THE LEARNER DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL
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ISSN: 2433-5401
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The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turnfor Learner Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations
Author: Vasumathi Badrinathan
Title: Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in
Mumbai.
Date of publication online: 2021
Author contact: <vbadrinathan@gmail.com>

Published by the Japan Association for Language Teaching
Learner Development Special Interest Group, Tokyo
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Copyright 2021 each respective author

The APA citation reference for this paper is:
Badrinathan, V. (2021). Multilingualism in the foreign language classroom: The curious
case of French in Mumbai. In A. Barfield, O. Cusen, Y. Imamura, & R. Kelly (Eds.),
The Learner Development Journal Issue 5: Engaging with the Multilingual Turn for Learner
Development: Practices, Issues, Discourses, and Theorisations (pp. 9-24). Tokyo: The Japan
Association for Language Teaching (JALT) Learner Development Special Interest Group.

Articles are published in the Learner Development Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution
License (CC BY), of which CC BY 4.0 is the most recent version. Under this agreement, authors grant users
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is given to the work.

NARRATIVE ACCOUNT:, University of Mumbai, India<badrinathan@gmail.com>
I-

このナラティブ・アカウントは，言語的に異質な都市であるムンバイの外国語教室（フランス語）で，多言語主義がどのように扱われているかを理解しようとするものである。インドでは，外国語学習の分野における多言語は，ほとんど注目されていない。本
研究では，ナラティブ・インクワイアリー手法を用いて，6人のフランス語教師の生きたを探る。このナラティブは，教師自身の言語との関係や言語的アイデンティティを 省的に示す一方で，教室 での多言語アプローチのための限られたスペースを明らかにしている。教師のビリーフ，言語学習プロセス，社会文化的要因が，教室 での言語の理解と使用に影響を与えている。教師の中には，自分の教授法に多言語アプローチを導入することに反感を抱かない一方，消極的で躊躇してしまう者もいる。このことは，多言語 略の認識を強化することが早急に必要であることを指摘しており，ムンバイの外国語教室における言語の豊かさを認知することが求められている。

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Keywords
多言語主義，ナラティブ・インクワイアリー，多言語教育ストラテジー，外国語としてのフランス語，ムンバイ

In this narrative account, I study the narratives of six French language teachers in
Mumbai city. Thereby I hope to gain an insight into the understanding of the concept ofmultilingualism by these teachers, as well as their classroom pedagogy involving French
and the other languages. At the outset I ould like to brie y retrace my o n personal
experiences with languages, with learning French, and with multilingualism. Subsequently,
I shall provide three vignettes relating to language in the educational space in order tocontextualize this study. Further I shall proceed to the teacher narratives and their analysis.
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

I myself speak ith uency more than three Indian languages, in addition to English andFrench. At home in Mumbai, I grew up speaking Tamil. English was always a part of myreading, riting orld, and my education, so in other ords it as a second first language
if I could use that term. I speak, read, and write Hindi and Marathi with ease, the latter being
the regional language of the state of Maharashtra where Mumbai is situated. I also speaka smattering of imperfect Gujarati (language of the neighbouring state Gujarat, commonly
heard in Mumbai) and Malayalam (language of the Southern state of Kerala to which I was
exposed in my early years). I later studied Spanish and Russian at some point of my life. I
began learning French in school, was fascinated by the language, and continued further toac uire my degrees of speciali ation in this language. As I did not learn my first language
Tamil at school, I learnt to read and write the language with external coaching. Besides
teaching, I seriously engage with Indian classical music and on this front, I am constantly
handling a wide lyrical repertoire in several Indian languages. This is the multilingual selfthat I am as an individual and as a language teacher.
Having provided this brief autobiography that contributes to my own understanding ofmultilingualism, I shall now proceed to present the three vignettes I spoke about at the
beginning, as a means to conte tuali e this study. The first is the reminiscence of a teacher
ho taught me language in school, the second speaks of an Indian film and its relevanceto languages and the third of my own personal journey as a teacher towards a broader andempowering perspective of multilingualism.
While at school, I learnt Marathi the local language which was compulsory until a certain
level before exercising an option to choose French. My Marathi teacher enjoyed the language
she taught, spoke often to us in Marathi and explained poetry in simple Marathi that I still
remember and cherish. Marathi being close to Hindi in script and vocabulary, a language
hich isidely spoken in India, it as not di cult for most students in the class tounderstand and draw from their linguistic resources. The teacher would use English and some
Hindi as an intermediary to explain. Somewhere in my mind, these classes had a profoundexperience on me. Decades later as I look back on the Marathi classes, I understand why
they impacted me. Marathi is a regional language, spoken by many in the city of Mumbai,
often heard on the streets, and a common language of a large majority of the domestic
workers or house maids that many families employ. Teaching Marathi through Marathi witha touch of English and Hindi was the right blend to teach a regional language. It was not an
all-English class nor as it an all-Marathi class. The hegemony of English as shatteredand a space, though small, yet po erful, as created for regional Marathi in a non-invasive
way. Although the teaching style was traditional, which was not surprising given that thisas the late 0s, the teacher as avant-garde in the sense as she made all comfortable ith
her explanations, balanced the known languages (English, Hindi) with the target language(Marathi), encouraged the students to think of equivalents in Hindi and make connections
with known cultural symbols. She used her own multilingual background (Marathi, Hindi,
English) to construct supporting knowledge for her multilingual students through theirlanguages. Although I cannot meet this teacher today unfortunately to understand herthought processes, I would certainly conclude that her positive beliefs about the language
she taught underpinned her teaching methodology. She knew how to harness the languages
that the class had, she gently dismantled the binary approach of English and the otherlanguage as well as a purely monolingual approach to teaching and learning Marathi. This
example remains with me as an abiding model of expanding boundaries of language teaching
and creating a space for multilingualism within the class.
The second vignette that I ish to present is from an a ard- inning Indian film, e ton(Masurkar, 201 ). The film is set in rural India, against the backdrop of the Indian national

