Multilingual Country Research Articles

Algorithms without frontiers? How language-based algorithmic information disparities for suicide crisis information sustain digital divides over time in 17 countries

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the changes in the global digital divide produced by language-based, algorithmic information disparities in relation to crisis-prevention resources for suicide available through the Google search engine. We used agent-based testing to emulate Google searches performed in 17 countries and in 16 different languages as a direct replication and extension of previous work. We compare data collected in 2017 with data collected in 2021. Our analyses revealed that Google searches in English from within the United States still have the highest likelihood of triggering the display of additional crisis-prevention information prominently shown in addition to the regular search results (i.e., Google’s suicide-prevention result). Searches in Spanish from within the United States are informationally disadvantaged. Display rates are only slightly lower in other English-speaking countries and when searches are performed in English. While information disparities and digital divides narrowed between 2017 and 2021, substantial differences in the display of crisis-prevention resources remain observable within multilingual countries, especially when other languages compete with English. In Bahrain, South Africa, and Sweden, the crisis-prevention information functionality seems unimplemented. Our findings suggest that the use of automated computational methods is both useful to continuously observe the implementation of new algorithmic functionalities and necessary to hold global media institutions accountable for their actions.

Translanguaging in Teaching and Learning Science in Selected Multilingual Elementary Classrooms in the Philippines

ABSTRACT To address the challenges of teaching and learning among multilingual elementary students, the Philippines, a multilingual country with over 180 languages, implemented the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). Studies on the use of mother tongue have reported positive results among students who share a common language. However, in highly multilingual places, mother tongue use poses a challenge to students whose mother tongues differ from the one used in the classrooms. Using non-participatory observations, this study gathered data from a highly multilingual city in the Philippines to determine how teachers and students use languages during the teaching and learning of science. It reveals that the participants used translanguaging in accomplishing communicative functions needed in teaching and learning science. Subsequently, the study proffers the legitimization of translanguaging as it is pedagogically beneficial to both the teachers and the students in multilingual elementary classrooms.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM ANXIETY OF STUDENTS STUDYING ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN KAZAKHSTAN

A significant number of students studying a foreign language have experienced anxiety at some point during their studies. Kazakhstan is a multilingual country, having three official languages (Kazakh, Russian, and English) as compulsory education, and it raises the question of whether students experience any anxiety during the classroom, which significantly impacts their learning process and academic performance. This article aimed to explore the level of foreign language classroom anxiety among the students studying in 3rd and 4th grade in the Department of English Language and Literature and the Department of Translation Studies at Khoja Akhmet Yassawi International Kazakh-Turkish University, Turkestan, Kazakhstan. To test the anxiety level, the study was conducted by conducting an online survey of 314 students (266=female, 48=male) and utilising the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS). The results showed a moderate level of anxiety, suggesting that the students and teachers might have been affected by the cultural aspects of the nation. Another assumption might be the mutual trust between the students and teachers that creates an atmosphere that decreases the anxiety. Furthermore, students were eager to study and looked forward to conversing with native speakers. This data confirms the importance of culture, peer support, and proper study programs, along with the continuous assistance and encouragement from the teachers.

THE TYPES AND FACTORS OF CODE SWITCHING IN “ENGLISH TIME” COURSE

In multilingual country, code switching is common in Indonesia. Code switching is the process of switching from one language into other language. Code switching also often appears in the English as foreign language (EFL) classroom. In learning English as EFL, the students in English course tend to switch their language. This research focuses on analyzing types of code switching and factors that cause the students to switch code by using sociolinguistic approach. The purpose of this study is to find out the types of code switching and factors that cause it in “English Time”. This research is a descriptive qualitative research in which the data are taken by observation method, specifically experimental observation, and involved conversation observation technique. The findings of the research reveal that there are three types of code switching occurred in “English Time”; tag-switching, intra-sentential switching, and inter-sentential switching. Moreover, there are eleven factors that cause the students to switch code; to emphasize a point, easy to convey a message, habitual experience, repetition to clarify a message, intimacy, affected with the addressee, to continue a pronouncement, easy to convey an idea, lack of vocabulary, to show different event, and to give explanation.

