Developing Reading Skills of Young Indian Learners in Challenging Contexts: Reflections and Suggestions

Developing reading skills of young Indian learners in challenging contexts: Reflections and suggestions

Lina Mukhopadhyay and Ianthi Maria Tsimpli

FORTELL 2024 Issue No. 49, 24-35

Abstract

The majority of young learners in India study under challenging contexts owing to a combination of factors such as their low socioeconomic status, mismatch between home language and language of instruction, and lack of support for literacy practices at home.  To cater to parental aspirations, and global needs of access to higher education and jobs, government-run schools in Telangana, a state in the south of India, have introduced English as the medium/language of instruction (MoI) from primary grades.  This has created a considerable gap as the MoI is neither available as a home language nor used for wider social communication outside class.  In this challenging context, a series of projects led by the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom in collaboration with the EFL University, Hyderabad have thrown light upon the need to practice multilingual strategies, specifically translanguaging pedagogy, systematically to develop literacy skills.  We propose that translanguaging pedagogy can be used in language classes as a tool for inclusive education.  It can provide social justice because multilingual resources of learners can be used for literacy development, knowledge transaction, and their multilingual identity formation.