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Vasumathi Badrinathan

elections. A team of election o cers attempts to set up a polling booth in a violent anddisturbed rural belt, home to forest tribal people. One of the polling o cers is a local girl,who otherwise by profession is a school teacher in the same belt. At one point, she describes
her daily ork and e presses ho di cult it is for her school children to understand the te t
books, as they are in Hindi, whereas the children speak and are familiar with Gondi, the local,
home language. Gondi is the language spoken by the aboriginal peoples or the Gonds from thecentral and south-central regions of India. So, as a teacher familiar ith this language hichis also her own, she explains the content to the school students in Gondi. This anecdote fromthe film reveals t o distinctive elements negligence or disdain to ards the local language
and an institutionalized instructional strategy that is unidimensional. The other element,
the more positive one, and very relevant to this study, is the e ort by the teacher to bringin the familiar language, making learning meaningful for her audience through linguistic
familiarity. Multilingualism is thus present not just in the classroom, in the city, and in myo n life e perience, but is also part of public discourse and modern media o ering di erent
perspectives as the film se uence sho s.
I now move on to discussing my own experience as a teacher of French. When I beganteaching French as a foreign language in Mumbai more than three decades ago, as a young
novice teacher, I as altogether enchanted ith the idea of the foreign tongue the mystery,the e oticism it o ered, and above all, in the depth of my mind, the unpronounced, implicit
norm of the native teacher. This meant, teach in French, speak in French and try to emulate
the native speaker model.
Trying to reach up to this model amongst other things, meant speaking the right way,with the “correct” accent and imitating the famous melodious French rhythm. Equippedwith meagre experience and eager to learn and experiment, as a young teacher, the only
path I could fall upon was my own experience with learning French. And this was throughthe medium of English. Thus, English became the via media for negotiating what could not
be transferred e ectively through French. This as the norm that became the mirror for
my early teaching practices. In juxtaposition with my Indian experience of learning Frenchthrough English, I ould place a French-only pedagogy, hich as prevalent in the courses
taught by French native teachers, and hich I took at the Alliance Fran aise, a French-run
institute for learning French. As I gre and matured as a teacher, the di erence bet een
the two approaches struck me. On the one hand, there was the Indian model that used
English in order to teach French (not forgetting the fact that French, or any foreign language
education is o ered only in institutions of English-medium instruction). On the other, there
was the imported model of teaching French through French. Let us admit that the latter wascertainly more e ective in ac uiring spoken skills and pronunciation, but far less practicalin the mainstream educational context of India. Grappling between the two models, and myincapability to surmount this dilemma, I took the middle path. I taught for around five years
in a bilingual model, French through French when possible but more often than not, Frenchthrough English. Only t o languages e isted in my class French and English.
The multilingual turn for me took place some years later through une pected uarters
firstly my o n class and secondly, a colleague s class. Back then, I confronted problems ofpronunciation with French for the learners. Those gifted for phonetics grabbed the nuancesof French ithout di culty. The challenge as for the rest, ho struggled ith sounds thatwere foreign to them and mispronounced them by grafting Indian phonetic sounds on them,hich is a common phenomenon. hile I tried to find e cient ays of dealing ith thispedagogically, I stumbled upon a student who was faithfully transcribing the pronunciationin his notebook into Tamil, his home language, for better understanding. Finding this tobe a brilliant idea, from that moment onwards I began integrating Indian languages that
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

learners ere familiar ith, to transcribe ba ing French pronunciations. This came ith
fairly satisfactory results. The second occurrence was, when walking past a class, I noticed
and heard a colleague putting up the pronunciation of a French sentence in Hindi on theboard. This as met ith large-scale criticism. The stigma of using one language to teachanother reinforcing the “holier than thou” monolingual norm awoke in me the awarenessof the hegemony of the “one language” model in language classes together with the implicit
ostracizing of the other languages present in situ, thereby making the learner feel inadequate
for possessing those languages, even if indirectly.
The above three scenarios that I have presented bring out the scene of teaching inIndia often a tug-of- ar bet een target language and the other languages in uestion
or bet een language and the sub ect matter, as in the film (Masurkar, 201 ). There is an
inherent paradox here that I would like to highlight. Indians are rarely monolingual. They
know and use at least two languages right from birth if not more. Hence, learning a foreign
language alongside should not be problematic. But the underlying current of high and low
languages along with the inherent sociolinguistic hierarchy based on negative discrimination
around such individual and societal heteroglossia comes into play. Those having nonEnglish education are referred to as “the vernaculars” ot the “vernacs,” or coming from the“vernacular medium” which has taken on a derogatory sense probably since colonial times
in India when the British started categorising major Indian languages as vernacular (seeMishra, 2020). This idely-used terminology is discriminatory and pushes local and regional
languages to the margins. The other issue to contend with is a pedagogical one. Learning
French becomes easier if one has prior knowledge of English, given that both languages sharesome commonalities. In this process, those not comfortable with English are left behind in
the race. They either do not opt to learn a foreign language, and even if they do, they findthemselves at a disadvantage as compared to the English language speakers who advance
faster. This approach also raises issues of inclusivity through the language framework.
This initial lead-in helps foreground the teacher narratives that follo in the second halfof this narrative account. I shall now present my research design before moving on to a brief
exposition of the sociolinguistic fabric of Mumbai city, of the notion of multilingualism itself,
and finally to the teacher narratives themselves.