Multilingual Turn and the Need of Multilingual Education in the Nepalese Context

This article is related with multilingual turn, multilingual education, and the need of it in the Nepalese context. It has highlighted the shifting of monolingual trend into multilingual education. Multilingual turn is a revolution in the sector of education. Day by day the demands of it are increasing for minority and indigenous languages. Similarly, there is need of multilingual education for people from such groups. Accordingly, the need of multilingual education is the focal point of this article. It has linked multilingual turn with multilingual education in the context of Nepal. Multilingual education is significant for learners’ cognitive and literacy skills. These skills are possible through the implication of this type of education. The language learning through the access of home language, or mother tongue is better and more effective for language learners. In true sense, multilingual education is bridging between learners’ first language and target language. Therefore, linguistic diversity is flourished from the multilingual education. Nepal, a multilingual country, has linguistic diversity requires multilingual education.

Aruba in een week

This article analyzes the role of different languages in the education sector of Aruba. For this purpose, we report some observations and reflections on language use and language policy in this multilingual country. The focus is on our pilot study at the University of Aruba in March 2020, consisting of explorative interviews with key actors in the field of language teaching and education policy. In particular, we analyze statements about ongoing changes with regard to the status and the use of Dutch and Papiamento in the current education system, including the challenges posed by the increasing importance of English. The article also discusses the consequences of ‘standard language ideology’ for language use and language teaching in postcolonial contexts.

Multilinguals in a Monolingual Community: The Influence of Non-linguistic Switching Cost and Awareness of Language Environment on Intentional and Unintentional Language Switch

Multilinguals who live in their native multilingual communities are constantly switching between languages, whereas those who live in monolingual communities need to constrain their code-switching. Malaysia is a multilingual country in which people mix languages on a daily basis, whereas, in Taiwan, Mandarin is predominately used and people are more cautious about code-switching. Therefore, in the current study, we investigated what factors might facilitate Malaysian-Chinese students to reduce the unintentional switching between languages to adapt to the language environment in Taiwan. Malaysian-Chinese who live in Malaysia (MIM) and Taiwan (MIT) were recruited to investigate whether and how non-linguistic code-switching and their awareness of language environment (ALE) influence their intentional and unintentional code-switching experiences. Participants' non-verbal code-switching was measured by a color/shape switching task, whereas ALE and code-switching experiences were measured by questionnaires. The multiple regression analyses of MIT's responses showed that the moderation of non-linguistic switch cost and ALE significantly predicted MIT's unintentional code-switching. Moreover, the simple slope analysis showed that MIT with high executive control have a dynamic unintentional switch in which the higher level of ALE is associated with lower unintentional switch. However, MIT with low executive control have a static unintentional switch, uninfluenced by their level of ALE. These results suggested that multilinguals' executive control along with their awareness of the language environment help them adapt to living in a community with a predominant language.

Interlanguage, Simplified English and Two-Word Structures

English is widely used as a Second Language. Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the 1990s (during my residence) had a population of approximately 4 million people who used slightly more than 800 languages. Many PNG people, through exogamy, have both a mother and a father language; they use Tok Pisin (a major dialect of Neo-Melanesian Creole English) for everyday communication outside their neighbourhood group; and they use English officially and for schooling. They are expert multilinguals. India is a vast, multilingual country with 427 languages, with English used officially and for education, and it is geographically remote from PNG. Both peoples were found to simplify English in similar ways, as an aid to learning the language, specifically by these means: - rule-generalization (disregarding exceptions)- giving a regular semantic basis to the prepositions (in, into, for, on, etc.),which have a basis in regularity with reference to location, direction and time, but are, overall, highly irregular in Standard English (SE)- reducing the system of article determiners (the, a, zero) to the zero option- exploiting the use of two-word verb+preposition and verb+noun combinations like play up, play down, and do banking, do repairs, make_progress.This congruence implies systematic processes and a universal basis, suggesting that other learners could profit from this approach, with the further implication that this type of English is a true interlanguage.

