Today on College Writing, Actually I talk with the amazing Anne Kerkian about best practices for writing tutors teaching multilingual learners (MLLs). Been wishing to sharpen your approach in these conferences? Want to be better for multilingual clients? Grab a notepad and hit play!
If you'd like to find Anne, you can find her on Linkedin as Anne Kerkian. If you would like the transcript to this episode, you can find it on the podcast's website https://www.buzzsprout.com/2097929/ Simply select the desired episode and click the "Transcript" tab beside the Show Notes.
Appreciate the resources the podcast provides? Consider becoming a monthly subscriber. Choose how much you want to give with pledges starting at $3/month-- cancel anytime. Because everyone deserves writing resources. Make a no-strings-attached pledge here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2097929/supporters/new
Today on College Writing, Actually I talk with the amazing Anne Kerkian about best practices for writing tutors teaching multilingual learners (MLLs). Been wishing to sharpen your approach in these conferences? Want to be better for multilingual clients? Grab a notepad and hit play!
If you'd like to find Anne, you can find her on Linkedin as Anne Kerkian. If you would like the transcript to this episode, you can find it on the podcast's website https://www.buzzsprout.com/2097929/ Simply select the desired episode and click the "Transcript" tab beside the Show Notes.
Appreciate the resources the podcast provides? Consider becoming a monthly subscriber. Choose how much you want to give with pledges starting at $3/month-- cancel anytime. Because everyone deserves writing resources. Make a no-strings-attached pledge here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2097929/supporters/new
Britt Threatt, host (BT)
Anne Kerkian, guest (AK)
[00:00] Music intro
[00:04] BT: Hello writers! I’m Britt Threatt and you’re listening to “College Writing, Actually” where we talk about the how-to and how-come of college writing and writing instruction every other Wednesday. Today, I’m joined today by Anne Kerkian, the Senior Associate Director for Writing and English Language Support. Thank you for making time to talk to us today, Anne.
AK: Thanks so much for having me.
[00:24] BT: And now I tell you how impressive she is: Anne holds a B.A. in English and Theater/Drama from Indiana University and an M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Graduate Institute of the School for International Training. Anne got her start in education at the Chicago Children’s Museum where she worked on cultural programs. She has taught English around the globe from working with elementary schoolers in South Korea to supporting airline and shipping employees in Argentina. Anne is passionate about supporting accessible pathways to education and has worked with immigrant and refugee students in the ESOL Bridge to College and Careers Program at Northern Essex Community College in Lawrence, MA. Before coming to Brown she was also an instructor for the A.C.E. Language Institute at the University of Rhode Island, which offered international students linguistic and cultural support as an alternative pathway to college instead of traditional English language placement exams.
[01:20] Okay! So much impressiveness. Now you see why I had to bring Anne on for this topic: “How do you actually work with multilingual learners effectively?” First, let’s get at those letters, MLL. I’ve always known the designation to be “ESL” (English as your Second Language). Where and why did we get MLL (multilingual learners)?
[01:40] AK: Yeah, and it's a language field so language is so important. The language has made important shifts since I first entered the field - and I should note that the terminology it really varies around the world. You'll hear terms like EFL, “English as a Foreign Language” - but in the U.S. context specifically, language is reflective of changes both in educational policy, and specifically K12, and really in recognition of student’s backgrounds and their experiences. The term English as a second language and some similar language that you'll hear like “English Language Learner,” that does not represent the reality of many of our students' identities. It doesn’t accurately reflect the fact that in the US and world-wide many people learn English and another language or languages at home at simultaneously.
[02:37] The fact that many learners speak multiple language. So second really isn't accurate. I mean--
BT: Students are speaking three or four.
AK: Yeah! Many of my students speak four, five, six languages or different dialects. And so the term multilingual learner is just so much more inclusive in that way and for me, importantly, that places the emphasis on students as skilled users of multiple languages, not just a focus on them as a learner of one. So for folks who want to explore more about this, The National Council of Teachers of English blog has a glossary that I know I refer to a lot that has some helpful explanations and sort of the wide-variety of terminology that you hear specifically in the U.S. educational context.