The Research Design—Looking Closely at Narrative Enquiry
It has been my concern to address the role of languages other than the target language, in thiscase, teaching French in Mumbai. This is inextricably linked to the teacher as a person, his or
her beliefs, their journey with languages, perceptions relating to language, and the relationshipbetween being, negotiating between languages, and teaching one of them. How do they perceive
languages As porous, non- ater-tight, breathing freely, and developing in a healthy language
ecology, or as individually separate entities that do not engage ith each otherI rely upon the narratives of six teachers teaching French in the city of Mumbai tounderstand their perspectives about the language they teach, the languages they and theirstudents know, and the convergent space which is the classroom. These teachers (all ofthem omen purely by coincidence) hose age range is bet een 4 0, speak about their
lived experiences, their relationship with languages, and French language teaching. Someof these teachers were born and raised in Mumbai, and some came into the city later. All ofthem know and use several languages in their daily lives. They have grown up with somelanguages, adopted some others along the way, and share a varied relationship with theselanguages. The teachers ork in diverse settings school, college, university and theirprofessional e perience ranges from 10 toyears.

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I prefer the word discussion rather than interview as it sets the stage for narration;interviews implicitly set a hierarchy and thereby a barrier. What are the languages theteachers kno and use Do they use these languages in the French classo did they learn
Frenchhat determines their instructional practice Can they dra upon the languagesof the learners and their o n to teach French Through these and other uestions, I intend
to explore the language biographies of these teachers, their linguistic repertoires, and theinterrelationship between languages, teaching, knowledge creation through the multilingual
frame, and the multilingual identity. The main frames of discussion include the biographicaldimension of the teachers dealing with multiple languages, their own language learning
tra ectory, and finally their role and e perience ith multilingualism ithin the Frenchlanguage classroom.
In discussing in depth ith these teachers, I hoped to establish a free- o ing chain ofthought where they would speak without inhibitions and without succumbing to the pressureof giving the “right or correct answers.” What I am interested in here is the possibilityof looking closely at teacher narratives and how this impacts their classroom approaches
towards language teaching. In doing so, I wish to establish a “dialogic relation” between
the intervie er and the intervie ee so that the free o of thoughts and ideas is generated
without obstacles and the participants speak willingly and freely of their journeys. I have
known some of these participants for several years, and this personal relationship made iteasy for them to speak ithout inhibitions. All the semi-structured discussions took placeover the telephone due to the pandemic crisis.
In undertaking a narrative en uiry methodology, I ish first to understand the languaged
lives (Ellis, 201 ) of French language teachers. As I said earlier, most Indians use t o ormore languages in their daily lives. Therefore French language teachers also navigate between
multiple languages home languages (for not al ays is ust one spoken at home), languages
at work, languages at the marketplace and so on. The workplace may restrict them to one
language at an o cial level, usually English. o ever, the other languages they deal ith
and the relationship with all of these contributes to a language teacher identity that I hope
to comprehend through the narratives. Before I proceed, I ould like to d ell brie y on thenotion of multilingualism and the sociolinguistic fabric of Mumbai, which frames my study.

The Sociolinguistic Context of Mumbai City
In order to understand this study it is imperative to thro light, albeit brie y, on thesociolinguistic fabric of India and the city of Mumbai. The Indian constitution recognises
22 scheduled languages (o cially recognised in the th schedule of the Indian constitution).
Besides the scheduled languages, as many as 99 non-scheduled languages ith several
dialects under each of these languages are also mentioned in the constitution. Indiansociolinguist Pandit (1972) provides the classic and much quoted example of the Indian
multilingual mosaic.
A Gujarati spice merchant in Bombay uses Kathiawadi (a dialect of Gujarati), with hisfamily, Marathi (the local language) in the vegetable market, Kachi and Konkani in
trading circles, Hindi or Hindustani with the milkman and at the train station, andeven English on formal occasions. Such a person may not be highly educated or wellversed in linguistic rules but knows enough to be able to use the language(s) for his
purposes. (p. 79)
This exemplary situation of a linguistically heterogeneous Mumbai (as Bombay is known
today), holds true even today. It is further complicated by frequent code switching and
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

varieties of Hinglish (mix of Hindi and English in colloquial usage) in formal and informal
discourse that have found a place in the current linguistic reality of the city.
English has a strong presence in India and its educational system, alongside Hindi, both ofhich are recognised as o cial languages, not to mention the regional o cial languages ofthe di erent states in India. English dominates as the language of higher education, although
it still remains a language of urban and metropolitan areas. The hegemony of English in
the hierarchy of languages is undisputed, often creating a secondary position for regional
languages that I have mentioned before.
rban multilingualism has been described as a crisscrossing net ork of many di erent
languages co-e isting in the same space (Siemund et al., 201 , p. 4), and this resonates ith
Mumbai, one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse cities of the world. Vertovec(200 ) refers to a super-diversity (in an European conte t of migration), hich has beenreadily adapted into a “linguistic superdiversity” (Duarte & Gogolin, 2013). In a context suchas Mumbai, the dynamic and complex interplay of languages can lend itself to the concept of asuperdiversity of languages. As the city gre into a financial stronghold and cinema capital of
the country, the diversity of its populace was enriched. This brought in a plethora of languages
and cultures especially palpable in Mumbai s ethnolinguistic enclaves, hich are interesting
spaces in themselves (Chik et al., 201 ). Today this diversity has gro n multifold, adding to its
comple ity of cultures and languages. As King and Carson (201 ) argue, the city space is a testbed” for an exploration and understanding of society and its cultures. In this context, the cityof Mumbai is my space for exploring the multilingualism of its French language teachers.

