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Multilingual Education Programs

Certain contexts may require developing multilingual education (MLEd) programs which promote literacy in the first language and provide further access to a language of wider communication and the broader linguistic community.

Multilingualism, rather than monolingualism or even bilingualism, is the reality of most language contexts in our world today. For that reason language program planners and the communities they represent usually want to include educational opportunities that will expand into the national language and perhaps even include an international language.

Multilingual educational programs can provide the means to meet these community and national aspirations. Based on linguistic and pedagogical principles, SIL works with local and national educators to develop transition literacy materials. Transitional materials begin with what a person has already learned through literacy in the mother tongue to gain literacy in the national language. However, if the person has learned to read first in the national or some other language, instructional materials can be designed to begin with that language to transition back into the mother tongue. The person with multilingual literacy skills then has access to print in "both worlds."

Multilingual Education in SIL

Multilingual and bilingual education programs are most often a part of a formal educational system. For that reason, SIL has worked in cooperation with various ministries and departments of education in a variety of countries in program development.

2006 Annual ReportSIL supports multilingual education that allows ethnolinguistic minority communities to participate in broader linguistic circles while functioning fully in the vitality of their own language. The SIL 2006 Update illustrates some of SIL’s involvement in multilingual education through advocacy, resource linking, and capacity development activities. The Update is available in four languages.


Multilingual Education: Mother-tongue-first Education in a Multilingual World

MLE Brochure This trifold brochure outlines four aspects of multilingual education: capacity building, advocacy, resource linking and life-long learning. It is available for download in two paper sizes:


Posters used in the above Multilingual Education publications

See the SIL Terms of Use policy for permissible use of this material.

Resources

See also