Elementary Teachers’ Attitudes towards Teaching of Tamazight Language in Moroccan Elementary Schools

Morocco is a multilingual country with rich antiquity. Seemingly, the sociolinguistic status quo in Morocco is marked by its diverse tongues, which are in regular contact. Given this assortment and variety in its linguistic landscape, Morocco opted for teaching Tamazight language in some of its elementary schools since 2003. The current paper brings to the forepart the status of Tamazight in Moroccan elementary schools to know the attitudes of Moroccan elementary teachers towards the teaching of Tamazight in Moroccan Elementary Schools. This study is based on structured interviews targeting Moroccan elementary teachers in different districts of Morocco, using content analysis as the primary method to process the data of this study. In undertaking the aim of this study, this paper addresses the following research questions: (i) what is the status of Tamazight in Moroccan schools? (ii) What is the nature of Moroccan teachers’ attitudes towards Tamazight in Moroccan elementary schools? To see whether Moroccan elementary teachers clutch favourable or unfavourable attitudes towards the teaching of Tamazight in Moroccan elementary schools and to what extent those teachers are ready for this change that touches upon the instructive Moroccan context. The findings of this study highlight that Moroccan elementary teachers hold positive and strong attitudes toward Tamazight and its use in Moroccan elementary schools. Participants stated that Tamazight witnessed a period of high-spiritedness and vivacity.

Traces of Spiritual Nationalism in the Selected Poems of Ranu Uniyal and Arundhati Subramaniam

Ranu Uniyal and Arundhati Subramaniam are contemporary Indian English Poets. They are deeply rooted in Indian soil. Their poems are full of Indian ethos and deal with a wide variety of subjects. Spiritual nationalism is one of them. Like Aurobindo Ghosh, for them nationalism means true devotion towards one’s country and its people irrespective of their faith, caste, race and sex. India is a multilingual, multicultural and multireligious country. The conflicts on the basis of religion and culture are inevitable. People are often misguided by conservative and narrow- minded religious leaders and politicians which sometimes results in riots. Both Uniyal and Subramaniam believe that riots in a multicultural country like India are inescapable. India has faced so many invasions and incursions but continued to grow with the passage of time. The biggest strength of India is its spiritualism. It has empowered it during all external and internal assaults. Uniyal and Subramaniam believe that the negative forces which are destroying the peace and harmony of the nation can be defeated by realizing the core values of Indian culture. The objective of this research paper is to compare and explore the national ethos present in their selected poems: “In a City of Riots” by Uniyal and “Home” by Subramaniam

Language perceptions and use among (TV) journalists in multilingual Belgium: how pragmatic realities affect the idealized benchmark of bilingualism

Building on previous research, we investigate how TV reporters at the French- and Dutch-speaking public television networks deal with each other’s language when preparing and producing news reports. Through analysis of 31 semi-structured interviews with journalists from both networks, our study provides both insights into the news production process in a multilingual country, and the individual reporters’ perception of the French- and Dutch-speaking Belgians’ language. By delineating how the idealized benchmark of bilingualism is restrained by pragmatic realities (format, time and language proficiency), we demonstrate how ‘coping strategies’, including collective translation processes, play a role in news production.

DravidianCodeMix: sentiment analysis and offensive language identification dataset for Dravidian languages in code-mixed text

This paper describes the development of a multilingual, manually annotated dataset for three under-resourced Dravidian languages generated from social media comments. The dataset was annotated for sentiment analysis and offensive language identification for a total of more than 60,000 YouTube comments. The dataset consists of around 44,000 comments in Tamil-English, around 7000 comments in Kannada-English, and around 20,000 comments in Malayalam-English. The data was manually annotated by volunteer annotators and has a high inter-annotator agreement in Krippendorff’s alpha. The dataset contains all types of code-mixing phenomena since it comprises user-generated content from a multilingual country. We also present baseline experiments to establish benchmarks on the dataset using machine learning and deep learning methods. The dataset is available on Github and Zenodo.

Minorities and Multilingualism in India: Language in Education

It is impossible to fully handle education in India without taking into account the country's linguistic and cultural context. This main purpose of this paper is to provide background knowledge concerning India's linguistic elements. The term "minorities" is considered in the context of India, and indeed the extra clothes by the Indian Constitution for minority communities is examined. Going to follow that, there is a consideration on language policy in Indian education, as well as an analysis of several college course ideas. Among the relevant areas explored are the variety of languages taught, the language of instruction, and curriculum design for residents of minority languages. The paper will also discuss several linguistic revolutions and their impact upon Indian education. Language is one of the most controversial subjects in Indian education. India, being a democratic, multilingual country and its educators are always discussing whether tongues should be exploited as a teaching medium, specifically for consumers of minority languages with no standard written forms.

