fact, multilingual practices occur in diverse educational contexts worldwide, to positive effect. Students – and teachers – have been observed using spontaneous mixes or “blends” of Tamil and English, Afrikaans and English and Xhosa, Cantonese and Mandarin and English, or English and Singlish and Mandarin and Hokkien. Integrating the diverse language practices of students in the classroom affords a more empowering and equitable learning space.