[03:22] BT: Wow, okay. What a history!
AK: Yeah!
BT: Of three little letters! Thank you for that, Anne. And we'll link all of these things in the transcript, which will be linked in the description of the podcast. So if you want any of the resources that Anne has already mentioned or will mention, you can look in the description of the transcript and that's where all of the links will be. So, the way we describe students definitely says a lot about how we view them, and "multilingual learner" is definitely an important shift in orientation.These students have unique strengths and unique needs because of those multiple literacies-- literacies beyond what the person teaching or tutoring them might even have. And actually, when I first started working in the writing center, I felt the least prepared to support MLL clients. It was so easy to fall into just cleaning up the grammar because that's what I for sure knew
[04:14] AK: Yeah!
BT: And I was like, "I don't want you to come to me and be like 'I need help!'" I'm like, "I can't help! I don't know all the things!" So you just lean into your strength, but that doesn't feel effective for what they may need to help them be like self-sufficient and not always need to come into a writing center.
AK: Yeah, absolutely, and one of the things I hear this a lot from both our tutors in the writing center and my students themselves, is that it's hard to work on language without it being the whole conversation too. And one of the things that I'm often saying to my students is that it-- "well, what's the point of working on the language and finding each specific word and grammatical convention when you're gonna change this whole argument or example?" You've actually just done that grueling grammar work twice, so like try to wait on the language and really work on on those ideas up front.
[05:08] BT:Yeah, and that's...that's where I'm like, "well..." right? Because we say that we're discursive and we're not a copy editing service so don't do those things and also you don't wanna do the work twice like you just said, but sometimes grammar help is what they came in for and would get frustrated-- I've had clients get frustrated with me when I’d be like “well, let’s just talk about the ideas.” I felt a little callous-- I mean "pretentious" isn't the word-- and I was like "well, we're dialectical" but I did feel a way pushing a ‘fancy, conceptually superior’ discursive method on a writer who’s like “dude, comma here? Yes or no!”
AK: Right. And they're like "my paper is due tomorrow" so.."I can't...just help me!" Yeah, absolutely. I have those conversations all the time and I think for me it's really about striking a balance there and I'm constantly trying to interrogate is this actually an effective language teaching moment for my student.
[06:06] So, if it's something like a preposition - you have your of's, your for's, your on's - it's a punctuation mark. Usually that's something I’d just note or --may not even note-- and just move on. I like the UNC-Chapel Hill Writing Center says, “give prepositions away like candy.” And I love that idea, right. Like that's not that important. Like let's get away-- like we can spend all day all day talking about the difference and the nuance between "of" and "on." It's not important. Let's get to the meat of things. But then there are those moments where grammar truly affects the meaning. It effects the reader experience and those meaning-making areas are where I would really stop and focus. And so oftentimes that's something like subject-verb agreement, verb tense, parts of speech, particular word choices - those can seem small but they have a really big impact on understanding.
[06:58] Particularly if it's around verbs, because so much of what we understand in English has to do with the ways that the verbs are are presented. And so what I like to think about is using grammar as a catalyst to then explain the idea or the meaning behind that language choice. So if I were to say something like “you need the future tense here,” that doesn’t help my student and it doesn't open up a dialogue and it doesn't give them any sense of my experience reading their text. But if I frame that as a question um “I’m not sure when this happened, has this already happen? No? Oh, okay! So because this is in present tense here, I was feeling like these two things were happening as the same-- at the same moment. It would be really helpful for me, I think, as the reader if this were in the future tense. I think I’d have a better sense here as a reader that this is something that you're hoping to do in your experiment, but you haven’t tried yet.”
[07:56] And so that really gives the student a sense of-- yes, that was a language break it down grammatically, future versus present tense but it's really about what is the reader experience and what is the meaning-making that's happening there? And you'll notice that I use the word "choice" - and I think this is for me critical anytime we're talking about grammar. We hear a lot about grammar rules. We hear a lot about what is "good writing" and there's no one way to say something. There’s never a right way to say something. It's just that once we make a choice in our writing, we're following certain grammatical patterns or expectations for our reader and those come into play. And so you know I think about a phrase I talked through with a student: “I wanted nobody around” versus“I didn’t want anybody around.”
