Translanguaging by Parents to Prepare Children for English Medium Preschool: A Trend in India

This qualitative paper analyses the parental English language input strategies adopted to make children ready for English medium preschools. The author uses interview and observation methods to collect data from 30 families in a cosmopolitan city in India. The result supports multimodal transglossic approach that promotes simultaneous plurilingualism and metalinguistic ability in children. To save children from undue pressure and unintelligent memory work in the home context before the beginning of preschool, the suggestion is to implement age-appropriate scaffolded English language teaching and prevention of the downward extension of the primary school syllabus to the preschools.