How Do We Understand Multilingualism Today?
In this section, I ill brie y discuss my understanding of multilingualism throughout thisnarrative account, which is central to its interpretation. The above example given by Pandit(preceding section) in the 1970s already points towards a broad understanding of individual
multilingualism (the European discourse prefers the distinction multilingualism to mean asocietal phenomenon and plurilingualism, referring to an individual s linguistic repertoire).
Pandit s trader is a multilingual individual, possessing many languages at his disposal that hecomfortably uses as per convenience to communicate (Pandit, 1972).
Conventional understanding today of the term multilingualism has changed in recent
years ith the upsurge of a large body of research in this field (Makoni & Pennycook,2012
ei, 201 amongst others). Multilingualism can no longer be understood in the
restricted sense of two monolingualisms meeting in a commonplace, but language itself
is reconceptualised as a multilingual, multimodal and multisensory meaning-making
resource (Otheguy et al., 2019, p. 2 ). In the conte t of language-rich Mumbai as in thelarger context of India, it would be diminishing to consider multilingualism in any otherform. Languages commonly meet in daily social and professional lives. Hybrid sentences suchas the following are very common in Mumbai in daily communication, as well as in public
spaces on signs, for example: “Pets ikde allowed nahi (Marathi-English: Pets are not allo edhere), “chatpata taste ( indi-English: referring to a taste that only an Indian ould kno
precisely tangy and hot at the same time). These e amples present language as a comple
yet spontaneous net ork of communicative and a ective elements. It is this specific natureof Indian multilingualism that is its natural pluralism and that extends continuously throughthe country, hich researchers called organic pluralism (Khubchandani, 199 , p. 9 ) a
non-competitive, interconnected language space ithin a society. Mumbai is perhaps one of
the best examples of this interconnectedness and language synergy in India. We may recall
here the interesting notion of “multilingual franca,” proposed by Makoni and Pennycook

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Vasumathi Badrinathan(2012), and hich is not far removed from Pandit s trader, ho today could still be theemblematic resident of Mumbai city. Following this overview of multilingualism, I seek to see
how this interplay between languages translates into the foreign language classroom.

Through Their Lens: Teacher Narratives
Having now laid out the background, I move to the core of the narrative account, which is
the teacher narratives. In the following subsections, I present a partial reconstruction of the
discussions that I had with the teachers. Subsequently, I shall proceed to an analysis andunderstanding of the narratives. Six French language teachers spoke through their personal
experiences, their beliefs and their relationship with the languages they know and they use in
their social, personal, and professional lives. The discussions with the teachers were mostly inEnglish to facilitate integration into the narrative accounts. However, at times, some teachers
used some French in our discussions.

Growing Up With Languages
In talking ith the teachers, my intention as to understand the di erent languages thatthey negotiated growing up and in their daily lives. I use pseudonyms for the teachers, tokeep close to the genre of the narrative account and to introduce a personal human touch towhat the teachers share about themselves and their narratives. The teachers that participatedin the study are Heena, Hetal, Natasha, Neeti, Rabia, and Sanjeevani. I will provide a briefbackground of these teachers that will help the reader relate better to them.
eena s ( years old) home language is indi, and she has an a nity to ards English. She
migrated to Mumbai after her marriage. etal (4 years old) gre up in Mumbai, and orked
in another profession before eventually becoming a French teacher. Her home language is
Gu arati. atasha (years old) gre up in the state of Gu arat and, like eena, moved to
Mumbai after her marriage. She eventually became a French teacher in a school. Her homelanguages are Gu arati and English. eeti (years old), native to Mumbai, speaks Gu arati athome, and teaches French in a school. Rabia ( 0 years old), also a native of Mumbai, gre up
speaking Hindi and English and feels connected to the Urdu language. She teaches university
students. Sanjeevani (34 years old) works in a school. She is native to Mumbai and her homelanguage is Marathi.
It is obvious that the teachers grew up naturally negotiating multiple languages in their
daily lives. Sanjeevani is very conscious of her Marathi roots and the strong presence ofthe language at home, safeguarded through intergenerational communication and throughliterature in print.
We speak Marathi at home. Hindi of course was always around us and then we watched Hindi
movies! And we picked up colloquial Hindi and regularly used it with our friends. All my education
was in English. Sometimes we speak in English at home. When we visited my grandparents or
my elderly relatives, we only spoke in Marathi and that continues even today. I learnt to read
and write Marathi as we learnt it in school and then at home, there were always Marathi books
around at home, Marathi newspapers and all that you know. (Sanjeevani).
atasha and eena are also eager to point out the di erent languages present at di erent
points in their lives. atasha identifies language shifts due to geographical mobility and ho
she embraced a new language Marathi without any perceived resistance.
When growing up, we always spoke Gujarati at home. At school we learnt English. And withneighbours we spoke in Gujarati. Later, when I moved to Mumbai, I spoke Hindi, and now a
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

smattering of Marathi, which I understand well but do not speak as well. Much later in my life I
learnt French and I continued with it. Between my husband and I we use Gujarati and English.
(Natasha)
We spoke Hindi growing up. And English was always present as it was the medium of learning inschool and then the reading culture at home. Hence I read a lot in English. And French came inlater in school. I pursued it as it fascinated me. (Heena)
However it was the conscious reliving of their language identity through their narratives
that brought this awareness of the importance of languages in their lives to the fore.

