Bilingual Read-Aloud in Indian Classrooms: When the Book and the Child Speak Different Languages

The Linguistic Mismatch at the Heart of Indian Primary Education

Walk into most Indian primary school classrooms and you will find children whose home languages differ from the language of instruction. In a Mumbai government school, children might speak Marathi, Hindi, Konkani, or Gujarati at home and be instructed in Marathi or English. In a Chennai classroom, children might speak Tamil, Telugu, or a minority language and be instructed in Tamil and English. In a tribal school in Jharkhand, children might speak Santali, Ho, or Mundari at home and be taught in Hindi.

This linguistic diversity is one of India's most remarkable features and one of its most underaddressed educational challenges. The National Education Policy 2020 explicitly advocates mother-tongue instruction in the early years of schooling, stating that wherever possible the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5 should be the home language or mother tongue. The principle is sound and well-supported by research. The implementation is considerably more complicated — not because the principle is wrong, but because 'home language' in multilingual India is not always straightforward to identify, and because the material and personnel resources for mother-tongue instruction in minority languages are severely limited.

For read-aloud specifically, the linguistic mismatch creates a specific challenge. The research on shared reading consistently finds that children who are read to in their home language develop stronger vocabulary and comprehension than those read to exclusively in a second language. But if the teacher does not speak the child's home language — or if there are no books in that language — what should be done?

What the Research on Mother-Tongue Literacy Shows

The evidence for mother-tongue literacy instruction — teaching children to read and write first in the language they speak at home — is substantial and has been consistently supported across multiple international studies and UNESCO policy documents.

The UNESCO report Education in a Multilingual World (2003) and the subsequent research reviews on mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) have consistently found that children who receive initial literacy instruction in their home language develop stronger literacy skills, stronger academic achievement, and stronger second-language literacy than children who receive initial instruction in a second language. The research suggests that literacy skills — once developed in any language — transfer to subsequent languages, meaning that investment in mother-tongue literacy in the early years pays dividends in the school language later.

A comprehensive review by Benson (2004) of multilingual education programmes across Africa, Asia, and Latin America found that children who received mother-tongue based instruction consistently outperformed those in second-language instruction environments on measures of reading, writing, and general academic achievement — and that these advantages persisted even when the children transitioned to instruction primarily in a second or national language.

For Indian contexts specifically, the research evidence is more limited — systematic comparative studies of mother-tongue versus second-language instruction across Indian languages are not as available as the international literature. The ASER Centre's Annual Status of Education Reports have consistently documented that children instructed in their home language show stronger foundational literacy outcomes, but these are observational findings rather than controlled studies.

Translanguaging: The Practice That Makes Multilingual Read-Aloud Work

The concept of translanguaging — developed by Welsh education researcher Cen Williams and subsequently theorised more broadly by researchers including Ofelia García and Li Wei — describes the natural practice of multilingual speakers moving fluidly between their languages for different communicative purposes. Rather than treating the languages of a multilingual speaker as separate systems that must be kept apart, translanguaging views them as parts of a single integrated linguistic repertoire.

For classroom read-aloud, translanguaging as a pedagogical practice means that the teacher deliberately uses all the languages available to her and her students — not keeping them artificially separate, but moving between them where it serves comprehension and learning.

In practice, translanguaging read-aloud in a multilingual Indian classroom might look like this: the teacher reads a Hindi text aloud, pausing to explain a difficult word or concept in Marathi (the majority home language of her students), inviting children who speak other home languages to contribute their word for the same concept, and using children's home-language knowledge to build connections to the school-language text. The reading is in Hindi; the understanding is built across multiple languages.

While the formal research base on translanguaging read-aloud in Indian multilingual classrooms is limited, the approach is consistent with the broader translanguaging research literature and with the pedagogical recommendations of multilingual education researchers. It represents a middle path between mother-tongue instruction (which requires resources and materials that may not be available) and monolingual second-language read-aloud (which excludes children's existing linguistic knowledge from the learning process).

Books in Indian Languages: What Exists and the Gaps

The most direct solution to the linguistic mismatch in Indian read-aloud is books in children's home languages. The availability of these books varies enormously by language.

For Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, and other major Indian languages, a reasonable (though still limited) body of children's literature exists. Publishers including Pratham Books (storyweaver.org.in) have produced picture books in over thirty Indian languages, many available for free download under Creative Commons licences. Tulika Publishers, Eklavya, and NBT (National Book Trust) all have Hindi and regional language children's book catalogues.

For India's tribal and minority languages — including Santali, Gondi, Bodo, Mizo, Bhili, and hundreds of others — children's books are extremely scarce. Some community-led documentation projects, NGOs, and government tribal welfare departments have produced limited materials, but coverage is highly uneven. The linguistic diversity of India means that for many children's home languages, virtually no published children's literature exists.

For teachers working in classrooms where children's home languages are inadequately served by published materials, two practical approaches can partially address the gap: oral storytelling in the home language (which does not require books) as a complement to book-based read-aloud in the school language; and community-generated texts — stories told by parents, grandparents, or community members and written down or recorded for classroom use. The Spin A Yarn India initiative at Anhaya Foundation works specifically on the documentation and classroom use of oral traditions across Indian communities, providing one avenue for bringing home-language stories into classrooms even where published books do not exist.

What Teachers Can Do: Practical Strategies for Multilingual Read-Aloud

The following strategies are grounded in the multilingual literacy research and adapted for the specific realities of Indian classrooms.

Read in the school language, explain in the home language. This is the most immediately practical approach for teachers who do not have books in children's home languages. Reading the English or Hindi text aloud, then pausing to explain key vocabulary and concepts in the majority home language of the class, brings children's home language knowledge into the reading experience without requiring bilingual books.

Use bilingual books where they exist. Tulika Publishers' bilingual picture books — presenting text in two Indian languages on the same page — are designed specifically for this purpose. A teacher with a Marathi-English bilingual book can read aloud in both languages, helping children see that stories exist in multiple languages and that their home language is as legitimate as the school language.

Invite children's home-language contributions. After reading a passage, asking 'Does anyone know what this is called in their language?' creates a multilingual moment that validates home languages, builds vocabulary connections across languages, and generates genuine intellectual engagement.

Bring oral stories from home. Asking parents and grandparents to share stories from the family's oral tradition — inviting them into the classroom or sending a simple recording request home — generates read-aloud material in children's home languages that no publisher can provide. These home-language stories, recorded and written down, can become part of the classroom library.

Connect with The Read Aloud Project at https://www.anhayafoundation.com/the-read-aloud-project and with Spin A Yarn India at https://www.anhayafoundation.com/spin-a-yarn for resources and support in building multilingual read-aloud practice in your school.

Sources

UNESCO. (2003). Education in a multilingual world. UNESCO Education Position Paper. Paris: UNESCO. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000129728

Benson, C. (2004). The importance of mother tongue-based schooling for educational quality. Background paper for Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2005. UNESCO. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000142049

García, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Palgrave Macmillan.

Government of India. (2020). National Education Policy 2020. Ministry of Education. Available at: https://www.education.gov.in/nep/about-nep

Pratham Books StoryWeaver: storyweaver.org.in — verified source for multilingual Indian children's books.

Note: The claim about ASER observational findings on home-language instruction is based on the general pattern in ASER reports; specific report citations should be verified at asercentre.org before formal publication. Claims about translanguaging in Indian classrooms are applications of the general translanguaging research literature to the Indian context, not India-specific experimental findings.