[08:47] Exact same meaning there in terms of the writer, but the negation and the grammar changes depending on what word choice you have there. And so for me I think it's really critical that when we're talking about grammar, we're really thinking about grammar as choice, which is not how grammar was ever represented to me. It was like "grammar is grammar, grammar rules." Yeah, but really if we think about grammar as not being static and having choice involved, it allows our writer options. For multilingual writers, it allows them the opportunity to build their vocabulary. We're giving them different language chunks to use in future writing. And importantly, that really helps respect the writer's voice. I'm not telling you what to say. I'm giving you some different options. What sounds best to you? What works for your...your writing, your goals, your audience?
[09:34] Music interlude
[09:39] BT: Thank you! Because that bit, just annotate your reading experience for them so they can decide how they want to correct the experience that you're having. How they wanna shift it. I, um, I definitely have seen, even if a writer says "I just want direction" and you try to make a compromise where it's like "okay, well let me give you some things that are very concrete versus just being abstract" but I also see that sometimes the effect is they become dependent on direction. Like they feel like they cannot make a decision on their own because what you say is right because you're sitting in that tutor chair because I'm the one that has a need and you're the one that has the resource. Which again, goes back to shifting how we're thinking about people in the writing center of just like multilingual learners and not "English as their second language" right? Like, that goes back to that shift of just supporting the conceptual shift, of of the vocabulary.
[10:36] Like, just calling them a multilingual learner isn't enough if you're still not arraying choice to that writer.
AK: Yeah. Exactly.
BT: You had mentioned something about uh "I wanted nobody around" versus "I didn't want anyone around" or something. And you mentioned like there was a negation. Just because I love examples and especially because this episode is geared toward tutors, can you break down sort of the difference between those two sentences as you broke it down for your MLL in case someone wants to use that example.
[11:05] AK: Yeah! Absolutely. So, "I wanted nobody around" the negation is built into the vocabulary choice, right? So the "nobody" implies none. So that's already, that's already a negative, right? Whereas "anybody" could be used in a positive or negative form and so what you would need there to show the negation is that "did not, didn't." Um and so in order to-- and and usually what that happens with when I'm talking with a student is that I would say, "okay, here's 'nobody' here's 'anybody,' like what are we talking about? Like are we talking about people or are we talking about no people? Is it more important to focus on the zero people as in nobody or is it more important that we're talking about any person and that you did not? And is that where the negative is really important?"
[11:58] And again-- and there's also, this also depends on on your voice as a writer. So there would be instances where you would use both and say, "I didn't want nobody around." Right? In terms of how you are using double negation as a writer. So again, that just has to do with sort of putting those-- in in that case, I'd put those three options forward and say, "these all have negation in different ways. What's important to you?"
BT: Right. Who do you want the wr--the reader's attention on?
AK: Yeah!
BT: You or the lack of people around you? Yeah, yeah that's really good.
[12:32] With all your experience working with multilingual learners, you must have had a steep learning curve. Because I'm just thinking of even that very quick example you just gave us-- and y'all cannot see me but the way I had to sit forward in my seat to be like "anybody...nobody...yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm following, I'm following. I I'm just imagining how much work that must have taken you to just rattle off like "oh let me explain to you the difference between these two things."
AK: Well I'm glad that that that felt like a clear explanation. I I feel very much like I'm still in the middle of that steep learning curve so 100% I’m still very, very much on it!
[13:13] Music interlude
[13:17] BT: Can you talk us through the first part. If you're in the middle, what was-- how did you get to this part in the roller coaster?
