English Language in Both Monolingual and Multilingual Classes

Today English seems to act as lingua franca in some areas of the world. Studying for English has become a priority for students seeking to secure a good future in this rapidly changing world. There are mainly two kinds of classes for studying language which are the monolingual and multilingual classes. Both classes give students different studying environment. This essay will discuss the benefit and drawbacks of each class. There are a lot of advantages and disadvantages when students participate in monolingual class.

Monolingual class can be defined as a kind of class being able to speak only a single language and most students come from the same place. On the one hand learners will gain benefits if monolingual class can be attended. Frist of all, Albu (2004) believes that one learner will help others because of teachers do not focus on individual problems. For example in the monolingual classes students would make the same mistakes or ask the same questions in their further study.

The teacher only pay close attention one student that they seem to know the problem of most students. Furthermore in the monolingual classes students can more smoothly carry out tasks than students in multilingual classes, because it can be a problem for students using different language for communicate or group discussion. For instance students feel difficult to express their own opinion when students are involved in the complicated group work, because they have not enough vocabulary.

On the other hand there are also several disadvantage of studying in the monolingual classes.

Get quality help now

WriterBelle

Verified

Proficient in: Communication

4.7 (657)

“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

To start with, Albu (2004) state “the fact that student are communicating in their mother tongue can act as an obstacle as they are not using English at all times in the classroom and very rarely outside the class, greatly reducing exposure to, and practice the language”. The fact is that teachers can never prevent students using their mother tongue in the monolingual class.

Secondly, in the monolingual class students whose performance is not good may fell depressed, because they have similar background. For instance a particular grammatical or syntactic phenomenon of English language may not represented in that of student’s native language which study in monolingual class, thus everyone may feel very hard to study or unhappy. However, there are many benefits and drawbacks of attending multilingual classes.

Multilingual class is the act of multiple languages is used by students who study in class and this kind of class can usually be found in speaking English countries. At beginning, multilingual class has many benefits. Firstly, students who can get better communication than in the monolingual class, because students come from different country. They can easily find out the theme to talk from their different culture or other interesting things. Then it can in prove student’s learning motivation when they participate in multilingual class.

As a matter of fact students will be forced to speak English in class or out of class, because their classmates do not speak same language and usually multilingual class establish in speaking English country. Finally students will have a good opportunity to know many kinds of accents in the multilingual class that it is very helpful for communicating different people. The classmates seem to come from all over the world and they can use different accents to speak English.

Nevertheless multilingual class also has a variety of disadvantages. First of all, according to Albu (2004), multilingual class may cause some problems. Learners use different language to work seems to create different efficiencies. Furthermore teacher may study all the students’ first languages. For instance teacher cannot support learners what they may require when students studying a new knowledge. In conclusion, this essay discussed the benefits and drawbacks of monolingual and multilingual classes.

Monolingual class has two advantages, teachers do not focus on individual problems, students can more smoothly carry out tasks and it has two disadvantages, students often speak mother tongue in the class, students may fell depressed. Whereas studying in multilingual class has more benefits than studying in monolingual class. It can provide students more communication, more motivation and know more accents. So a multilingual class is the best learning environment.