Abstract
The article gives a brief analytical survey of multilingualism practices, its consequences, its benefits in education and discussions on the appropriate ways towards its achievement in education. Multilingualism refers to speaking more than one language competently. Generally there are both the official and unofficial multilingualism practices. A brief survey on multilingualism practices outside Africa indicates that Canada, Belgium and Switzerland are officially declared multilingual countries. Likewise countries like South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya experience multilingualism in Africa. Multilingualism exhibits both the political and the linguistic consequences. The linguistic consequences include the development of a lingua franca, creation of mixed languages within a linguistic milieu, enhances cross cultural communication strategies and cross cultural communication skills. Benefits of multilingualism practices in education include the creation and appreciation of cultural awareness, adds academic and educational value, enhances creativity, adjustment in society and appreciation of local languages.
Highlights
Humans need an organized medium of communication in any given social set up
When foreign and indigenous languages are included in the multilingualism practices in education, we should always try to avoid imposing these languages to the people
As you impose a lingua franca and or foreign languages to people without developing the indigenous languages this may lead to language death
Summary
Humans need an organized medium of communication in any given social set up. This medium is normally referred to as language. Though it appears difficult to clearly define the term language due to its social complexity, it is generally agreed amongst linguistic intelligentsia that it is a system of symbols designed for the purposes of communication. This system involves a collection of entities organized into a whole and arranged in such a way that they work together to achieve a particular function [1]. As humans use more than one language terminologies such as bilingualism, trilingualism and multilingualism arise
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