AK: Yeah, well let me uh, I'll I'll share a little bit of good advice that I was given or something that I go back to a lot. I talk about my teaching a lot and I really try my best to approach teaching as a practice. I think it is something that just requires constant reflection and flexibility-- it's like language in that way, right. It's not static. It's ever changing. And one of my graduate school professors gave me a framework that that I probably go back to every week and my students hear me talk about quite a bit which is thinking of language learning - or really any learning at all- as an AASK process. And so this is A-A-S-K
[14:12] So the acronym "ASK" with a double "a" and that stands for A: Attitude, then the second "a" is Awareness, and then Skills, followed by Knowledge. And I think that I, probably many tutors and teachers feel this way, but I want to jump straight into the idea of skills and knowledge, right? And even at Brown we talk about the creation and dissemination of knowledge is what we do, right? That's in our in our mission and so that that feels so easy to kind of focus on that skills and knowledge piece but the thing that's really important is that if I go back to that idea of attitude. Okay, so if I'm starting with attitude, how does this student feel about their piece of writing? How do they feel about writing in English? How--what type of feedback do they find helpful or unhelpful? Like how is the person who I am sitting with in a space feeling and reacting to what's happening in that moment?
[15:13] And that's true for me and the writer? Right? And I think any work that we try to do without acknowledging that, we're just not acknowledging what the human experience is. We're trying to make it about the thing and not about the people and the communication. Awareness is then also part of that-- and again, that's both for me and the student-- do I have awareness of the student's goals? Do they? have an awareness of their goals? How might the languages that they speak influence one each oth-- influence each other in different ways, right? And so I always talk about this in terms of just moving across languages, more than translation. And so if we're moving in and out of different languages, could I help to raise awareness of different language patterns they I'm seeing in English? Either as something that they want to take into future writing or as areas where they're hoping to make changes. So as I mentioned before, that idea of choice and making language choices is such a huge part of language learning
[16:11] and so attitude and awareness and skills and knowledge, skills and knowledge are critical, but in thinking about this process, they're final steps. We don't just jump straight there and I like this so much because it acknowledges the reality that language learning is a process me. It takes time. It involves humans. It involves communication. Communication is messy and hard and beautiful and all of that. But then I also really just love that the acronym is AASK, because it's a good reminder to me that really my job is to ask questions. That's what I'm doing. I'm holding up a mirror for students.
[16:55] BT: Yeah, and you-- one of the things I just thought about as you were talking, particularly with the like "we wanna jump right to skills and knowledge" and I'm like "well, of course because that's our identity."
AK: Yeah!
BT: Especially if you are in like these R1 institutions but really any educational institution. Anyone in there, their business is knowledge and the creation and dissemination of that knowledge, right? And so, if I have to step back and AASK and I also am a learner, where is my authority to tell this person what is right and what is wrong? Our our seats could easily be switched and I think a lot of educators, be they professors or writing tutors that are like graduate students or writing fellows-- whomever. A lot of us are uncomfortable with unsettling our authority in that way. Such that I can't just jump to skills and knowledge because there are other things to tussle with and that messiness could have me making a mistake and I can't do that!
[17:59] Right? So it's a little bit of vulnerability in AASK. Did y'all hear my long "a"? It's a little bit of vulnerability in that but that's the work of reflexivity and acknowledging that it's a process on both ends. For them as the writer. For us as instructors.
AK: And writing is such a vulnerable process. So we kind of need to be together in that shared vulnerability. Particularly when writers are bringing their work to us and sort of putting themselves out there to come to us. I think this allows us to meet them halfway on that.
BT: Yeah. 100% Because it's not really fair otherwise. It's like, "you come to me. Be vulnerable and I'm just gonna sit here with all of my stuff together because I don't wanna look like a dork."
[18:48] It's like "well why do they have to look like a dork--" Not that they do. Writers are beautiful. But why do they have to present themselves in this particular way that we are above? Right? Otherwise, we get into that. So yeah, no. I absolutely agree. And also with the attitude, there could be baggage there. Because writing is vulnerable. We have no idea-- and there's so much stigma and stereotype around-- right because writing is personal. Which is to say that it's also political because it also has so much to do with the cultural.
AK: Absolutely.
BT: And so we have no idea what that multilingual learner has been told about the way that they speak or write because they are a multilingual learner. And and so when we come in and we're just like "here's the thing" and we sit back and we're "objective" and we're an authority, you don't know what you're bringing up for that student and if they don't trust us to some extent, there's not much help that we can do.