The Journey with Learning
Another theme that emerged as I helped teachers relive their language learning experiences,
was the place of French in conjunction with other languages in their personal and linguistic
space. Hetal, for example, recalled learning French after she had already graduated:
I started learning French rather late in my life. I was working in an office before and then got
tired of it and explored French. I continued learning. Once I achieved a good level in the language,
I felt eager to start teaching and got an opportunity to teach in a school. Thus I began teaching.
I like teaching French. I am happy I can speak Gujarati, English, French, Hindi and Marathi. I
find myself connected with languages. Somewhere it’s satisfying to deal with languages, and to
speak it. My family thinks I am obsessed with French, though! (Hetal)
Speaking multiple languages and using them for di erent purposes reveals theinterconnectedness of these languages ithin the socio-professional language ecology ofthese teachers. Hetal uses adjectives such as “connected,” “satisfying,” and “obsessed”
that display her attachment to languages. The choice of language use, though varied, is not
random and is often determined by the context and the usefulness of language as we see inthe quotes below. Heena, while retracing her language learning journey, expresses positive
feelings and takes pride in being a language teacher and the power of expression.
I began learning at school, then in college, and thus began my journey. I speak Hindi at home anda good bit of English. Of course business outside the house is in English or Hindi, and at work I
teach in French and English. I feel proud actually that I can be a language teacher, happy to workwith languages. I do not know how to express it correctly but it makes you feel nice. (Heena)
Rabia “cherishes” the aesthetic dimension that French has given her through its literatureand cultural depth.
I got the opportunity to learn French in school. I loved the language and continued and here I
am with thirty six years of teaching experience behind me, at college, at university. I was always
fond of literature. I have a Masters in English literature and French literature. Going deeper into
the language, I discovered literature in the original, which is not the same thing as reading thetranslated work. I discovered French songs, French paintings and how the language had spreadover so many countries. I cherish my association with English and French, and of course, Hindi
and Urdu which are so close to me on a daily basis. Such closeness to language gives me a certain
dimension to your personality, to your aesthetics. (Rabia).
eeti, urged into re ection by her narrative, clearly en oys her transaction
languages.

ith multiple

Gujarati is my first language. I share a bond with this language. We speak it at home, with myparents. Of course, English is always there, ever-present! I have never really thought about this16

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Vasumathi Badrinathan

in detail, but as you ask me, it is quite interesting, to be dealing with so many languages all in
one go! Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, and of course French. My Marathi is not so good, I manage
though! I do enjoy it. (Neeti).
However, one element that clearly emerges is that the learning process of languages ismarked by the use of English, and of learning language “the correct way,” as the observations
from Heena and Sanjeevani below show.
When I learnt in the seventies, we did not learn how to speak. It was more of written work, stresson writing, on correct grammar of French, the right spelling, the correct verbs etc. Now there is aneed more than ever to communicate. So one needs to modify according to that. (Heena).
We worked so hard on our conjugation of verbs, we had a very sincere approach to learning thelanguage. We did not only crave for the marks. The teacher would explain the grammar welland we worked well on the grammar. That has given me a strong base today. We learnt English,
though that was the medium of instruction. In Marathi and Hindi classes also we used English
though we wrote in Hindi and Marathi. The teachers were very good in explanations. We did a
lot of writing work. The English teacher taught in English, the Marathi and Hindi teachers usedsome Hindi and Marathi in class but explanations were in English, so that everyone could follow
easily. (Sanjeevani).
Both Heena and Sanjeevani touch upon the “correctness” of language learning and theimportance of the ritten competence prevalent in their learning years. eena s narrative
clearly brings out the change that she perceives in society over a period of time andhow language learning needs to adapt to a more communicative approach, In contrast,
Sanjeevani does not explicitly touch upon this element, although her narrative reveals thecompartmentalisation between languages in the learning process.

Teaching French
I now focus on the role of language in the professional space and lives of these teachers. I am
interested in knowing how they handle the multiple languages of the classroom, the teaching
techniques they employ to tap the multilingual resources of their students, the struggles andchallenges they may encounter in this process. I see the same enthusiasm and proximity withlanguages as a motivating factor for these teachers. Natasha is well aware of the challenges
ithin the classroom that make a communicative approach di cult.
I like teaching, communicating with students. I always wanted to be a teacher, to learn not justto read and write but to speak French as well. Therefore when I began teaching, I wanted tocommunicate this ability to the students. But you see inside the classroom it becomes difficult.
There are 45 students of varying levels. And in 50 minutes, we have to complete the task andleave the room. We cannot achieve everything. (Natasha)eeti echoes

atasha s vie s, but makes her best e orts under such circumstances.

