Multilingual Education: Mother-tongue-first Education in a Multilingual World

Multilingual and bilingual education programs are most often a part of a formal educational system. For that reason, SIL has worked in cooperation with various ministries and departments of education in a variety of countries in program development.

SIL supports multilingual education (MLE) as it enables ethnolinguistic minority communities to participate in broader linguistic circles while still functioning fully in the vitality of their own language. SIL has produced a resource, Multilingual Education, which illustrates several important issues in MLE: advocacy, capacity building, writing systems, resource linking and lifelong learning.

This resource is available in: English, 中文FrançaisPortuguêsEspañolTürkçe.

Multilingual Education: Mother-tongue-first Education in a Multilingual World

Trifold brochure - PDF

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English [426 KB] [2.4  MB]
English on A4 [437 KB] [2.4 MB]
Français [460 KB] [2.5 MB]
Português [1.7 MB] [2.4 MB]
Español [421 KB] [2.4 MB]

 

Posters used in the above Multilingual Education publications

See the SIL Terms of Use policy for permissible use of this material.

  • Multilingual Education Bridge: visually demonstrates methods of bridging between languages.
  • MLE Components: shows the components of sustainable Multilingual Education Programs in chart form.

SIL International 2006 Update on Multilingual Education

SIL celebrates the growing momentum in multilingual education (MLE) during 2006 for the world’s ethnolinguistic minority communities. This 2006 Update illustrates some of SIL’s involvement in MLE through advocacy, capacity building programs and resource linking.

Other Multilingual Education Resources