[19:44] AK: Right.
BT: It becomes really prescriptive in a way that's not effective because, again, we wanna be encouraging them to their own autonomy and writing to be able to do this process on their own and not always need us. But if we're not really seeing them as a person then how can we give them anything but a prescription? Well, here's some ibuprofen. As opposed to like "I think you actually might need some aloe. Your skin looks a little--" like we're not really looking at them like that. We're just checking off a list, so absolutely. And I thnik that a lot of tutors just starting to work with MLLs can relate to all of those things that we just said. The un-- the lack of being sure. The wanting to retain authority. Seeing the like "oh, but this could be vulnerable." Like I think that a lot of-- a lot of writing tutors just starting out can relate to that. I definitely can and I think that the AASK is a really great approach to teaching. These things about vulnerability and it being processual. These things that we tell our writers but don't really...
[20:42] AK: It's hard to live.
BT: It is! But have not internalized. And so, in your years of experience, in addition to teaching multilingual learners themselves, you also do work with tutors on teaching multilingual learners. And you just gave us a little bit with the AASK, but also, there may be a listener here who is about to work with multilingual learners for the first time or is already doing so but is struggling and we need some practical tips. What’s a good starter-- yes, I'm all for the practical. What's a good starter kit of tips with a sprinkle of some resources for those that wanna look into this more?
[21:20] AK: Well, I will try! I love the idea of sprinkles on top of our um starter kit of...ice cream or tips. Yeah so I think that one of the things that, for folks that are just starting out, and- and for me, something that I try to remember in every conversation that I'm having with my students is it's so critical to prioritize feedback - again it's that balance of sort of content but we know that students want support with language and um so I really think that it comes back to that idea of “meaning-making.” You know, if we're really going back to "did I did I truly understand here? Was this-- did I not understand or did I just expect something different?" I think that's an important distinction.
BT: Mm! Can you break that down?
[22:06] AK: Right? Yeah, exactly. So I think um, I have certain expectations as a teacher and a user of English um and having done this after years was like "oh, I would just expect to hear this sort of phrase in this sort of order you know?" I would expect something like oh at the beginning when a transition is happening, I would hear something like "while this, x, there may also be this." So if I see something that's not that, did I truly not understand it or was it just different from my reader expectation?
BT: Come on, now!
AK: Because a lot of time if it if it's the same as our expectation, we say "oh no, that's wrong." But but no, it's not wrong. It's understandable. It's my job to make sure that I'm understanding and again trying to remember that it's a two-way street. Right? A writer is not just writing so that they can make it clear to me. It's my job as a reader to also do my part to understand what someone else is saying.
[23:02] And so that idea of it being reciprocal. So with that idea of sort of-- I I ask my question a lot. Did I truly not understand or was this just different from my expectations? And sometimes I I want to say and be honest about "this was different from my expectation. It's not 'wrong.' Was that intentional? Was that a choice that you're making? Um, as a as a reader, this lifted me out of the text for a moment because I was sort of unsure about is-- were you trying to make me notice this?" And and helping folks to re-- to think about where that's intentional. Where they can, again, make choices um for the reader experience. And I think it's that idea of honesty...um to honestly say, "I'm not sure what this word means here. The length of this sentence got me kind of lost about what you're trying to emphasize here."
BT: inaudible
[23:53] AK: Yeah! I think my tenth grade English teacher sat down and was like "Anne, this is a semicolon. This will prove you useful in life. You have a thoughts. There are ways to put them together." And I still to this day am a lover of semicolons, because that's how I think!
BT: Yes.
AK: I'm like, "I have this idea, but it's also this other thing!" I'm somebody who when I tell a story you've heard half of my life's story by the end of my very short... and so I think it's very helpful when someone's like "Anne...what did--what did you mean here?" And I think that, you know, we all want that kind of honesty. That's why we're coming in and trying to be vulnerable in the first place is "please be honest with me."
