Introduction

Most of the people in the world speak or have to speak more than one language. Often people use different languages to communicate with different people in their neighbourhood, at the market or sometimes even within the family when in-laws are from other language communities. Companies often employ multilinguals as it will help them to communicate to a wide audience in the languages that they best understand. Multilingualism is in many ways more common and advantageous than monolingualism. Having said that, multilingualism also provides some challenges, in particular when a country has 30, 50, 80 or even more than 100 languages, as is often the case in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The challenge for these countries is to find a way for all different language communities to communicate with each other. To do so, one language is chosen that each person is expected to learn. This often happens at school. The question is also which language or languages are used at school? How do children learn a new language best? How do children become multilingual? This is a serious and challenging issue in many multilingual developing countries.

This chapter seeks to gain more insight in language education in multilingual countries in developing contexts. It will do so by first examining different approaches to education in multilingual settings and reviewing them based on what is already known. Then, it will look at data from different multilingual countries to better understand what evidence comes from the field about different multilingual education models in developing countries. After that, it will briefly look at data that have emerged from situations where more than one mother tongue is spoken in a classroom. Next, it will review the most prominent context factors that influence the pace of language learning. Then, all information will be pulled together to look at what picture is emerging from these findings. Finally, the chapter will briefly discuss a common economic argument that prevents implementing the best approach for becoming multilingual in developing countries.