Navigating Language Pedagogy through Digital Interfaces: A Pathway to Inclusive and Multilingual Classrooms

Digital interfaces are disrupting language education as a vehicle for transactional experiences, resulting from the emphasis on interdisciplinary learning in multimodal and multilingual settings under NEP 2020. This paper focuses on how various digital learning interfaces, including apps for language learning, artificial intelligence, and online collaborative spaces, are disrupting the teaching and learning of languages by supporting translanguaging, facilitating language transition, and encouraging inclusivity in diverse classrooms. Informed through theoretical framings of Vygotskian sociocultural construction of knowledge and Krashen’s Input Hypothesis, as well as a survey of undergraduate students and their teachers, the study explores how a range of digital tools including Google Translate, the DIKSHA learning solution, subtitled videos, and Google Docs’s AI writing assistant, provide epistemic access to knowledge and legitimate learners' linguistic identities, both as students and as individuals. Findings suggest that students and teachers used translation to translanguaging academic content into native or simpler forms, thereby enhancing understanding and engagement. Discussion also attends to the implications of the digital divide for access to learning resources and the impact of bias inherent in algorithms, suggesting student-centered approaches to digital pedagogies in equitable practices. The study concludes that there are opportunities for digital interfaces to shape purposeful and equitable approaches to language teaching and learning that are in alignment with NEP 2020.