Importance Of Bilingual Self

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Bilingual “self”
I would like to define myself as an elective, unbalanced bilingual (struggling to achieve the qualities of an additive or balanced bilingual) on the basis of the ability and usage of my known two languages- English as my second language and Malayalam my mother tongue, along with its influence on cognition. I label myself as a bilingual because I mainly use two languages for different purposes to different people at different contexts (Baker, 2011). This label is discussed from my perspective as a student and as a teacher.
The contexts for using languages varied throughout the stages of my life. As the contexts for using languages may change throughout the life of an individual, so does individual bilingualism. According to Bhatia and Richie (2011), individual bilingualism is less permanent if the bilingual’s journey is through the path between two monolingualisms having generations as way stations. My connection with English as a second language begins with my primary school run by Christian missionaries. My family and societal background were of a Malayalam monolingual, a rural part of Kerala, India where bilingualism was uncommon. Due to the effect of colonialism and the influence of Christian missionaries, my parents thought that educating English would not only provide us a special status but also better employment opportunities in future. So English language came to me as an elective for education purpose and I would like to label me as an elective bilingual as Baker (2011) explains elective bilingualism as the attribute of a person who chose another language without losing their first language especially in classroom. (p.3).
The course of acquisition of English language never ran smooth after my primary scho...

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...languages in hand. I could have used bilingual method in teaching and learning, giving equal importance to heritage language and English to make me as well as my students active or balanced bilinguals.
On the light of minimal definition of bilingualism, which says even a little knowledge in another language can distinct a person from being monolingual (Bassetti &Cook(2011),Baker (2011). Then I will be an “incipient multilingual” who know certain phrases in Hindi, Tamil and Telegu as I belong to a country with diverse languages. However I like to label myself as bilingual rather than ‘multilingual’ or ‘plurilingual’ because of the awareness of my ability in English and my mother tongue is much stronger than the feeble use of other languages or gestures. Moreover ‘multilingual’ or ‘trilingual’ and so on can be included within the term ‘bilingual’(Bassetti &Cook,2011).

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