[24:30] But particularly for multilingual speakers, many of my students will tell me that very often people act like they understand because they're trying to be polite. Whether that be um you know, they're an international student and this is in a store in the United States or someone reads their writing and they say, "...yeah, I got your point. It's fine. And we know as speakers or writers when someone didn't really get it.
BT: You're fibbing!
AK: Yeah! And so that doesn't-- that's not helpful and so students say, "well, I wish someone would just be honest with me." Um and so that idea of where can I be honest but also then do that in a way that is kind and supportive and gives them options as well um and not picking out every single thing. So really prioritizing there.
[25:14] Reading out loud is the best way that I have to really help show my understanding, because I do-- I feel that I can do a lot of that through intonation. I can indicate a question. I can indicate understanding, just by reading a text and I don't even have to say anything at all and my student will go "oh, wait! Hold on, wait! That sounded like you had a question there." Sometimes I have to pause to process, sometimes the speed of my reading...sometimes I don't even have to say anything. Just through my honest reader reaction so I think that's really helpful. And then it's also just so critical that we're giving feedback on ideas, argument, examples. We can't just focus on how something is said. We have to also focus on what is said. And just as we would for any student regardless of their language background.
[26:02] And so I think I'll actually I sometimes code my feedback when I'm talking through a piece. So I have a whiteboard in my office, so we'll write everything up but you could write this on a piece of paper, in docs, however whatever format you're using, um and we'll code and say this was "c" this was something around content where I had a question or confusion. This is a structural question. "G" this is a grammatical question. Because a) I think that's helpful for a student to take home and think about. Then they kind of have a sense about "well, what was this feedback?" Sometimes as the end of an hour
BT: Yeah...
AK: It's sort of like, "I have all of this feedback. What is it? To where does it go?" And so we're kind of doing that as we go. But it also an accountability system for me. So if I see "wow, I've made a lot of comments on grammar. I need to really make sure that I'm commenting on content and structure." Or the other way around. So it's kind of a an accountability check for me to do some intentional coding.
[26:57] So...something else that I think is just a really, really important thing-- and I'll say that I'm a huge proponent of universal design for learning, and so the things that I say are important for multilingual writers are things that I think are good for just all writers.
BT: Okay, lay it on us!
AK: And so...we don't always necessarily know if someone is multilingual or not, right? So I think if we approach these sorts of tips with every writing session that we have, I think that's gonna benefit any writer regardless of their language background. And so I think it's really key to norm the use of resources.
[27:35] Um so for example, if my students don’t already use Grammarly, one of the first things I do is I sit down um I'll show them how to download the free Chrome or Firefox plug-in and I'll share with them um "I never send an email without running it through Grammarly." I'm tired. I let the machine learning work for me. This is something that I run absolutely everything that I write through. It's just so helpful. It saves me time. Sharing things that you find helpful and then showing students how you use that resource, not assuming that they're gonna just go off and know how to exactly use it. And if you don’t know something, you look it up together!
[28:15] I have um Merriam-Webster app pulled up on my laptop while I'm working and a lot of times I'll say, "I don't know that word. Let's look it up." Um and that, I think all of that is also helping to de-stigmatize this idea that, “Nobody else struggles with this."
BT: Absolutely!
AK: And particularly for multilingual for multilingual learners, "oh...this is this is an English sort of thing." I'm like "no, no, all writers need tools and all writers need support, regardless of their language background. Full stop. I've been doing this for a long time and I need all of the tools and the support that I can get. So I think that that's really, really important. I think if you're working at a particular institution, what are the what's the institutional knowledge that you have that you can take some time to show students?
[29:02] So for example, I'm constantly on our library subject librarian page and showing them-- first of all, this is how you find a subject librarian. It's broken down. It's super easy. You can chat. You can meet. Let's just look at the tool together. Because everybody needs this sort of support and if I know about resources that work for me, why wouldn't they work for my students?
BT: Right. Right. Which, again, like vulnerability. Like, I don't know everything. I need help. Here's what helps me, so it may help you. Which would make them feel more comfortable asking you a question. Because I've definitely been on the other side of the table where I'm like "I just asked like 5011 questions and maybe I shouldn't ask anymore." As opposed to someone being like "yeah, I have that question too" and it being like "oh, we're asking questions together. Okay, well then I have one more to put out there." It absolutely can encourage help seeking behavior.