How is it possible to teach spoken French fluently to the students? Many are not interested. Manyfind it difficult to understand. This is the challenge and I enjoy it. (Neeti)
Rabia s use of English as a medium for teaching French is the same as eeti s. English,
above all, performs the important function of bringing clarity and understanding in theclassroom.
I like to teach, I like being a teacher (…). I learnt with detailed explanations of grammar. That’s
how my grammar base is strong. One cannot explain all this in French to young thirteen andLearner Development Journal • Volume 1: Issue 5 • December 2021

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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

fourteen year olds. The base has to be reinforced, and they have to perform well in the exams.
Therefore, we have to explain the same through English. (Rabia)
All the teachers deal with a class that is linguistically heterogeneous in terms of languages
present within, with English being the medium of instruction. The presence of several
languages in class often comes through in the teacher narratives as the weakest link in thelearning process in the eyes of the teachers it is a hindrance to the right accent, or thereason for code-s itching. hile there are multiple languages present in the classroom in thestudent repertoire, the teachers do not treat them as a resource or an advantage.
For Neeti, the stress is on “mastering” a language correctly and achieving target language
proficiency.
I constantly encourage my students to speak in French. They do resort to English in the class all
the time or chat in their own languages some of them. I have told them not to do so manytimes, but do they listen? Many are not interested in really mastering the language. They wantto get good scores. They want to tell everyone, they have learnt the language, but how wellthey learn it is another thing altogether. Actually they do not always want to master languages.
What’s the use of improperly learning a language? But nowadays I notice see, how they speak
English? Half the sentence in English and one half in Hindi or using Hindi words in between toconnect sentences. Can you believe it? (Neeti)
Rabia is very conscious of straightening out accents that occur because of other languages
that the learners have in their repertoires.
When I teach, I do use English as a medium of communication. Sometimes, I recognise thelanguage they speak at home in their French accent or even their English accent. I try to correctit, but somewhere it lingers on. It is difficult to get rid of that. I keep telling them don’t speakin Hindi in class, pay attention to your French pronunciation. (Rabia)
Heena brings out the “messy” part of knowing many languages and mixing them up and is
deeply concerned about the lack of desire to learn “perfectly.”
Half-baked learning has become the norm. Even their English is full of mistakes. Their Hindi,
it’s all a mix of many things including English and what not. Whenever they get a chance, they
are chatting with their friends in Hindi, or sometimes Marathi or Gujarati, you know they makefriends with others who speak their language. So no one is concerned about learning correctly,
learning perfectly. (Heena)
San eevani echoes eena s vie s and, although she dra s e amples from other languages,
she does not perceive it as a resource, but rather as the root cause for the imperfections inlearning the target language.
It is important for the students to learn to speak in French at least a little bit. I do try. But I have toresort to English, how will they understand otherwise. Sometimes to correct their pronunciation,
I give examples from Hindi or Marathi. For example parent. They mispronounce it in French.
Then I tell them, it’s like “paapdi” or “chaat”… But the main problem is there is confusion
between the languages they already know and French. So they mix up pronunciations. That’s avery big problem. And when they write also, it’s the same issue. All the languages get mixed up
and it becomes a mess. That’s why in class I tell them, concentrate on your French! (Sanjeevani)
etal is honest in confessing that she has never re ected on integrating the otherlanguages towards teaching French, although she is well aware of the presence of many
languages in class.

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Vasumathi Badrinathan

Yes I do know most of my students speak at least three or four languages I have students who
speak Tamil, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati, Tulu etc at home. Of course, all of them speak English,
Hindi. Sometimes good Marathi also. Sometimes you hear them chat in Hindi in the class andEnglish is omnipresent. I haven’t really tried using their languages to explain or teach French. I
find some time to speak in French though this component does not count for much in the exams.
(Hetal)atasha is the only teacher ho refers to a positive multilingual element her e perience
ith idiomatic e pressions in di erent languages and comparing it ith French e pressions.
Once we were having a discussion in class on idiomatic expressions. And students came up withinteresting expressions in Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati etc the languages they know or speak athome. It was very nice to compare these expressions, some which are common, others which arenot. (Natasha)
Rabia brings in other languages in class but is apologetic about it, and is quick to add thatshe does not want to “make it a habit.” Neeti too has a tone of regret about using anotherlanguage (English) while teaching French and underlines that it is more out of compulsion (tofacilitate understanding) than choice.
Sometimes I write the pronunciation in Hindi on the board, it helps, but I don’t do it often. Only
sometimes. I don’t want to make it a habit. I stick to French and English by and large. But there
are also limitations. I do not have much time in class. (Rabia)
You have to explain the grammar and other difficult concepts in English. Only then everyone
understands. (Neeti)
Others, like Sanjeevani, who do take the help of local languages while teaching seem tohave di culty accepting that this can be a useful and meaningful strategy for target language
proficiency.

