Choosing a Language of Instruction Note for a Multilingual Classroom
A Grade 12 Dari literature class in Mazar-i-Sharif has 34 students. A teacher's informal survey finds 19 students speak Dari at home, 11 speak Pashto at home but study Dari as a subject, and 4 speak Uzbek at home. All written examinations are in Dari. The class is studying a classical ghazal with archaic vocabulary and a metre that is unfamiliar to most students. The teacher has one 45-minute period and must decide whether to (a) teach the poem line by line in Dari with vocabulary glosses, (b) first translate the poem into everyday Dari before analysis, or (c) spend the first 15 minutes on the metre and the rest on meaning. The department requires that the poem be read aloud and that students produce a short written analysis in Dari by the end of the week.
1. Which option best serves the assessment requirement, and what is the main risk of the option you reject?
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Option (a) is the strongest fit. The assessment requires a written analysis in Dari, so the students must be able to handle the poem's own Dari vocabulary and structure, not a paraphrase. Line-by-line work with glosses keeps the original text in front of the students while removing the vocabulary barrier, and it directly rehearses the skill the written analysis will test.
Option (b) is the one to reject. Translating into everyday Dari first makes the poem feel accessible, but it removes the archaic diction and the compressed syntax that the analysis is supposed to discuss. The risk is that students write about the modern paraphrase rather than the poem, and their analysis cannot cite the original wording. It also silently disadvantages the 15 students who do not speak Dari at home, because they lose the chance to build the original vocabulary with support.
Option (c) front-loads metre, which is useful, but with 45 minutes and a demanding text, metre alone will not produce a written analysis. Metre is better introduced briefly and revisited.
2. How should the teacher handle the 15 students who do not speak Dari at home, without lowering the standard for the class?
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The standard stays the same: everyone writes the analysis in Dari. What changes is the scaffolding.
Concrete moves: pair each student who is new to Dari literary vocabulary with a strong Dari speaker for the glossing stage only, so the support is temporary; provide a short bilingual glossary of the eight to ten hardest words rather than a full translation; and check comprehension with quick oral questions in simple Dari before the written task.
The judgement is that support must be aimed at vocabulary and at the conventions of written analysis, not at the content of the poem. If the teacher simplifies the poem for these students, the class splits into two standards and the examination will expose the gap. If the teacher gives vocabulary support and keeps the poem intact, the gap narrows.