Japan as a multicultural and multilingual country

Japan as a multicultural and multilingual country

Организационно-педагогические условия как факторы качества обучения русскому языку в билингвальных сельских школах

In the Russian Federation, bilingualism and multilingualism are becoming an integral part of modern society. The problem of ensuring the availability of quality education, regardless of the place of residence and the language of instruction, is a priority task of the Russian education system. Organizational and pedagogical conditions can become one of the factors for obtaining high-quality education, regardless of the place of residence and language of education of students. The article presents the results of a study aimed at identifying organizational and pedagogical conditions that contribute to improving the quality of Russian language teaching in rural schools that conduct educational activities in their native language. A leading research method is questionnaire survey, which involved respondents from four regions - the Republic of Altai, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Tatarstan, Tuva - in which official languages are Russian and that of the republics. The research material was based on the responses to questionnaires of 368 respondents in three groups: heads of rural educational organizations, Russian language teachers, students in grades 5-9 and their parents. In addition, the following methods were used: observation, conversation, interviews, questionnaires, content analysis, and study of school documentation. Based on the theoretical analysis of sources on the research topic, the concept of “organizational and pedagogical conditions” was specified; the definitions of the types of conditions - motivational, administrative and managerial, personnel, material and technical, control and evaluation - were clarified and formulated. The results of the study allowed identifying these conditions as factors that ensure quality and presenting them in terms of motivation (for what purpose?), organization (what and how?), personnel (who?), logistics (where and by what?) and evaluation and control (how?). The results obtained helped to formulate methodological recommendations for creating organizational and pedagogical conditions as a set of certain pedagogical measures to influence participants in educational relations. These measures ensure the improvement of the quality of education and are aimed at the formation of balanced bilingualism in children in bilingual education. For our multilingual country, state support for Russian and the native languages of its peoples is necessary not only as a factor of sociopolitical development, but also as a guarantee of state security of a multinational state.

Machine Learning Techniques for Sentiment Analysis of Code-Mixed and Switched Indian Social Media Text Corpus - A Comprehensive Review

A comprehensive review of sentiment analysis for code-mixed and switched text corpus of Indian social media using machine learning (ML) approaches, based on recent research studies has been presented in this paper. Code-mixing and switching are linguistic behavior shown by the bilingual/multilingual population, primarily in spoken but also in written communication, especially on social media. Code-mixing involves combining lower linguistic units like words and phrases of a language into the sentences of other language (the base language) and code-switching involves switching to another language, for the length of one sentence or more. In code-mixing and switching, a bilingual person takes one or more words or phrases from one language and introduces them into another language while communicating in that language in spoken or written mode. People nowadays express their views and opinions on several issues on social media. In multilingual countries, people express their views using English as well as their native languages. Several reasons can be attributed to code-mixing. Lack of knowledge in one language on a particular subject, being empathetic, interjection and clarification are some to name. Sentiment analysis of monolingual social media content has been carried out for the last two decades. However, during recent years, Natural Language Processing (NLP) research focus has also shifted towards the exploration of code-mixed data, thereby, making code mixed sentiment analysis an evolving field of research. Systems have been developed using ML techniques to predict the polarity of code-mixed text corpus and to fine tune the existing models to improve their performance.

Learners’ Beliefs and Use of Chavacano as Medium of Instruction

Philippines has been known to be an ethnically diverse country where people speak 181 different major and minor languages. Despite being a multilingual country, the Department of Education (DepEd) through the Republic Act 10533, implemented the Mother Tongue Based, Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) in the primary level of the basic education. In the year 2012, Chavacano language was one of the languages used as medium of instruction in the primary level. Although Zamboanga City has been known to be the “Asia’s Latin City”, it is also known as the “melting pot” of the region because of the presence of different cultures bringing their own native languages. This scenario may give possibility of language mixing especially to children who do not master yet their L1. Thus this study aimed to determine the beliefs and use of the 39 participants about Chavacano (L1) as a Medium of Instruction (MOI) in L2 reading. Furthermore, study solicited the beliefs and use of the 39 participants about Chavacano (L1) as a Medium of Instruction in reading in English (L2). Using Descriptive Coding, the validated guided questions were coded, transcribed and analyzed. Results showed that the respondents were not yet proficient in their L2 and they were not exposed to L2 especially in reading as evidenced by their “sometimes” responses in reading and answering stories in English. There also seemed to be a dominant negative or unfavourable pattern on the students’ views on the role of L1 to L2 particularly in learning how to read. Generally, students did not see yet the connection or association between the languages in reading, more so, the pupils did not see the importance of their L1 in learning their target L2. They did think that Chavacano and English are both difficult languages. Moreover, this supported Ellis (1997) and Cummins (1979) Threshold Hypohesis that learners construct their own interim rules in learning a target language using their L1 knowledge if they believe that this L1 would help them in learning the task at hand or when they have become sufficiently proficient in the L2 for transfer to be possible. This also supported the findings that some problems in the mother tongue instruction were Teachers’ Guide and Learners’ Manual inconsistency, limited number of LM’s, lack of time in the preparation of localized instructional material, limited vocabulary.