Discussion
By virtue of their retrospective character, narratives encourage a re ective thought process.
The narrative extracts that we have looked at in the previous section reveal teacher beliefs at
a personal, social, and professional level.
At a personal level, the teachers I talked with are conscious of their multilingual identity.
They recognise their strong multilingual repertoires, through the pleasant personale periences that they narrate and an evident pro imity ith di erent languages. This allo s
us to understand how they negotiate between languages and view themselves as users ofthese languages. They move e ortlessly bet een their many Indian languages and a foreign
language that is French. In this process, they construct a “hybrid” identity as a foreign
language teacher. By this I refer to a distinct sense of identity of one negotiating between,
and inhabiting languages, and also occupying these many spaces simultaneously one thatis local and rooted in home languages and cultures, the other emerging from the foreign
language and culture and the resultant third space, to borrow from Bhabha (1994), mediatedby the presence and knowledge of the foreign language.
However, I notice that this positive sense of identity does not percolate favourably within
the classroom. The narratives regarding classroom practices and events often embody thenotion of “monolingual superiority.” A language, if we know one, should be well mastered.
The presence of other languages in a person s life even ith varying levels of mastery,though acknowledged, is neither perceived nor understood as a strength. While the teacher
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai

narratives reveal the variety of languages and acknowledge that variety, the celebration of
the multilingualism of learners or even perceiving that as a distinct advantage is absent in
how they articulate their views. In fact, some teachers are even critical of improper use oflanguage, imperfections and code switching. Only one teacher, Natasha, makes an allusion
to a positive inclusion of languages present in the class. She stands out as an example
of someone who has moved beyond the “looking down” upon local languages, and has
succeeded in de-normalising the stigmatising hierarchy. Although she did not outline in her
comments any particular reason for her significantly di erent methodology, I sensed that she
had a humanistic approach concerning languages, especially while referring to her activity
involving other languages as “interesting” and “nice to compare.” This reminds me of
Agnihotri s (2014) observation that language conceptualised as multilinguality is constitutiveof being human (p.
4). One has to first begin by accepting the other, and this means
accepting their language(s) too. This idea helps conceptualise multilingualism di erently.
Natasha, in this case, seems to be naturally sensitive toward the languages present aroundher, that her learners have, and is sensitised to this useful strategy.
It is evident that if teachers are not averse to the languages present in class, they are
struggling with the multilingualism that they are confronted with. Here, three aspects
come to the fore. Firstly, the learning beliefs of teachers, which are fashioned by their own
learning experience, give them a strong sense of mastering a language correctly. In thisscheme of things, one is empowered with knowledge only when one achieves perfection in
it. The second is the inherent hierarchy of languages that is present in society and education,and to which they are not immune. Therefore, mobilising languages other than English in
the French classroom is frowned upon, and thus it is left to the margins or spoken about
with hesitation or apology. This is also the reason for the underlying sense of guilt in using
languages such as indi or Marathi to teach, even though the teachers do find it useful intheir pedagogy. The only language that can disrupt this process is English by virtue of its
implicit superiority. This discriminating hierarchy has been normalised in the lives of theteachers and naturally trickles into their pedagogical practices. The third aspect is a lack of
a areness about multilingualism. The e ibility and movement that e ist bet een languages
at a societal level evaporate when it comes to the language classroom that is described
here. Even if some teachers are not hostile to languages other than English and French,
they are clearly unaware about integrating a multilingual approach in class, and even about
understanding multilingualism through a larger prism.
By and large, the narratives reveal that we are dealing with a notion of multilingualismthat translates as “two or more monolinguals in one body” (Creese & Blackledge, 2010, p.
10 ). Teachers are directed to ards a bilingual approach (English-French/French-English)
largely because of their beliefs being fashioned by their own learning experiences. It is anembodiment of the internalisation of the language hierarchy and the monolingual approachby the teachers. Despite alluding to bilingualism and multilingualism as guidelines,
government policies do not distinguish bet een a uid multilingualism in class and a rigid
framework of educational norms. The National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 in India, atthe very onset, declares that one of its key objectives is “promoting multilingualism andthe power of language in teaching and learning” (Government of India Ministry of Human
Resource Development, p. 5). The policy additionally recognises bilingualism as a focus area
for teaching: “Teachers will be encouraged to use a bilingual approach, including bilingual
teaching-learning materials, ith those students hose home language may be di erent
from the medium of instruction” (p. 13). Moreover, India has long embraced the “threelanguage policy and the EP 2020 further clarifies that at least t o of these languages ill
be native to India besides making space for foreign languages in the educational system.

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Vasumathi Badrinathan

So it is clear that languages enjoy a place of importance in educational policy. However,the challenges start from this point onwards as languages that exist alongside each other,but rarely co-e ist, rarely speak to each other. This additionally contributes to a generalold- orld notion of a largely monolingual multilingualism. Kno ing many languages
imperfectly is neither a disadvantage nor an inconvenience. In fact it should be viewed as
linguistic capital, a strength hich is also dynamically shifting like the imperfect English
spoken by the youth of Mumbai, which one of the teachers explicitly mentions critically.
The hegemonic presence of English is also clear. While it is an important language, there
is no bridge between English and the other languages in these contexts. This “language
isolation” also weakens the multilingualism of both teacher and learner, and does nottranslate into enriching classroom pedagogy for foreign language learning. The two seem
strangely divorced. Use of other languages besides English seems unnecessary, and, even if
productive, remains in the margins. ere is here language and curriculum specific policies,
such as the National Curriculum Framework (National Council of Educational Research andTraining, 2005), and the National Focus Group report on the teaching of Indian languages( ational Focus Group on Teaching of Indian Languages, 200 ), could help. These policies
clearly recognise multilingualism as linked to the identity of the learner, and advocate it as aclassroom strategy by the language teacher. But this has to percolate to the teachers on the
ground, as the multilingual repertoire of both the teacher and the learner are underexploredor practically neglected.

