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Multilingual assessment of language and content knowledge: English alongside different mother-....

Watch the plenary at our New Directions East Asia 2024 conference in Bangkok Multilingual assessment of language and content knowledge: English alongside different mother-tongues in primary schools Professor Ianthi M. Tsimpli - University of Cambridge Multilingualism alongside linguistic diversity is a feature of many countries around the world, most notably the Global South. In many of these contexts, the role of English at all levels of education, from preschool to tertiary, is central and English language proficiency is aspired to by learners, parents and education authorities alike. It is also very often the case that the choice of English as the medium of instruction (EMI) is understood by most stakeholders to imply a unilingual (English-only) lesson delivery, learning process and assessment of both content and language. This perception is, however, fallacious because the reality of language use in EMI or regional medium primary school classrooms in India, for example, is found to be far from unilingual with translanguaging and multilingual practices being pursued instead (Lightfoot et al, 2022). Furthermore, the aspiration towards unilingual EMI delivery has been shown to trigger widespread disadvantages in learning outcomes as well as low learner and teacher confidence and well-being levels (e.g. Tsimpli and Balasubramanian, 2024; Vogelzang et al, 2024). The aim of the presentation is to address the above challenges by advocating for a multilingually-resourced intervention programme that integrates teaching, learning and assessment strategies for improved learning outcomes in primary school children in India attending EMI schools. Different modes of multilingual and multimodal content and language assessment will be presented alongside some findings from the implementation of these assessments in cohorts of primary school children attending government schools in the last two school years. A critical review of the different assessment methods will hopefully open the discussion in terms of challenges, benefits and future directions from a global perspective.