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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Margreet VogelzangORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
In a highly multilingual country like India, challenges and opportunities arise in education and language policy. Although multilingualism is often associated with developmental advantages, Indian primary school children generally show low learning outcomes, specifically on literacy. Here we examine the influence of mother tongue education and multilingualism on the reading skills and reading comprehension of 1272 Indian primary school children from low SES homes. The children performed the ASER literacy task in both the regional, majority language and in English, which was followed by newly developed reading comprehension questions. The results show that minority language speakers from monolingual households—who do not receive mother tongue education—underperform compared to majority language speakers when reading in the majority language. When reading in English, growing up in a multilingual household improves children's performance. Finally, in sites which have a larger proportion of mother tongue-educated children, children perform better in literacy in the regional language and worse in English. Overall, these results provide insight into the influence of mother tongue education and multilingualism on reading abilities and show that more support is needed for minority language speakers to develop literacy in the majority language, and for all children to develop literacy in English.
Author(s): Vogelzang M, Tsimpli IM, Balasubramanian A, Panda M, Alladi S, Reddy A, Mukhopadhyay L, Treffers-Daller J, Marinis T
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: TESOL Quarterly
Year: 2024
Pages: epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 25/04/2024
Acceptance date: 30/03/2024
Date deposited: 01/05/2024
ISSN (print): 0039-8322
ISSN (electronic): 1545-7249
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Inc.
URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.3326
DOI: 10.1002/tesq.3326
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