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ERIC Number: EJ1461229
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Mar
Pages: 38
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0039-8322
EISSN: EISSN-1545-7249
Available Date: 2024-04-25
Effects of Mother Tongue Education and Multilingualism on Reading Skills in the Regional Language and English in India
Margreet Vogelzang1; Ianthi Maria Tsimpli1; Anusha Balasubramanian1; Minati Panda2; Suvarna Alladi3; Abhigna Reddy3; Lina Mukhopadhyay4; Jeanine Treffers-Daller5; Theodoros Marinis6,7
TESOL Quarterly: A Journal for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages and of Standard English as a Second Dialect, v59 n1 p448-485 2025
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.
Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www-wiley-com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-us
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: India
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Theoretical and Applied Linguistics Section, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages & Linguistics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; 2School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India; 3Department of Neurology, National Institute of Mental health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, India; 4Department of Training and Development, School of English Language Education, The English & Foreign Languages University (EFL-U), Hyderabad, India; 5Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Reading, Reading, UK; 6Department of Linguistics, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany; 7School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, UK; 8School of Psychology, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK