Sample Multilingual Activity Type 3

 Survey & Games

Learners prepare a questionnaire and conduct a survey in one language and present the results orally or in writing in another language.
 
Learners are assigned a task to survey their neighbourhood and collect information on specific topics. This they could do in their mother tongue or the language understood by the neighbourhood community and then present the report in English. Alternatively they could collect data from their classmates in English and present a report , for example, in a parents meeting in their mother tongue.
 
Learners play  a game at different levels in different languages Many language games can be played at different levels. Whenever we want learners to play games we need to help them understand the rules of the game and the expected outcome. Many games can be played in the learners' mother tongue first so that they understand the classroom procedure before playing it in English. This is especially useful at the beginner's level where the learners have very little language to understand the instruction. Playing the game in their mother tongue would be better than translating the instructions in mother tongue. When the game is repeated in English, we should start using English for giving the instructions and no translation should be allowed. It is also possible to select a game like 'feel and say' [object in an opaque cover to be felt and identified by the learners] and play it at different levels, the lower levels in English and the higher levels in mother tongue. At the beginner level learners only mention the name of the object and at the later levels they express their degree of certainty and give explanations like, 'I think this cannot be anything other than …. because it has …….'. Learners play this level in their mother tongue and then gradually switch over to English.