Supplementary materials and multilingual classroom

Abstract

Nowadays, the process of globalization resulting in the advancements of international relations
and close cooperation in every field among individual states as well as the increase in the
migration of people to various countries worldwide have conditioned the creation of multilingual
societies. In this respect, the education system is not an exception and multilingual classrooms
have become common at the educational institutions including HEIs. At Tbilisi State University
multilingual classrooms mostly consist of the students of Georgian, Armenian, Azeri, Ukrainian
and Russian nationalities who vary from each other according to their cultural, traditional
backgrounds and religious affiliation. Their main problem for interaction represents the language
barrier that is even more acutely revealed in the learning process. The necessity of successful
implementation of this process poses new challenges to teaching English as a second language
and sets the new objectives to English teachers in multilingual classrooms where the differences
in students’ learning needs and knowledge level are added the distinctions existing between their
backgrounds.
Having a good command of any foreign language means being perfectly capable of
communicating, reading, writing and listening. Hence, the acquisition of a target language requires
the development of all the necessary language skills of students. English teachers constantly seek
for the new methods and approaches facilitating the process of learning the language. The goal of
this paper is to highlight the importance of using supplementary materials as an effective tool
providing the enhancement of strategies and techniques of teaching the second language – English
in the multilingual environment.
Despite the fact that modern English text books are complex and comprehensive encompassing
the materials which are targeted at all the components of language learning, they still do not
suffice to teach English in multilingual classrooms. The paper deals with the utilization of
additional educational sources for developing learners’ productive skill, namely, speaking as well
as the strategy of selecting the supplementary materials and their integration with the course book
for the purpose of fostering students’ learning process and outcomes in multilingual environment.
The paper also reviews the research which was conducted in the multilingual classroom with 12
students involved (5 -Georgian, 4 –Azeri, 3- Armenian students). The research method applied
was a survey through the questionnaire to provide the formative assessment and the final exam
(testing fluency and accuracy) through the interview and oral presentations for the summative
assessment of students. The research findings confirmed the positive effect of using supplementary
materials on students’ learning outcomes, particularly, on developing the speaking skill in the
multilingual classroom