Африкаанс и английский языки: языковая политика в системе образования Южной Африки

Purpose of work. The article examines the linguistic situation in modern South Africa after the end of Apartheid. One question is the importance of a concept of mother tongue education in the RSA. What difficulties Afrikaans speakers, mainly the Afrikaners and the Coloureds, have regarding the use of their mother tongue in education and how such challenges can be addressed; does this provide a basis for building a new common cultural, national identity. Materials and methods. The author analyzes several aspects and measures taken by the South African government, by universities and various public organizations in the sphere of education that affect the status and functioning of the Afrikaans language in modern conditions in order to determine the degree of their influence on the linguistic situation in the country. Results. The study showed that the measures taken by the government in the field of language policy, especially with regard to Afrikaans, are clearly at variance with the Constitution, guaranteeing the right to education in the mother tongue, Since the government’s goal is not to support Afrikaans and other language speakers in their desire to preserve linguistic identity, but to impose the English language, the minority language on the multilingual country, which in turn causes discontent among the Afrikaans speakers, that leads to the establishment of civil society organizations and movements for the defense of the mother tongue and the development of secessionist activities among Afrikaners and other linguistic communities among the country. Conclusion. Based on the facts provided, the author concludes that without joint efforts and cohesion of the Afrikaners and the Coloureds, without a shared perception of their linguistic and cultural identity, Afrikaans in the long run will simply become just a home language with further complete and utter oblivion.

Principle-Based Approach for the De-Identification of Code-Mixed Electronic Health Records

Code-mixing is a phenomenon where at least two languages are combined in a hybrid manner in the context of a single conversation. The use of mixed language is widespread in multilingual and multicultural countries and poses significant challenges for the development of automated language processing tools. In Taiwan’s electronic health record (EHR) systems, unstructured EHR texts are usually represented in a mixture of English and Chinese which increases the difficulty for de-identification and synthetization of protected health information (PHI). We explored this problem by applying several state-of-the-art pre-trained mono- and multilingual language models and propose to exploit the principle-based approach (PBA) for the tasks of PHI recognition and resynthesis on a code-mixed EHR corpus annotated with 6 main categories and 25 subcategories of PHIs. A hierarchical principle slot schema is defined in the PBA to encode knowledge of code-mixed PHIs and utilize slots to learn from the training set to assemble principles for recognizing PHI mentions and synthesizing surrogates simultaneously. In addition, a semantic disambiguation process is implemented to disambiguate ambiguous PHI categories in the de-identification process and to dynamically extend the knowledge encoded in PBA during the knowledge augmentation process. The experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve the best micro- and macro-F-scores in comparison to the other mono- and multilingual language models fine-tuned on our code-mixed corpus.

Multilingualism and Indigenous School Education in Brazil: past, present and future challenges

In Brazil, only with the Federal Constitution of 1988 is indigenous peoples guaranteed the right to use their languages and cultures. However, since colonization, many languages have disappeared. The number of speakers of these languages has decreased, and different stages and language policies have promoted the Portuguese language at the expense of indigenous languages. All these factors to different sociolinguistic situations, current challenges in language teaching and learning, as scenarios of monolingualism in an indigenous language, continuum bilingualism, and non-speaking communities of an indigenous language. However, with revitalization, actions occur in the Brazilian context. We resorted to assumptions derived from studies on multilingualism, language policy, and language pedagogies. Based on these assumptions, this article aims to reflect on the moments and movements of indigenous school education and language policies in Brazil’s multilingual and multicultural country. This study is qualitative interpretive research based on a literature review in an integrative approach of theoretical perspectives concerned with the topic.