Mehreen Zafar
Ghazi University, Pakistan
The current research paper aims to explore the impact of multilingual pedagogy on semantic knowledge of primary students in Siraiki Landscape. The learning of English semantic notions at low speed or failure to translate English words into Urdu by Siraiki native primary students (monolingual) is the reason of the current study. As Vygotsky argues that learning is primarily social (Recker, 1996) and Hult (2014) identified the worth of learning in a multilingual community. Therefore, a hypothesis about better learning under multilingual pedagogy was formulated. An experimental study was carried out to measure the outcomes of multilingual and monolingual pedagogy on Siraiki native speakers (monolingual). The participants were divided in two groups; students (n=200) exposed to multilingual pedagogy and students (n=200) under monolingual pedagogy. A list of words was selected from English text books at primary level in Southern areas of Pakistan. The teachers’ feedback was resumed through questionnaire. The content analysis, results of pre-test and post-test, and statistical analysis advocated the positive impact of multilingual pedagogy on semantic understanding of Siraiki primary students. Multilingual pedagogy lessened the anxiety of the students towards English and resulted in better and fast learning of the students. Though the present study was limited to the semantic understanding of English words of primary text books but it is a way for further research for bi/multilingual language learning and emotional quotient in different linguistic landscapes of Pakistan.
The above abstract is a part of the article which was accepted at The Fourth Annual International Conference on Languages, Linguistics, Translation and Literature (WWW.TLLL.IR), 1-2 February 2020, Ahwaz.
