Using Mother tongue in Multilingual Classroom

 

Today, a student stood before me, his face grim, voice tight with frustration. He was convinced that his peers had been making fun of him in their mother tongue. When I enquired, I found out that it was just a harmless casual chit-chat.  

Though the incident seems to be a normal misunderstanding outwardly, it highlights a silent challenge in our diverse classrooms: the words we don't understand can hurt the most, fostering feelings of exclusion, insecurity, and isolation.

In some instances, it has also been mentioned that some students even indulge in name calling in their mother tongue and others pick up these words without knowing the hurtful context. 

In a linguistically rich and diverse country like UAE, our classrooms are kaleidoscopic with students who grow up hearing, absorbing, and navigating multiple languages every single day. But the flip side is, it sometimes builds an invisible wall of discrimination among the students. When they connect with their own language speaking peers in their mother tongue, it encourages subtle “ingroup–outgroup” divisions, fuels FOMO and misinterpretations, makes others in the class feel excluded and even intimidated.

Using one’s mother tongue is not an offensive crime. It is more a reflex than a deliberate choice. We should encourage students to be aware of the downside as well.

In a multilingual classroom, students are to be encouraged to share the linguistic nuances of their own mother tongue without downplaying others’ to develop global mindset and promote tolerance.  

And it is to be inculcated in children that in the face of any conflict, they should ask before assuming anything, so that they can have a good rapport with their peers.

Ultimately, our goal is to prevent language from becoming a barrier. A multilingual classroom should feel like a shared space, not separate islands.