The crowded and bustling streets of Delhi teem with life. Stop to listen and, above the din of rickshaws and buses, you'll hear a multitude of languages, as more than 20 million people go about their daily lives. Many were born and raised here, and many millions more have recently made India's capital their home, having moved from surrounding neighbourhoods, cities and states or across the country, often in the hope of gaining better jobs and a better life. Some arrive speaking fluent Hindi, the dominant language in Delhi (and the official language of government), but many arrive speaking any number of India's 22 officially recognised languages, let alone the hundreds of regional languages in a country of more than 1.3 billion people.

德里的街道熙熙攘攘，充满生机。停下脚步倾听，在人力车和公交车的喧嚣声中，你将听到多种语言交织而成的声音，超过两千万人在这里过着日常生活。许多人出生并成长于此，还有数以百万计的人最近从周边地区、城市、邦乃至全国各地迁居至此，往往希望获得更好的工作和更美好的生活。有些人抵达时已能流利使用印地语——德里主要的语言（也是政府的官方语言），但更多人则会说印地语以外的22种官方认可的语言，更不用说这个拥有13亿人口的国家所拥有的数百种地方语言了。

A team of researchers led by Professor lanthi Tsimpli of Cambridge University is currently working on a project collecting data on 1,000 primary-age children in Delhi and the cities of Hyderabad and Bihar. The overriding aim of the four-year project, called Multilingualism and Multiliteracy, is to find out why in a country where multilingualism is so comon (more than 255 million people in India speak at least two languages, and nearly 90 million speak three or more languages), the many benefits of speaking more than one language, observed in schools in Europe for instance, do not apply to many of India's schoolchildren.

由剑桥大学兰蒂·齐普利教授领导的一支研究团队目前正在开展一项项目，收集德里、海得拉巴和比哈尔邦1000名学龄儿童的数据。这项名为“多语言与多读写能力”的四年期项目的主要目标是探究：为何在一个多语言国家（印度有超过2.55亿人至少会说两种语言，近9000万人会说三种或更多语言）中，像欧洲学校所观察到的那样，掌握多种语言带来的诸多益处，并未惠及印度的许多中小学生。

'Each year across India, 600,000 children are tested, and year after year over 50% of children in Standard 5 [ten-year-olds] cannot read a Standard 2 [seven-year-olds] task fluently, and just under 50% of them cannot solve a Standard 2 subtraction task,' says Tsimpli. She explains that low educational achievement can lead to many of these students dropping out of school - a problem disproportionately affecting female students.

“每年在印度，有60万名儿童接受测试。年复一年，五年级（十岁）学生中超过50%的孩子无法熟练阅读二年级（七岁）的任务，近50%的学生甚至无法完成二年级的减法题。”茨姆普利表示。她解释说，低下的学业成绩可能导致许多学生辍学，而这一问题对女学生的影响尤为严重。

Tsimpli and her colleagues are investigating whether these low learning outcomes could be caused by an Indian school system where the language that children are taught in often differs from the language used at home. The research project, which focuses on 8 to 11-year- old schoolchildren in rural and urban areas, collects data on whether the schoolchildren live in slum or non-slum areas. Many of the children have moved from remote, rural areas to urban areas. They are so poor they have to live in slums and, as a result of migration, they may speak languages that are different from the regional language.

Tsimpli和她的同事们正在研究，这些低学习成果是否可能源于印度的教育体系，即儿童在学校所学的语言与家庭使用的语言常常不同。这项研究项目针对城乡地区的8至11岁学龄儿童，收集了他们居住在贫民窟还是非贫民窟区域的数据。许多儿童从偏远的农村地区迁移到城市，由于生活贫困，不得不居住在贫民窟中，而迁移导致他们可能使用与当地方言不同的语言。

Having already tested 1,000 children, the researchers will now embark on retesting them. They intend to look not only at test results, but also at variables such as the standard of schooling, the environment and the teaching practices themselves. It's possible that one of the causes of low performance is the lack of pupil-centred teaching methods; in many Indian primary schools the teacher dominates and there is little room for independent learning.

