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Katsuko T. NAKAHIRA
Assistant Professor
Nagaoka University of Technology
(Nagaoka, Japan)
Usage of Mother Tongue in Education
in the Case of Multilingual Activities with ICT
Introduction
UNESCO and some other international organizations are regarding the
use of mother tongues in the real world as an important problem from the
viewpoint of the linguistic diversity. Meanwhile also in the cyberspace,
accompanying the popularization of the Internet, various problems around
the linguistic diversity and the use of mother tongues are increasingly
occurring. It is especially important in the educational context, as education
becomes borderless with the popularization of e-learning, from the viewpoint
of importation and exportation of educational service, Guidelines on Quality
Provision in Cross-border Higher Education (2005, UNESCO/OECD) refer
to the language usage in higher education: “Higher education institutions are
responsible for the quality as well as the social, cultural and linguistic relevance
of education and the standards of qualifications provided in their name, no
matter where or how it is delivered. In this context, it is recommended that
higher education institutions/providers delivering cross-border higher
education (a)Ensure that the programmes they deliver across borders and
in their home country are of comparable quality and that they also take into
account the cultural and linguistic sensitivities of the receiving country. It is
desirable that a commitment to this effect should be made public.” The report
suggested that this consideration should be applied not only to the face-toface
education but also to the remote education including e-learning.
The research on linguistic diversity in e-learning is being proceeded with an
application of translation tools, for example, Language Grid. Many of the
translation tools are developed for the multilingual communication with
different mother tongues, evaluation for their translate function can be found
in many places but there is few verification of their effect to the users. In this
report, we will investigate the effect of translation tools to the users from the
two case studies of e-learning education using ICT in Nagaoka University of
Technology.
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