Mental Workload on the Children in Multilingual Environment

Abstract

Background: The children in Pakistan study in a multilingual environment. They have books of subjects; Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Islamiyat in English language, most of the time teachers give instructions only in English language. However, their home tongue is different from English e.g. Urdu, Punjabi, Saraiki, Pushto, Balochi, and Sindhi etc. Children speak with their parents and siblings in their own language. Objective: Children in schools face a multilingual environment. That may cause more workload during class time. The workload is comprised of 6 components; mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort, and frustration. The main objective of this study is to measure the workload on children, who are studying in schools in multilingual environments. Method: We tested 187 samples of children studying in public and private schools facing multilingual environments. The ages of children were 11-14. We designed 3 experiments for this subjective study, a home language survey, and three task questionnaires. We designed tasks questionnaires of mathematics in English language, translated that mathematics questions in Urdu language, and English Grammar task questionnaires from the SAT KS2 paper for grade 7. We also designed a home language survey to assess the language they speak with their parents, siblings and friends, the language of teacher’s instructions in the classroom, language in which children can efficiently understand and learn their subject’s concepts. We also measured the workload on children due to the multilingual environment with a workload measuring tool; NASA-TLX test. Result: The result of this study showed that children faced more mental workload when they solved the Mathematics task in English and less mental workload in Urdu. When we see other subscales of workload, children required more physical demand, temporal demand, and effort when they solved the task in English as compared to the Urdu language. They also showed lower performance and felt frustrated when they solved tests in the English language. Conclusion: Children showed more mental workload when they performed tasks in English language and less mental workload in the Urdu language. Books should be in the national language; Urdu and the teacher should give subject-relevant instructions in the tongue language.xiii Application: These conclusions can contribute to the developing field of education called “educational ergonomics”, indicating that a reliable measurement tool can identify children who are facing more workload. School environment and factors of human psychology can be improved for children’s better mental health.