This chapter explores the scope of language education in the Indian multilingual context. It reviews the construct of translanguaging and its usefulness in language classrooms with special attention to reading, the cornerstone of primary education. It presents a critical summary of translanguaging practices across the globe followed by teacher-learner practices in Indian classrooms with children from low socio-economic status and/or from migrant workers' families. The review of Indian classrooms with translanguaging practices helps to understand the purposes of use of this pedagogic strategy and its impact on language learning and reading. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the role of using the socio-constructivist theory to scaffold reading through peer interaction. This chapter is a precursor to the next chapter that presents the design of a translanguaging-based reading model built with the help of peer interaction to scaffold reading development in young multilingual learners.

Studies have proven that multilingual children's second language learning and reading comprehension skills are influenced by the complex linguistic repertoire they possess. But when multilingual learners from low SES and migrant families acquire reading through a medium of instruction (MoI) that is not their L1, they face challenges in general language comprehension and literacy development as their L1 knowledge remains untapped as elaborated upon in the previous chapter. Therefore, this chapter proposes a task-based translanguaging model within the socio-cognitive framework for scaffolding reading in low resource Indian classrooms. The scaffold is provided through a series of incrementally complex tasks to build learners' lexical coverage, inferencing skills, and whole-text comprehension through translanguaging pedagogy at pre-, while-, and post-reading stages. The model activates learners' prior knowledge through L1-L2 lexical equivalents, develops inference generation abilities through peer interaction, and aids whole-text comprehension through bilingual sequential summary.