1. 2. Situation in Tallinn Health Care College (THCC)
Multilingual Teaching in ESP – Challenges and Benefits Elle Sõrmus Siret Piirsalu Ene Kotkas Kateriina Rannula Tallinn Health Care College Estonia 2016
1. Introduction
Given the growing size of the multilingual population, establishing fluency in more than one language ensures that students are more skilled and maintain a competitive edge when applying to colleges or for jobs. (Trent, 2013). The complex role of languages used – when, how and to which extent has led to controversy over what is the best way to provide education. One solution is to simply educate students in the dominant language of a given region, although it is logical that mother tongue should not be excluded as it is inherent in students´ everyday life and learning process.
2. Situation in Tallinn Health Care College (THCC)
In Tallinn Health Care College, multilingualism is present as in any college or university in Estonia. Students of Tallinn Health Care College are usually adults who already have some acquaintance with languages and are continuing learning languages in order to communicate a set of professional skills and to perform particular job-related functions. Focusing on the curriculum of nursing, students graduate by defending their final paper and to do that certain strategies in reading, translating and writing are used, very often combining the vocabulary and grammar of three or more languages.
3. Multilingualism
According to the modern approach it is difficult to draw a line separating monolinguals from bilinguals or categorize someone as multilingual. Number of languages is not limited and most people speak more than one language in today´s world. Still, researchers are concerned about the differences between persons who choose to study a second language and those who grow up in communities where several languages are spoken and have used the terms elite, academic, and elective bilinguals for the former and natural, folk, and circumstantial bilinguals for the latter. At the same time, multicompetence does not require perfect fluency in all the languages at one’s command; thus, setting the boundary would probably be a mission impossible. (Cook, 2001).
4. Advantages of Multilingualism
•In Estonian classrooms, where students study for example English or Estonian and whose mother tongue is not always Estonian, students will be forced to speak English or Estonian between themselves and with the teacher. That way they learn the language forms and terminology both from each other and from the teacher who also has the opportunity to indirectly correct their mistakes.
•In case of multilingual students in the classroom doing group-work, they are forced to communicate in the target language to prepare and present their work.
•Students are claimed to develop a greater vocabulary size over age, including that in their L1, see their own culture from a new perspective not available to monoglots, have improved critical thinking abilities, and learn further languages more efficiently, the latter being a highly needed skill in today´s world. (Cook, 2012).
5. Disadvantages of Multilingualism
•Different students speak different languages working at different speeds and can creating divisions in the class. (Poudel, 2010). It is dependent on the teacher´s skills how to solve problems of an individual student and not to leave the rest of the class bored and neglected.
•Students will come across different problems in language and it will require personal attention from the teacher. Explaining a problem of one student to the whole class may be ineffective as they do not necessarily experience the same difficulties.
•Teachers may have difficulties in delivering the content because of poor language of students (teachers translate and shift into another language). Preparing the topic requires more work from the lecturer – more visual aid is needed in the materials; videos, graphs, pictures, etc. should be added.
6. Questionnaire in THCC
To investigate multilingual learning in Tallinn Health Care College, a questionnaire was compiled and sent to a sample consisting of nursing students currently studying Estonian or English or both in Tallinn Health Care College.
•There were 26 respondents.
•The study was conducted in January-February 2015.
•Age of the students was 18–59.
•The respondents were female with Russian as their native language.
•A semi-structured questionnaire consisted of 12 questions with the Likert scale.
7. Conclusions
The results of the questionnaire revealed that in general students´ native language is used during the lectures as well as among themselves. To benefit from the evident situation lecturers and students should try to find and develop strategies to suit the learning outcomes of the subject in the best possible way. One of the ways would be to promote drawing comparisons and analysing language structures or integrating a text in students´ native language into the learning process next to the text in the target language. Multilingual classroom poses a challenge to the lecturer because it requires not only language skills but psychological expertise as well as pedagogical knowledge. The study showed that lecturers were quite flexible about students using their native language, which in turn creates positive predisposition for purposeful usage of multilingual learning. The success in foreign language teaching often depends on the students´ motivation towards it and the interference of learners´ mother tongue affects students´ performance in English or Estonian. Learners´ inner motivation and lecturers´ encouragement are the two factors influencing the learning outcomes in any classroom but are thus vital in a multilingual classroom.
References
Cook, V., Multi-competence, s.l.: homepage.ntlworld.com.
Cook, V. J., Requirements for a multilingual model of language production, s.l.: ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Papers/RequirementsForMultilingualModel.htm.
Ofelia Garcia, L. W., Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education.. New York: palgrave Macmillan.
Poudel, P. P., Teaching English in Multilingual Classrooms of Higher Education: The Present Scenario, s.l.: Journal of NELTA. Vol 15, No.1-2..
Trent, E., Opinion: The benefits of multilingual education, s.l.: s.n.