[29:58] AK: Yes! Co-creation of knowledge, right?
BT: Absolutely! We in it together. Me and you. You and I. Absolutely. No, I love that.
[30:04] Music interlude
[30:12] AK: Um, a couple other resources. Academic word lists and academic phrasebanks. One of my colleague recommended one from the University of Manchester. Those can be really helpful. When I was going back to the idea of language choices. Of helping you have language choices to offer to students. Oftentimes that happens to me that students say, "well what is another way to say that?" And then all of the language I ever knew falls out of my head. Um..."I don't know." So just having that resource and then sharing that with students to use for future writing can be really helpful. Uh, a couple resources for teaching or giving feedback that I have bookmarked and I come back to all the time: Of course, PurdueOWL, Purdue Online Writing Lab. Really, truly one of the top resources out there. They do have a dedicated space also for multilingual writers. So I use that and then my students can use it as well.
[31:03] Um, the Sweetland Center for Writing has really great resources for teachers. They have an error-type table that talks about how to prioritize grammar conversations that I find really helpful. So they'll say something like "oh, this is something that's pretty common for someone to be able to recognize and correct in their own writing." Versus the sorts of things that are often more helpful for somebody else to point out and give some options for.
BT: Okay. That sounds really helpful. Like, you don't have to tell them all the things. Some of these things they're gonna pick up on their own in revision.
AK: Yeah! Absolutely, and there's the sort of critical distinction in the English teaching world is the difference between an error and a mistake. And so the idea being a mistake is just something that somebody knows and they're just making a mistake as we all do
[31:52] versus an error where it's like "oh, I have a fundamental misunderstanding of tense." Or "oh, I thought that this phrase...you know, I thought this was a cognate. I thought this was a word that in maybe one of my primary languages translates directly into English, but it doesn't or the nuance is different." And so that idea of where are the places where something is just a mistake and we don't need to spend a lot of time on it versus the places where it's actually helpful to have a conversation around the why behind the language choice too.
BT: Wow, okay. You teaching us!
AK: That's the goal.
BT: Yes, it is.
AK: One more resource I'll offer is the Corpus of Contemporary American English. So this has a learning curve. It's not something that I would necessarily offer to students and say "go figure this out on your own." It's kind of an interesting database, but it’s a really great way to look up things like collocations. So the types of words or phrases that just typically follow a pattern in how they're put together in English.
[32:53] So um like “salt and pepper.”
BT: Oh, y'all we are really learning today. Collocations. Salt and pepper. Write that down in your journal. Go on, professor. We listening!
AK: So uh you know but-- but why "salt and pepper?" Why not "pepper and salt?" Means the same thing. Would I say that someone has pepper and salt hair? Or salt and pepper hair? Right? Like why...why? But why does this...why do these sort of...
BT: But why, though?
AK: But why, though? Right? The perennial question. It also is helpful to look up how common certain terms are or what contexts they would be used in. So, uh I used this not too long ago with a student. I got the question, "Anne, what's the difference between 'fill in' or 'fill out'?" And I was like, "what IS the difference between those two?" And so what we did is that we went to the Corpus and we looked up those two terms and got a sense of sort of what are things...where were those phrases popping up. And so, the the Corpus will also show
[33:46] you what context, so you can get a sense of like "oh, is this used more often in spoken versus written versus um is this showing up in sort of things like journals or is this showing up in things like academic textbooks or...or um magazines or what have you." So it's helpful in terms of the context too so that students can say when I'm making a language choice, I'm thinking about my audience and my contexts as well.
[34:09] Music interlude
BT: Now, I'm 'bout to spring something on you. As you were teaching us, professor, when you were talking about fill in and feel out and you were like "oh, well some of these things are more common when they're spoken as opposed to when they're written," because...because that is a thing, how do you or do you bother...see, I'm springing it on myself too. I'm like, "how to--how to say these things? Words!" But how do you, do you try to help a writer find a writerly voice that is different from their speakerly voice or are you like "nah, just do you?"