Concluding Remarks
arratives are a fundamentally in ard element for those narrating. o ever, the firsthand accounts help the researcher apprehend the stories (Busch, 2017, p. 52) from an external
perspective. Therefore, I have attempted to make meaning of the narratives and the teacher
tra ectories. pon reading and re-reading of the narrative transcripts, three lines of thinking
were strongly visible: the “one strong language” phenomenon, the sense of guilt in using
other languages to teach the target language (in this case French), and lastly, the lack ofunderstanding of the importance of multilingual repertoires in the teaching environment.
Multilingual teachers enjoy a complex and complete toolset at their disposal, which allows
them to negotiate di erent languages for teaching, and, as Busch (201 ) puts it, createa “space for potentialities” (p. 57). The conventional pedagogy in use can change only
if teachers are made aware of ways of harnessing the languages at their disposal within
their teaching framework. There is also a need for informed recognition of the strengthsof a multilingual teacher and their multilingual lives that merit attention. Merely having
positive beliefs regarding languages does not necessarily lead to adopting a multilingual
pedagogy ( aukas, 201 ). In this regard, I perceive teacher educational programmes thatmake them aware of educational policies advocating multilingualism along with a practicalclass approach to be a solid way of engaging foreign language teachers with multilingualism
and incorporating a multilingual pedagogy. Research shows that there is a strong correlation
bet een teacher self-perceived proficiency and their plurilingual a areness (Ot ino ska,2014). To make a teacher engage better with the languages of the class, she needs to be awareof them.
Coming back to my own personal narrative with which I started this narrative account,
I had always imagined that I was an incomplete foreign language teacher, rather than aperfect multilingual teacher. It took years of experience, reading, and scholarship to makemyself aware of the merits of my multilingual self within the classroom, to fully understandthe potential of multilingualism, and to challenge the phenomenon of the two solitudes
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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in Mumbai(Cummins, 200 ) putting languages into atertight areas that do not interact ith eachother, which is further reinforced through the evaluation patterns in education. There wasalways a recognition of the “right grammar phrase,” the correct conjugation, the correctspelling and so on. This made the notion of the “right and correct version” the only way ofengaging with learning. Moreover, language learning within the institutional framework ishighly compartmentali ed, o ering little or no give-and-take bet een languages. Therefore,
in my opinion, it will take much more than mere teacher education to bring about a change.
While teacher training could certainly provide the needed technical solutions for integrating
a multilingual approach, the problem is located at a wider sociocultural and sociopoliticallevel. Therefore, it ill also take e perience to live and relish one s languaged self, and theunderstanding of one s multilingual identity as a reckoning force. A change of consciousness,and questioning the deeply rooted hierarchy of languages, is called for. Of course, ways toenable this force ithin the teaching-learning frame ork ill have to be created. It ill
also take the same understanding from concerned stakeholders institutions, associations,learners and their families, and decision makers. Finally, it would only be an advantage ifsuch diversity could be harnessed for foreign language teaching and learning.
If a language classroom, as Pennycook (200 ) e plains, is a transcultural contact one(p. 30), then it is incumbent on language teachers to negotiate this richness and reassert
the local in the global (Canagarajah, 2005). This in turn could also stimulate a meaningful
student-oriented and student-led pedagogy, especially in a linguistically heterogeneous classenvironment such as in Mumbai. But in order to do so, teachers ill have to first unpack theirown beliefs concerning multilingualism and confront them.
This study propels me to further expand the boundaries of narratives and encourageteachers to write down their stories with a particular focus on multilingualism. For a future
research study, a focus group discussion on multilingualism wherein these narratives could
be shared and deliberated upon, could probably be an interesting way of engaging witha pedagogy of multilingualism for foreign language teaching. Eventually, this could be astarting point for reconfiguring classroom pedagogies. There is an urgent need to articulate
strategies that allow for L1s to enter L2 spaces. This would help in not just challenging theexisting language hegemony, but also making additive bilingualism or multilingualism a
viable paradigm in the Indian conte t. In other ords, this could help create a non-guilt
multilingual approach in foreign language classrooms where teachers feel empowered tocall upon the languages of the learners. In such an approach, the presence of home and first
languages would serve as a foothold and not as a hindrance as the narratives in this research
reveal. This process could further help to validate learners linguistic identities and linguistic
capital in multilingual settings (Cummins, 2007) such as Mumbai.

Vasumathi Badrinathan is Assistant Professor in the Department of French, University of
Mumbai. Her research interests include multilingualism, technology in language learning,
and learner-teacher autonomy. She co-edited an issue of the ournal Glottopol on
multilingualism in the Asian conte t (201 ). Besides, Vasumathi is a literary translator andtranslates from Tamil and Marathi into French.
Vasumathi Badrinathan est maître de conférences au département de français, Université deMumbai, Inde. Ses principaux domaines de recherche portent sur la didactique du français
langue trang re et incluent l int gration des technologies, le plurilinguisme et l autonomie
de l enseignant-apprenant. Elle a co-coordonn un num ro de Glottopol sur le plurilinguismeen conte tes asiati ues (201 ). Vasumathi est galement traductrice litt raire.

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Vasumathi Badrinathan

Review ProcessThis paper as blind peer-revie ed by members of The Learner Development Journal Review
Network and Journal Steering Group. (Contributors have the option of open or blind review.)

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Multilingualism in the Foreign Language Classroom: The Curious Case of French in MumbaitttInternational Journal of Multilingualism 11
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India as a sociolinguistic areat
Global Englishes and transcultural flows
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Multilingualism and language
diversity in urban areas
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