New Delhi: The renowned British Council, which is closely working with the Delhi government to improve the skill set of students in English language in government schools here, believes the language is very important but not at the cost of one’s mother tongue. “English is not a replacement for the mother tongue, but is important (in the context of) the present global situation,” British Council India Director Alan Gemmell told News Agencies.

The British Council which is running “The Language of Education in Multilingual India: Exploring Effects on Reading and Mathematics” project along with the University of Cambridge in Delhi government schools to explore and develop the multilingual learning and cognitive abilities of the students.

“Appropriate use of English in education systems has been part of our global charter. English has one of the highest numbers of loan words from Indian languages and it is only natural that it has become one of India’s languages. It has also become an essential skill in the 21st century, an ‘operating system language’ across the world,” Mr Gemmell told News Agencies.

According to him, this research project, will provide further evidence for their belief in the culture of multilingualism and the role of mother tongue that it plays in early years of education.

The project was first started in the year 2016 to find out whether children who are able to speak a language at home that is a bit different from the medium of instruction in school will face lower learning outcomes compared to those whose home and school language is the same.

The project is also being run in Hyderabad and Patna apart from Delhi.

“One of the reasons for choosing the three cities was that we have our collaborators present in all these cities. In this project, the British Council is the strongest partner,” Ianthi Maria Tsimpli, Professor of English and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge, told News Agencies.

Data collection is being done with about 1,000 child participants and the findings may come out in the year 2020.

“The challenge is children are coming to schools and not being able to adapt language skills. The system has failed in teaching the children how to read, learn and express in language. This makes it difficult for them to use the language in other subjects as well. When a child finds it difficult to read a language, he will find it difficult to learn social science, science and other subjects in that language,” Atishi Marlena, former advisor to Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia, told News Agencies.

She said that the basic of any type of system should be such that a child should become able to acquire the first language, she said, while adding “When he is comfortable with the first language, only then will he be able to learn all other things.”

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