Individual Essay

INDIVIDUAL ESSAY : The practice and the benefits of multilingualism in education
INTRO/THESIS
The purpose of this essay is to deepen the multilingualism practices in the education system, as
multilingualism has a great impact on the children and their professional and personal future,
as well as to explain the benefits that multilingualism brings to polyglot people.
SUMMARY
Before starting to develop the multilingualism practices and the benefits that multilingualism
has over each of us, it should be kept in mind that there are two types of multilingualism. The
official one is normally enshrined in the country´s constitution and it is applied over education
and other official engagements such as parliamentary proceedings, international conferences
…Unofficial multilingualism, however, does not appear in a constitutions. It is practiced in
different ethnic group communities when they meet during activities like sports, trade and
commerce …Most of the times, second- language learner´s goal is to be able of
communicating in the selected language as native speakers. This creates an environment of
failure and incompleteness. For this reason, schools should encourage their students to pose
diverse forms of communicating and different competences depending on the language
spoken, leaving no room for failure. We should consider as a useful multilingual practice at
school translanguaging. This term first used by Williams in 2002 means receiving input in one
language and performing a task in another different language (this involves multiple discourse
practices). Another useful practice, the so common phenomenon of codeswitching helps
students to share identities and cultures between each other, because it consists on changing
the code every time you change of language.
It is estimated that over a billion of people speak more than one language fluently. The
increased number is mainly due to regionalism and internationalism (technologies, trade and
commerce). Multilingualism has its own benefits which include communicating with people,
not only in the professional context, but also in the personal one, and being capable of
synthesizing knowledge and clearly express it. For example, when someone knows the official
language of a country and perfectly speaks the indigenous languages in the same country, the
person would be able to synthesize knowledge and express it accordingly. It is therefore
necessary to include indigenous languages in education. Multilingual practices enhance
intellectual flexibility and creativity, and, according to recent studies, it has been proven that
those children who speak more than two languages are more perceptive and intellectually
flexible than those who only speak one language. Dr Elsie Nude, mentioned in one of the
articles (“Benefits of multilingualism in education “) realized that when parents encourage
children to acquire additional languages they are also investing in the child intellectually: they
are superior lateral thinkers, they have a better social adaptability and their cognitive systems
become better. Despite the large number of benefits , there are some negative consequences
of being in a multilingual territory. Due to the intense language contact , the creation of mixed
languages may appear . To explain this we can observe that during verbal communication,
speakers tend to involve a mixture of languages. The last negative aspect on multilingualism is
the creation of diglossia because there is always a language which dominates through another
in countries in which there are two official languages
As John McWorter argues, it is said that for the end of the century from six thousand languages
only a few hundred will continue to be spoken or written. If English happens to be the universal
foreign language, why should we learn foreign languages? Apart from the afore mentioned
benefits he explains more reasons why studying languages is important for our personal
development. The first argument he gives is that a language channels your thoughts. In order
to explain this, he gives a very easy example. When asked to imagine a table speaking, both,
Spanish and French people imagined the voice of that imaginary table as a feminine one.
English people, on the contrary, considered that the imaginary speaking table sounded more
like a man´s voice. It has also been shown that when you speak two or more languages you are
less likely to suffer from dementia and you are a better multitasker .Another and the last
argument supporting the learning of languages is the fact that languages are fun and that there
has never been a better time to study languages than now.
Agreement or disagreement / agreement & disagreement
The author gives most of the times real examples of the idea that he is developing. (“For
example, some members of the Luo Community living around the shores of Lake Victoria in
Kenya have the ability to communicate in the Luhyia language of the Luhyia community
neighbouring them on the Western part of Kenya and viceversa “). This way I can personally
follow his thoughts in a very simple way. For me it is another way of explaining things visually
but instead of using images or graphics he uses the method of daily life examples
In my view, it is also important to include the conclusions that the author reaches. In “Benefits
of multilingualism in Education “, Benard Odoyo Okal, clarifies the reasons why the death of
languages is in constant progress. These reasons include the imposition of languages to people,
language colonialism, foreign language dictatorship… The revival of these languages that are
dying can be done by introducing multilingual practices in education and by the production of
both monolingual and bilingual dictionnaires
The only thing I would improve in the academic article mentioned before is the extensive
number of languages and countries he explains. I think it is to much, and I do not consider this
information so relevant as for example the practices we can consider to do in every school so
as to include multilingualism in it
To conclude, I strongly believe that multilingualism has beneficial consequences for children, as
important studies have already proven .One of the benefits mentioned in “benefits of
multilingualism in education “ is the improvement of the cognitive system , directly related to
the dimensions explained over dyslexia in the article “Multilingualism and dyslexia : Challenges
in Research and Practice “.Finally , I feel that multilingualism practices should be compulsory
activities that schools should carry out for their students
References
● Basic reference:
Okal, B. O. (2014). Benefits of multilingualism in education. Universal Journal of Educational
Research, 2(3), 223-229.
● Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2011). A holistic approach to multilingual education:

Introduction. The Modern Language Journal, 95(3), 339-343.
● https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQRjouwKDlU
● McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., Whiteford, C., & Walker, S. (2016). Multilingualism and
speech-language competence in early childhood: Impact on academic and
social-emotional outcomes at school. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 34, 53-66.

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INDIVIDUAL ESSAY : The practice and the benefits of multilingualism in education

Agreement or disagreement / agreement & disagreement

● Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2011). A holistic approach to multilingual education:

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