研究人员已经对1000名儿童进行了测试，现在将重新对他们进行检测。他们不仅会关注测试结果，还会考察诸如教育水平、环境以及教学实践本身等变量。低成绩的一个可能原因是缺乏以学生为中心的教学方法；在许多印度的小学中，教师占据主导地位，几乎没有空间让学生成为自主学习者。

Although the findings are at a preliminary stage, Tsimpli and her team have found that the medium of instruction used in schools, especially English, may hold back those children who have little familiarity with, or exposure to, the language before starting school and outside of school life. According to Tsimpli, most of the evidence from this and other projects shows that English instruction for children from low socio-economic areas might not be the best way for them to learn, at least in the first three years of primary education.

尽管研究结果尚处于初步阶段，但Tsimpli及其团队发现，学校所使用的教学语言，尤其是英语，可能会阻碍那些在入学前及课外生活中对这门语言不熟悉或接触较少的儿童。据Tsimpli表示，来自本项目及其他研究的大部分证据表明，在小学教育的前三年中，对于来自低社会经济阶层的儿童而言，英语教学可能并非他们最佳的学习方式。

'What we would recommend for everyone, not just low socio-economic status children, would be to start learning in the language they feel comfortable learning in... English can still be used, but perhaps not as the medium of instruction in primary schools. It could, for example, be one of the subjects that are being taught alongside other subjects. We are not suggesting that English be withdrawn - that ship has sailed - but we perhaps have to think more about learner needs. There is perhaps too much uniformity in teaching and less tailoring to the children's language abilities and needs,'says Tsimpli.

“我们建议的，不只是针对低社会经济地位儿童，而是让每个人从他们感到舒适的学习语言开始学习……英语仍然可以使用，但或许不应作为小学阶段的教学语言。例如，它可以与其他科目一同作为教学内容之一。我们并非建议取消英语课程——那艘船已经驶离了——但我们或许需要更深入地思考学习者的需求。目前的教学方式可能过于统一，对学生的语言能力和需求缺乏个性化调整。”茨姆普利表示。

While the preliminary results show there is no difference in general intelligence among boys and girls from slum areas versus those from urban poor backgrounds, an unanticipated finding has been that children from slum backgrounds do not seem to lag behind children from other urban poor backgrounds - and in some cases outperform them (e.g. in numeracy and literacy tasks). According to the researchers, this unexpected finding may be down to the life experiences of children growing up in slums. They are likely to mature faster and come into closer contact with the numeracy skills essential for day-to-day survival.

尽管初步结果显示，贫民窟男孩与城市贫困家庭女孩在一般智力方面并无差异，但一个出人意料的发现是：来自贫民窟的孩子似乎并未落后于其他城市贫困家庭的孩子，甚至在某些情况下（例如在数学和读写任务中）表现更优。研究人员认为，这一意外发现可能与生活在贫民窟的孩子们所经历的生活环境有关。他们通常发育更快，并且更早接触到日常生存所需的数学技能。

The project has already caught the attention of government ministers, who are keen to use the findings of the study to inform and adjust school policy in Delhi and the wider state. 'They are as keen as us to understand how the challenging context of deprivation can be attenuated when focusing on the languages children learn and use while at school. Our findings don't mean you're doomed if you're poor. It may be that these low learning outcomes are because of the way education is provided in India, with a huge focus on Hindi and English as the mediums of instruction, to the potential detriment of children unfamiliar with those languages, ' explains Tsimpli.

该项目已引起政府部长们的关注，他们希望利用这项研究的成果来指导并调整德里乃至整个邦的学校政策。茨姆普利解释道：“他们和我们一样迫切地想了解，如何通过关注儿童在学校所学和使用的语言，来缓解贫困带来的严峻挑战。我们的研究结果并不意味着贫穷就注定了失败。这些低学习成果可能源于印度教育体系的安排，即过度强调印地语和英语作为教学媒介，从而对不熟悉这两种语言的儿童造成了潜在不利影响。”

'Language is central to the way knowledge is transferred - so the medium of instruction is obviously hugely influential. We hope to... show that problem solving, numeracy and literacy can and do improve in children who are educated in a language of instruction they know. The trick may be to bridge school skills with life skills and make use of the richness of a child's life experience to help them learn in the most effective ways possible,' says Tsimpli.

“语言是知识传递的核心，因此教学媒介显然具有巨大影响。我们希望……证明在使用自己熟悉的教学语言进行教育的儿童中，解决问题的能力、数学能力和读写能力不仅能够而且确实可以得到提升。关键或许在于将学校所学的技能与生活技能相连接，并利用孩子丰富的生活经验，帮助他们以最有效的方式学习。”——齐姆普利说。