AK: I think it totally depends on the writer's goals.
BT: Okay.
[34:51] AK: Right? So, I think um-- and again, this comes back to how do students-- not only what are their goals, what are-- what are they working on? What's their what's their project? What's their assignment. But also how...what are their goals in terms of bringing in their other languages as well? So, for example, I'll have students who say...I had a student from Brazil who said, "I'm writing in English but I want to keep my Portuguese-ness in English so like how do I do that? How do I sort of bring the elements of other languages in?" And so that's where again it comes back to choice and so again, a student can't know that until they sort of see what the options are so that's why I love the coding in something like the Corpus where it would say
[35:41] "well okay, we're seeing this a lot in academic texts but is that really how you want to sound? Do you wanna emulate that? This is up to you."
BT: Questions that need answers.
AK: Right? Um, "oh, okay well this is something that we're seeing a lot--" Now the Corpus has a lot of podcasts in their because that's where a lot of language is happening as we create language here. You know, "oh, this is something that's happening in podcasts." You know, "what are you gonna do for your final project? Are you going to write out a podcast script? Are you gonna write an academic paper and you're bringing in elements of spoken language into that paper?" Giving students that choice, right? And so I think that all comes back to sort of putting options on the table and saying, "what do you want it to sound like?"
[36:23] BT: Yeah, and I'm thinking about like, Black Language. Oral tradition is SO IMPORTANT, so when you try to say like "oh, is it speakerly or is it writerly?" When we're talking about like writing Black Language it's gonna sound speakerly because of the origins in oral-- in orality. Like even like Toni Morrison, right, who, I"m talking about her novels but even her essays also talk about the importance of orality in her texts. Her novels sound like they're being spoken to you, right? And so when you're talking about like "oh, I wanna bridge some things." Depending on the language you're trying to build in, the paper might end up a speakerly text. And that being okay and no less rigorous and, you know, all these other charged terms come in and we have to undo them.
AK: It comes back to who gets to define good writing? What is good writing? How do we-- yeah, absolutely. But yeah, it's that idea of choice.
[37:20] And for-- and I think for students who are moving between languages, we say "does this sound like you? What choice are you making?" But it's hard to know what that sounds like in another language. And so, also like elevating this is...this is the choices that you have too. Because a lot of times students feel like "well, can you just tell me how to say it?" So, well you have choice. Even if this is your seventh, eighth, ninth language, you have a choice. You are the speaker. You are the writer. This is your choice. I can't decide for you. i can tell you what my experiences is...
BT: Right.
AK: I can show you these resources but really a lot of it for me comes back to offering options.
BT: And so it may even then be helpful to sometimes say when they say, "can you just tell me" to be like "no, because I don't know those languages like you do so you're actually the one that has the greatest qualification to make that choice.
[38:17] But I can work-- I can walk through those different variations with you but ultimately you're gonna be the one that can best make that decision." And that's a really empowering thing to say. To ask somebody "can you just tell me" and them to be like "no I actually can't. You're the one that can't. You're the one that would be telling me what that sounds like. I don't know. I don't speak Portuguese."
AK: Yeah. And going back to that idea of multilingual...
BT: Right.
AK: And the users of multiple languages and like, you know far better than I do. You're the one who gets to make that choice. What I don't wanna do is have students say "can you tell me something" and me just keep saying no and feeling like I'm not giving options. I think that's where it's on me to really say "okay, what are some choices? Let me help you with resources to find that. Let me give you some options that I know." Um, but one of the things that i say, that you'll hear me if my door is open, you'll hear me saying a lot, Britt, is "what sounds better to you?
[39:11] What do you like? What sounds like you?" Because we don't always know what our voice is as a writer until we kind of stop and say "well, that doesn't sound good to me. Why did I like this phrase better than this phrase?" And and that's just a practice like anything.
BT: Yeah. Yeah, 100%. We have had a lovely and just wonderfully full conversation. There you have it, y'all! Practical tips for how to actually work with MLLs effectively. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise, Anne. We’re out of here. As always, y’all write on.