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@article{184453,
        author = {Aynul Hoque Choudhury},
        title = {A Study on Multilingual Education in Primary Schools and its Impacts on Cognitive Development of a Child in Assam with Reference to Kamrup District},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {11},
        number = {1},
        pages = {5333-5340},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=184453},
        abstract = {Assam’s primary classrooms are naturally multilingual, with children encountering the home language alongside Assamese, Hindi, and English, and in many localities also Bodo, Bengali, Rabha, Garo, or Tiwa. This study focuses on Kamrup district to examine how multilingual education—defined as the planned use of two or more languages for instruction and learning support—relates to children’s cognitive development in the early grades. Grounded in sociocultural and interdependence perspectives on language and learning, the paper analyzes how structured multilingual exposure is associated with executive functions (working memory, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility), metalinguistic awareness, attention, and early academic outcomes in literacy and numeracy. Contextual barriers—limited teacher preparation for translanguaging pedagogy, shortages of grade-level texts in home languages, parental perceptions that prioritize English, and timetable constraints—are also explored. The analysis indicates that when the home language is used as a scaffold and systematically bridged to Assamese/English, children demonstrate clearer concept formation, faster decoding and comprehension growth, and improved task persistence. The paper concludes that a locally adapted multilingual model—mother-tongue-based instruction in the foundational years with additive Assamese and English, explicit cross-language transfer strategies, and teacher professional development—can enhance cognitive development and reduce early learning gaps in Kamrup’s government and aided schools.},
        keywords = {Assam; Kamrup district; multilingual education; mother-tongue-based instruction; executive function; metalinguistic awareness; primary education; translanguaging; cognitive development; early literacy},
        month = {September},
        }